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+Title: A Doll's House : a play
+Author: Henrik Ibsen
+
+A Doll’s House
+
+by Henrik Ibsen
+
+
+Contents
+
+ ACT I.
+ ACT II.
+ ACT III.
+
+
+ DRAMATIS PERSONAE
+
+Torvald Helmer.
+Nora, his wife.
+Doctor Rank.
+Mrs Linde.
+Nils Krogstad.
+Helmer’s three young children.
+Anne, their nurse.
+A Housemaid.
+A Porter.
+
+_[The action takes place in Helmer’s house.]_
+
+
+
+
+A DOLL’S HOUSE
+
+
+
+
+ACT I
+
+
+_[SCENE.—A room furnished comfortably and tastefully, but not
+extravagantly. At the back, a door to the right leads to the
+entrance-hall, another to the left leads to Helmer’s study. Between the
+doors stands a piano. In the middle of the left-hand wall is a door,
+and beyond it a window. Near the window are a round table, arm-chairs
+and a small sofa. In the right-hand wall, at the farther end, another
+door; and on the same side, nearer the footlights, a stove, two easy
+chairs and a rocking-chair; between the stove and the door, a small
+table. Engravings on the walls; a cabinet with china and other small
+objects; a small book-case with well-bound books. The floors are
+carpeted, and a fire burns in the stove. It is winter._
+
+_A bell rings in the hall; shortly afterwards the door is heard to
+open. Enter NORA, humming a tune and in high spirits. She is in outdoor
+dress and carries a number of parcels; these she lays on the table to
+the right. She leaves the outer door open after her, and through it is
+seen a PORTER who is carrying a Christmas Tree and a basket, which he
+gives to the MAID who has opened the door.]_
+
+NORA.
+Hide the Christmas Tree carefully, Helen. Be sure the children do not
+see it until this evening, when it is dressed. _[To the PORTER, taking
+out her purse.]_ How much?
+
+PORTER.
+Sixpence.
+
+NORA.
+There is a shilling. No, keep the change. _[The PORTER thanks her, and
+goes out. NORA shuts the door. She is laughing to herself, as she takes
+off her hat and coat. She takes a packet of macaroons from her pocket
+and eats one or two; then goes cautiously to her husband’s door and
+listens.]_ Yes, he is in. _[Still humming, she goes to the table on the
+right.]_
+
+HELMER.
+_[calls out from his room]_. Is that my little lark twittering out
+there?
+
+NORA.
+_[busy opening some of the parcels]_. Yes, it is!
+
+HELMER.
+Is it my little squirrel bustling about?
+
+NORA.
+Yes!
+
+HELMER.
+When did my squirrel come home?
+
+NORA.
+Just now. _[Puts the bag of macaroons into her pocket and wipes her
+mouth.]_ Come in here, Torvald, and see what I have bought.
+
+HELMER.
+Don’t disturb me. _[A little later, he opens the door and looks into
+the room, pen in hand.]_ Bought, did you say? All these things? Has my
+little spendthrift been wasting money again?
+
+NORA.
+Yes but, Torvald, this year we really can let ourselves go a little.
+This is the first Christmas that we have not needed to economise.
+
+HELMER.
+Still, you know, we can’t spend money recklessly.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, Torvald, we may be a wee bit more reckless now, mayn’t we? Just a
+tiny wee bit! You are going to have a big salary and earn lots and lots
+of money.
+
+HELMER.
+Yes, after the New Year; but then it will be a whole quarter before the
+salary is due.
+
+NORA.
+Pooh! we can borrow until then.
+
+HELMER.
+Nora! _[Goes up to her and takes her playfully by the ear.]_ The same
+little featherhead! Suppose, now, that I borrowed fifty pounds today,
+and you spent it all in the Christmas week, and then on New Year’s Eve
+a slate fell on my head and killed me, and—
+
+NORA.
+_[putting her hands over his mouth]_. Oh! don’t say such horrid things.
+
+HELMER.
+Still, suppose that happened,—what then?
+
+NORA.
+If that were to happen, I don’t suppose I should care whether I owed
+money or not.
+
+HELMER.
+Yes, but what about the people who had lent it?
+
+NORA.
+They? Who would bother about them? I should not know who they were.
+
+HELMER.
+That is like a woman! But seriously, Nora, you know what I think about
+that. No debt, no borrowing. There can be no freedom or beauty about a
+home life that depends on borrowing and debt. We two have kept bravely
+on the straight road so far, and we will go on the same way for the
+short time longer that there need be any struggle.
+
+NORA.
+_[moving towards the stove]_. As you please, Torvald.
+
+HELMER.
+_[following her]_. Come, come, my little skylark must not droop her
+wings. What is this! Is my little squirrel out of temper? _[Taking out
+his purse.]_ Nora, what do you think I have got here?
+
+NORA.
+_[turning round quickly]_. Money!
+
+HELMER.
+There you are. _[Gives her some money.]_ Do you think I don’t know what
+a lot is wanted for housekeeping at Christmas-time?
+
+NORA.
+_[counting]_. Ten shillings—a pound—two pounds! Thank you, thank you,
+Torvald; that will keep me going for a long time.
+
+HELMER.
+Indeed it must.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, yes, it will. But come here and let me show you what I have
+bought. And all so cheap! Look, here is a new suit for Ivar, and a
+sword; and a horse and a trumpet for Bob; and a doll and dolly’s
+bedstead for Emmy,—they are very plain, but anyway she will soon break
+them in pieces. And here are dress-lengths and handkerchiefs for the
+maids; old Anne ought really to have something better.
+
+HELMER.
+And what is in this parcel?
+
+NORA.
+_[crying out]_. No, no! you mustn’t see that until this evening.
+
+HELMER.
+Very well. But now tell me, you extravagant little person, what would
+you like for yourself?
+
+NORA.
+For myself? Oh, I am sure I don’t want anything.
+
+HELMER.
+Yes, but you must. Tell me something reasonable that you would
+particularly like to have.
+
+NORA.
+No, I really can’t think of anything—unless, Torvald—
+
+HELMER.
+Well?
+
+NORA.
+_[playing with his coat buttons, and without raising her eyes to his]_.
+If you really want to give me something, you might—you might—
+
+HELMER.
+Well, out with it!
+
+NORA.
+_[speaking quickly]_. You might give me money, Torvald. Only just as
+much as you can afford; and then one of these days I will buy something
+with it.
+
+HELMER.
+But, Nora—
+
+NORA.
+Oh, do! dear Torvald; please, please do! Then I will wrap it up in
+beautiful gilt paper and hang it on the Christmas Tree. Wouldn’t that
+be fun?
+
+HELMER.
+What are little people called that are always wasting money?
+
+NORA.
+Spendthrifts—I know. Let us do as you suggest, Torvald, and then I
+shall have time to think what I am most in want of. That is a very
+sensible plan, isn’t it?
+
+HELMER.
+_[smiling]_. Indeed it is—that is to say, if you were really to save
+out of the money I give you, and then really buy something for
+yourself. But if you spend it all on the housekeeping and any number of
+unnecessary things, then I merely have to pay up again.
+
+NORA.
+Oh but, Torvald—
+
+HELMER.
+You can’t deny it, my dear little Nora. _[Puts his arm round her
+waist.]_ It’s a sweet little spendthrift, but she uses up a deal of
+money. One would hardly believe how expensive such little persons are!
+
+NORA.
+It’s a shame to say that. I do really save all I can.
+
+HELMER.
+_[laughing]_. That’s very true,—all you can. But you can’t save
+anything!
+
+NORA.
+_[smiling quietly and happily]_. You haven’t any idea how many expenses
+we skylarks and squirrels have, Torvald.
+
+HELMER.
+You are an odd little soul. Very like your father. You always find some
+new way of wheedling money out of me, and, as soon as you have got it,
+it seems to melt in your hands. You never know where it has gone.
+Still, one must take you as you are. It is in the blood; for indeed it
+is true that you can inherit these things, Nora.
+
+NORA.
+Ah, I wish I had inherited many of papa’s qualities.
+
+HELMER.
+And I would not wish you to be anything but just what you are, my sweet
+little skylark. But, do you know, it strikes me that you are looking
+rather—what shall I say—rather uneasy today?
+
+NORA.
+Do I?
+
+HELMER.
+You do, really. Look straight at me.
+
+NORA.
+_[looks at him]_. Well?
+
+HELMER.
+_[wagging his finger at her]_. Hasn’t Miss Sweet Tooth been breaking
+rules in town today?
+
+NORA.
+No; what makes you think that?
+
+HELMER.
+Hasn’t she paid a visit to the confectioner’s?
+
+NORA.
+No, I assure you, Torvald—
+
+HELMER.
+Not been nibbling sweets?
+
+NORA.
+No, certainly not.
+
+HELMER.
+Not even taken a bite at a macaroon or two?
+
+NORA.
+No, Torvald, I assure you really—
+
+HELMER.
+There, there, of course I was only joking.
+
+NORA.
+_[going to the table on the right]_. I should not think of going
+against your wishes.
+
+HELMER.
+No, I am sure of that; besides, you gave me your word— _[Going up to
+her.]_ Keep your little Christmas secrets to yourself, my darling. They
+will all be revealed tonight when the Christmas Tree is lit, no doubt.
+
+NORA.
+Did you remember to invite Doctor Rank?
+
+HELMER.
+No. But there is no need; as a matter of course he will come to dinner
+with us. However, I will ask him when he comes in this morning. I have
+ordered some good wine. Nora, you can’t think how I am looking forward
+to this evening.
+
+NORA.
+So am I! And how the children will enjoy themselves, Torvald!
+
+HELMER.
+It is splendid to feel that one has a perfectly safe appointment, and a
+big enough income. It’s delightful to think of, isn’t it?
+
+NORA.
+It’s wonderful!
+
+HELMER.
+Do you remember last Christmas? For a full three weeks beforehand you
+shut yourself up every evening until long after midnight, making
+ornaments for the Christmas Tree, and all the other fine things that
+were to be a surprise to us. It was the dullest three weeks I ever
+spent!
+
+NORA.
+I didn’t find it dull.
+
+HELMER.
+_[smiling]_. But there was precious little result, Nora.
+
+NORA.
+Oh, you shouldn’t tease me about that again. How could I help the cat’s
+going in and tearing everything to pieces?
+
+HELMER.
+Of course you couldn’t, poor little girl. You had the best of
+intentions to please us all, and that’s the main thing. But it is a
+good thing that our hard times are over.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, it is really wonderful.
+
+HELMER.
+This time I needn’t sit here and be dull all alone, and you needn’t
+ruin your dear eyes and your pretty little hands—
+
+NORA.
+_[clapping her hands]_. No, Torvald, I needn’t any longer, need I! It’s
+wonderfully lovely to hear you say so! _[Taking his arm.]_ Now I will
+tell you how I have been thinking we ought to arrange things, Torvald.
+As soon as Christmas is over—_[A bell rings in the hall.]_ There’s the
+bell. _[She tidies the room a little.]_ There’s some one at the door.
+What a nuisance!
+
+HELMER.
+If it is a caller, remember I am not at home.
+
+MAID.
+_[in the doorway]_. A lady to see you, ma’am,—a stranger.
+
+NORA.
+Ask her to come in.
+
+MAID.
+_[to HELMER]_. The doctor came at the same time, sir.
+
+HELMER.
+Did he go straight into my room?
+
+MAID.
+Yes, sir.
+
+_[HELMER goes into his room. The MAID ushers in Mrs Linde, who is in
+travelling dress, and shuts the door.]_
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[in a dejected and timid voice]_. How do you do, Nora?
+
+NORA.
+_[doubtfully]_. How do you do—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+You don’t recognise me, I suppose.
+
+NORA.
+No, I don’t know—yes, to be sure, I seem to—_[Suddenly.]_ Yes!
+Christine! Is it really you?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, it is I.
+
+NORA.
+Christine! To think of my not recognising you! And yet how could I—_[In
+a gentle voice.]_ How you have altered, Christine!
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, I have indeed. In nine, ten long years—
+
+NORA.
+Is it so long since we met? I suppose it is. The last eight years have
+been a happy time for me, I can tell you. And so now you have come into
+the town, and have taken this long journey in winter—that was plucky of
+you.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I arrived by steamer this morning.
+
+NORA.
+To have some fun at Christmas-time, of course. How delightful! We will
+have such fun together! But take off your things. You are not cold, I
+hope. _[Helps her.]_ Now we will sit down by the stove, and be cosy.
+No, take this armchair; I will sit here in the rocking-chair. _[Takes
+her hands.]_ Now you look like your old self again; it was only the
+first moment—You are a little paler, Christine, and perhaps a little
+thinner.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+And much, much older, Nora.
+
+NORA.
+Perhaps a little older; very, very little; certainly not much. _[Stops
+suddenly and speaks seriously.]_ What a thoughtless creature I am,
+chattering away like this. My poor, dear Christine, do forgive me.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+What do you mean, Nora?
+
+NORA.
+_[gently]_. Poor Christine, you are a widow.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes; it is three years ago now.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, I knew; I saw it in the papers. I assure you, Christine, I meant
+ever so often to write to you at the time, but I always put it off and
+something always prevented me.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I quite understand, dear.
+
+NORA.
+It was very bad of me, Christine. Poor thing, how you must have
+suffered. And he left you nothing?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No.
+
+NORA.
+And no children?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No.
+
+NORA.
+Nothing at all, then.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Not even any sorrow or grief to live upon.
+
+NORA.
+_[looking incredulously at her]_. But, Christine, is that possible?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[smiles sadly and strokes her hair]_. It sometimes happens, Nora.
+
+NORA.
+So you are quite alone. How dreadfully sad that must be. I have three
+lovely children. You can’t see them just now, for they are out with
+their nurse. But now you must tell me all about it.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No, no; I want to hear about you.
+
+NORA.
+No, you must begin. I mustn’t be selfish today; today I must only think
+of your affairs. But there is one thing I must tell you. Do you know we
+have just had a great piece of good luck?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No, what is it?
+
+NORA.
+Just fancy, my husband has been made manager of the Bank!
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Your husband? What good luck!
+
+NORA.
+Yes, tremendous! A barrister’s profession is such an uncertain thing,
+especially if he won’t undertake unsavoury cases; and naturally Torvald
+has never been willing to do that, and I quite agree with him. You may
+imagine how pleased we are! He is to take up his work in the Bank at
+the New Year, and then he will have a big salary and lots of
+commissions. For the future we can live quite differently—we can do
+just as we like. I feel so relieved and so happy, Christine! It will be
+splendid to have heaps of money and not need to have any anxiety, won’t
+it?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, anyhow I think it would be delightful to have what one needs.
+
+NORA.
+No, not only what one needs, but heaps and heaps of money.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[smiling]_. Nora, Nora, haven’t you learned sense yet? In our
+schooldays you were a great spendthrift.
+
+NORA.
+_[laughing]_. Yes, that is what Torvald says now. _[Wags her finger at
+her.]_ But “Nora, Nora” is not so silly as you think. We have not been
+in a position for me to waste money. We have both had to work.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+You too?
+
+NORA.
+Yes; odds and ends, needlework, crotchet-work, embroidery, and that
+kind of thing. _[Dropping her voice.]_ And other things as well. You
+know Torvald left his office when we were married? There was no
+prospect of promotion there, and he had to try and earn more than
+before. But during the first year he over-worked himself dreadfully.
+You see, he had to make money every way he could, and he worked early
+and late; but he couldn’t stand it, and fell dreadfully ill, and the
+doctors said it was necessary for him to go south.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+You spent a whole year in Italy, didn’t you?
+
+NORA.
+Yes. It was no easy matter to get away, I can tell you. It was just
+after Ivar was born; but naturally we had to go. It was a wonderfully
+beautiful journey, and it saved Torvald’s life. But it cost a
+tremendous lot of money, Christine.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+So I should think.
+
+NORA.
+It cost about two hundred and fifty pounds. That’s a lot, isn’t it?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, and in emergencies like that it is lucky to have the money.
+
+NORA.
+I ought to tell you that we had it from papa.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Oh, I see. It was just about that time that he died, wasn’t it?
+
+NORA.
+Yes; and, just think of it, I couldn’t go and nurse him. I was
+expecting little Ivar’s birth every day and I had my poor sick Torvald
+to look after. My dear, kind father—I never saw him again, Christine.
+That was the saddest time I have known since our marriage.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I know how fond you were of him. And then you went off to Italy?
+
+NORA.
+Yes; you see we had money then, and the doctors insisted on our going,
+so we started a month later.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+And your husband came back quite well?
+
+NORA.
+As sound as a bell!
+
+MRS LINDE.
+But—the doctor?
+
+NORA.
+What doctor?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I thought your maid said the gentleman who arrived here just as I did,
+was the doctor?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, that was Doctor Rank, but he doesn’t come here professionally. He
+is our greatest friend, and comes in at least once every day. No,
+Torvald has not had an hour’s illness since then, and our children are
+strong and healthy and so am I. _[Jumps up and claps her hands.]_
+Christine! Christine! it’s good to be alive and happy!—But how horrid
+of me; I am talking of nothing but my own affairs. _[Sits on a stool
+near her, and rests her arms on her knees.]_ You mustn’t be angry with
+me. Tell me, is it really true that you did not love your husband? Why
+did you marry him?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+My mother was alive then, and was bedridden and helpless, and I had to
+provide for my two younger brothers; so I did not think I was justified
+in refusing his offer.
+
+NORA.
+No, perhaps you were quite right. He was rich at that time, then?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I believe he was quite well off. But his business was a precarious one;
+and, when he died, it all went to pieces and there was nothing left.
+
+NORA.
+And then?—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Well, I had to turn my hand to anything I could find—first a small
+shop, then a small school, and so on. The last three years have seemed
+like one long working-day, with no rest. Now it is at an end, Nora. My
+poor mother needs me no more, for she is gone; and the boys do not need
+me either; they have got situations and can shift for themselves.
+
+NORA.
+What a relief you must feel if—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No, indeed; I only feel my life unspeakably empty. No one to live for
+anymore. _[Gets up restlessly.]_ That was why I could not stand the
+life in my little backwater any longer. I hope it may be easier here to
+find something which will busy me and occupy my thoughts. If only I
+could have the good luck to get some regular work—office work of some
+kind—
+
+NORA.
+But, Christine, that is so frightfully tiring, and you look tired out
+now. You had far better go away to some watering-place.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[walking to the window]_. I have no father to give me money for a
+journey, Nora.
+
+NORA.
+_[rising]_. Oh, don’t be angry with me!
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[going up to her]_. It is you that must not be angry with me, dear.
+The worst of a position like mine is that it makes one so bitter. No
+one to work for, and yet obliged to be always on the lookout for
+chances. One must live, and so one becomes selfish. When you told me of
+the happy turn your fortunes have taken—you will hardly believe it—I
+was delighted not so much on your account as on my own.
+
+NORA.
+How do you mean?—Oh, I understand. You mean that perhaps Torvald could
+get you something to do.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, that was what I was thinking of.
+
+NORA.
+He must, Christine. Just leave it to me; I will broach the subject very
+cleverly—I will think of something that will please him very much. It
+will make me so happy to be of some use to you.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+How kind you are, Nora, to be so anxious to help me! It is doubly kind
+in you, for you know so little of the burdens and troubles of life.
+
+NORA.
+I—? I know so little of them?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[smiling]_. My dear! Small household cares and that sort of thing!—You
+are a child, Nora.
+
+NORA.
+_[tosses her head and crosses the stage]_. You ought not to be so
+superior.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No?
+
+NORA.
+You are just like the others. They all think that I am incapable of
+anything really serious—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Come, come—
+
+NORA.
+—that I have gone through nothing in this world of cares.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+But, my dear Nora, you have just told me all your troubles.
+
+NORA.
+Pooh!—those were trifles. _[Lowering her voice.]_ I have not told you
+the important thing.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+The important thing? What do you mean?
+
+NORA.
+You look down upon me altogether, Christine—but you ought not to. You
+are proud, aren’t you, of having worked so hard and so long for your
+mother?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Indeed, I don’t look down on anyone. But it is true that I am both
+proud and glad to think that I was privileged to make the end of my
+mother’s life almost free from care.
+
+NORA.
+And you are proud to think of what you have done for your brothers?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I think I have the right to be.
+
+NORA.
+I think so, too. But now, listen to this; I too have something to be
+proud and glad of.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I have no doubt you have. But what do you refer to?
+
+NORA.
+Speak low. Suppose Torvald were to hear! He mustn’t on any account—no
+one in the world must know, Christine, except you.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+But what is it?
+
+NORA.
+Come here. _[Pulls her down on the sofa beside her.]_ Now I will show
+you that I too have something to be proud and glad of. It was I who
+saved Torvald’s life.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+“Saved”? How?
+
+NORA.
+I told you about our trip to Italy. Torvald would never have recovered
+if he had not gone there—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, but your father gave you the necessary funds.
+
+NORA.
+_[smiling]_. Yes, that is what Torvald and all the others think, but—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+But—
+
+NORA.
+Papa didn’t give us a shilling. It was I who procured the money.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+You? All that large sum?
+
+NORA.
+Two hundred and fifty pounds. What do you think of that?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+But, Nora, how could you possibly do it? Did you win a prize in the
+Lottery?
+
+NORA.
+_[contemptuously]_. In the Lottery? There would have been no credit in
+that.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+But where did you get it from, then? Nora _[humming and smiling with an
+air of mystery]_. Hm, hm! Aha!
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Because you couldn’t have borrowed it.
+
+NORA.
+Couldn’t I? Why not?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No, a wife cannot borrow without her husband’s consent.
+
+NORA.
+_[tossing her head]_. Oh, if it is a wife who has any head for
+business—a wife who has the wit to be a little bit clever—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I don’t understand it at all, Nora.
+
+NORA.
+There is no need you should. I never said I had borrowed the money. I
+may have got it some other way. _[Lies back on the sofa.]_ Perhaps I
+got it from some other admirer. When anyone is as attractive as I am—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+You are a mad creature.
+
+NORA.
+Now, you know you’re full of curiosity, Christine.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Listen to me, Nora dear. Haven’t you been a little bit imprudent?
+
+NORA.
+_[sits up straight]_. Is it imprudent to save your husband’s life?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+It seems to me imprudent, without his knowledge, to—
+
+NORA.
+But it was absolutely necessary that he should not know! My goodness,
+can’t you understand that? It was necessary he should have no idea what
+a dangerous condition he was in. It was to me that the doctors came and
+said that his life was in danger, and that the only thing to save him
+was to live in the south. Do you suppose I didn’t try, first of all, to
+get what I wanted as if it were for myself? I told him how much I
+should love to travel abroad like other young wives; I tried tears and
+entreaties with him; I told him that he ought to remember the condition
+I was in, and that he ought to be kind and indulgent to me; I even
+hinted that he might raise a loan. That nearly made him angry,
+Christine. He said I was thoughtless, and that it was his duty as my
+husband not to indulge me in my whims and caprices—as I believe he
+called them. Very well, I thought, you must be saved—and that was how I
+came to devise a way out of the difficulty—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+And did your husband never get to know from your father that the money
+had not come from him?
+
+NORA.
+No, never. Papa died just at that time. I had meant to let him into the
+secret and beg him never to reveal it. But he was so ill then—alas,
+there never was any need to tell him.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+And since then have you never told your secret to your husband?
+
+NORA.
+Good Heavens, no! How could you think so? A man who has such strong
+opinions about these things! And besides, how painful and humiliating
+it would be for Torvald, with his manly independence, to know that he
+owed me anything! It would upset our mutual relations altogether; our
+beautiful happy home would no longer be what it is now.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Do you mean never to tell him about it?
+
+NORA.
+_[meditatively, and with a half smile]_. Yes—someday, perhaps, after
+many years, when I am no longer as nice-looking as I am now. Don’t
+laugh at me! I mean, of course, when Torvald is no longer as devoted to
+me as he is now; when my dancing and dressing-up and reciting have
+palled on him; then it may be a good thing to have something in
+reserve—_[Breaking off.]_ What nonsense! That time will never come.
+Now, what do you think of my great secret, Christine? Do you still
+think I am of no use? I can tell you, too, that this affair has caused
+me a lot of worry. It has been by no means easy for me to meet my
+engagements punctually. I may tell you that there is something that is
+called, in business, quarterly interest, and another thing called
+payment in installments, and it is always so dreadfully difficult to
+manage them. I have had to save a little here and there, where I could,
+you understand. I have not been able to put aside much from my
+housekeeping money, for Torvald must have a good table. I couldn’t let
+my children be shabbily dressed; I have felt obliged to use up all he
+gave me for them, the sweet little darlings!
+
+MRS LINDE.
+So it has all had to come out of your own necessaries of life, poor
+Nora?
+
+NORA.
+Of course. Besides, I was the one responsible for it. Whenever Torvald
+has given me money for new dresses and such things, I have never spent
+more than half of it; I have always bought the simplest and cheapest
+things. Thank Heaven, any clothes look well on me, and so Torvald has
+never noticed it. But it was often very hard on me, Christine—because
+it is delightful to be really well dressed, isn’t it?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Quite so.
+
+NORA.
+Well, then I have found other ways of earning money. Last winter I was
+lucky enough to get a lot of copying to do; so I locked myself up and
+sat writing every evening until quite late at night. Many a time I was
+desperately tired; but all the same it was a tremendous pleasure to sit
+there working and earning money. It was like being a man.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+How much have you been able to pay off in that way?
+
+NORA.
+I can’t tell you exactly. You see, it is very difficult to keep an
+account of a business matter of that kind. I only know that I have paid
+every penny that I could scrape together. Many a time I was at my wits’
+end. _[Smiles.]_ Then I used to sit here and imagine that a rich old
+gentleman had fallen in love with me—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+What! Who was it?
+
+NORA.
+Be quiet!—that he had died; and that when his will was opened it
+contained, written in big letters, the instruction: “The lovely Mrs
+Nora Helmer is to have all I possess paid over to her at once in cash.”
+
+MRS LINDE.
+But, my dear Nora—who could the man be?
+
+NORA.
+Good gracious, can’t you understand? There was no old gentleman at all;
+it was only something that I used to sit here and imagine, when I
+couldn’t think of any way of procuring money. But it’s all the same
+now; the tiresome old person can stay where he is, as far as I am
+concerned; I don’t care about him or his will either, for I am free
+from care now. _[Jumps up.]_ My goodness, it’s delightful to think of,
+Christine! Free from care! To be able to be free from care, quite free
+from care; to be able to play and romp with the children; to be able to
+keep the house beautifully and have everything just as Torvald likes
+it! And, think of it, soon the spring will come and the big blue sky!
+Perhaps we shall be able to take a little trip—perhaps I shall see the
+sea again! Oh, it’s a wonderful thing to be alive and be happy. _[A
+bell is heard in the hall.]_
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[rising]_. There is the bell; perhaps I had better go.
+
+NORA.
+No, don’t go; no one will come in here; it is sure to be for Torvald.
+
+SERVANT.
+_[at the hall door]_. Excuse me, ma’am—there is a gentleman to see the
+master, and as the doctor is with him—
+
+NORA.
+Who is it?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+_[at the door]_. It is I, Mrs Helmer. _[Mrs LINDE starts, trembles, and
+turns to the window.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[takes a step towards him, and speaks in a strained, low voice]_. You?
+What is it? What do you want to see my husband about?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Bank business—in a way. I have a small post in the Bank, and I hear
+your husband is to be our chief now—
+
+NORA.
+Then it is—
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Nothing but dry business matters, Mrs Helmer; absolutely nothing else.
+
+NORA.
+Be so good as to go into the study, then. _[She bows indifferently to
+him and shuts the door into the hall; then comes back and makes up the
+fire in the stove.]_
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Nora—who was that man?
+
+NORA.
+A lawyer, of the name of Krogstad.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Then it really was he.
+
+NORA.
+Do you know the man?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I used to—many years ago. At one time he was a solicitor’s clerk in our
+town.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, he was.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+He is greatly altered.
+
+NORA.
+He made a very unhappy marriage.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+He is a widower now, isn’t he?
+
+NORA.
+With several children. There now, it is burning up. [Shuts the door of
+the stove and moves the rocking-chair aside.]
+
+MRS LINDE.
+They say he carries on various kinds of business.
+
+NORA.
+Really! Perhaps he does; I don’t know anything about it. But don’t let
+us think of business; it is so tiresome.
+
+DOCTOR RANK.
+_[comes out of HELMER’S study. Before he shuts the door he calls to
+him]_. No, my dear fellow, I won’t disturb you; I would rather go in to
+your wife for a little while. _[Shuts the door and sees Mrs LINDE.]_ I
+beg your pardon; I am afraid I am disturbing you too.
+
+NORA.
+No, not at all. _[Introducing him]_. Doctor Rank, Mrs Linde.
+
+RANK.
+I have often heard Mrs Linde’s name mentioned here. I think I passed
+you on the stairs when I arrived, Mrs Linde?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, I go up very slowly; I can’t manage stairs well.
+
+RANK.
+Ah! some slight internal weakness?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No, the fact is I have been overworking myself.
+
+RANK.
+Nothing more than that? Then I suppose you have come to town to amuse
+yourself with our entertainments?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I have come to look for work.
+
+RANK.
+Is that a good cure for overwork?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+One must live, Doctor Rank.
+
+RANK.
+Yes, the general opinion seems to be that it is necessary.
+
+NORA.
+Look here, Doctor Rank—you know you want to live.
+
+RANK.
+Certainly. However wretched I may feel, I want to prolong the agony as
+long as possible. All my patients are like that. And so are those who
+are morally diseased; one of them, and a bad case too, is at this very
+moment with Helmer—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[sadly]_. Ah!
+
+NORA.
+Whom do you mean?
+
+RANK.
+A lawyer of the name of Krogstad, a fellow you don’t know at all. He
+suffers from a diseased moral character, Mrs Helmer; but even he began
+talking of its being highly important that he should live.
+
+NORA.
+Did he? What did he want to speak to Torvald about?
+
+RANK.
+I have no idea; I only heard that it was something about the Bank.
+
+NORA.
+I didn’t know this—what’s his name—Krogstad had anything to do with the
+Bank.
+
+RANK.
+Yes, he has some sort of appointment there. _[To Mrs Linde.]_ I don’t
+know whether you find also in your part of the world that there are
+certain people who go zealously snuffing about to smell out moral
+corruption, and, as soon as they have found some, put the person
+concerned into some lucrative position where they can keep their eye on
+him. Healthy natures are left out in the cold.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Still I think the sick are those who most need taking care of.
+
+RANK.
+_[shrugging his shoulders]_. Yes, there you are. That is the sentiment
+that is turning Society into a sick-house.
+
+_[NORA, who has been absorbed in her thoughts, breaks out into
+smothered laughter and claps her hands.]_
+
+RANK.
+Why do you laugh at that? Have you any notion what Society really is?
+
+NORA.
+What do I care about tiresome Society? I am laughing at something quite
+different, something extremely amusing. Tell me, Doctor Rank, are all
+the people who are employed in the Bank dependent on Torvald now?
+
+RANK.
+Is that what you find so extremely amusing?
+
+NORA.
+_[smiling and humming]_. That’s my affair! _[Walking about the room.]_
+It’s perfectly glorious to think that we have—that Torvald has so much
+power over so many people. _[Takes the packet from her pocket.]_ Doctor
+Rank, what do you say to a macaroon?
+
+RANK.
+What, macaroons? I thought they were forbidden here.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, but these are some Christine gave me.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+What! I?—
+
+NORA.
+Oh, well, don’t be alarmed! You couldn’t know that Torvald had
+forbidden them. I must tell you that he is afraid they will spoil my
+teeth. But, bah!—once in a way—That’s so, isn’t it, Doctor Rank? By
+your leave! _[Puts a macaroon into his mouth.]_ You must have one too,
+Christine. And I shall have one, just a little one—or at most two.
+_[Walking about.]_ I am tremendously happy. There is just one thing in
+the world now that I should dearly love to do.
+
+RANK.
+Well, what is that?
+
+NORA.
+It’s something I should dearly love to say, if Torvald could hear me.
+
+RANK.
+Well, why can’t you say it?
+
+NORA.
+No, I daren’t; it’s so shocking.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Shocking?
+
+RANK.
+Well, I should not advise you to say it. Still, with us you might. What
+is it you would so much like to say if Torvald could hear you?
+
+NORA.
+I should just love to say—Well, I’m damned!
+
+RANK.
+Are you mad?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Nora, dear—!
+
+RANK.
+Say it, here he is!
+
+NORA.
+_[hiding the packet]_. Hush! Hush! Hush! _[HELMER comes out of his
+room, with his coat over his arm and his hat in his hand.]_
+
+NORA.
+Well, Torvald dear, have you got rid of him?
+
+HELMER.
+Yes, he has just gone.
+
+NORA.
+Let me introduce you—this is Christine, who has come to town.
+
+HELMER.
+Christine—? Excuse me, but I don’t know—
+
+NORA.
+Mrs Linde, dear; Christine Linde.
+
+HELMER.
+Of course. A school friend of my wife’s, I presume?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, we have known each other since then.
+
+NORA.
+And just think, she has taken a long journey in order to see you.
+
+HELMER.
+What do you mean?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No, really, I—
+
+NORA.
+Christine is tremendously clever at book-keeping, and she is
+frightfully anxious to work under some clever man, so as to perfect
+herself—
+
+HELMER.
+Very sensible, Mrs Linde.
+
+NORA.
+And when she heard you had been appointed manager of the Bank—the news
+was telegraphed, you know—she travelled here as quick as she could.
+Torvald, I am sure you will be able to do something for Christine, for
+my sake, won’t you?
+
+HELMER.
+Well, it is not altogether impossible. I presume you are a widow, Mrs
+Linde?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes.
+
+HELMER.
+And have had some experience of book-keeping?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, a fair amount.
+
+HELMER.
+Ah! well, it’s very likely I may be able to find something for you—
+
+NORA.
+_[clapping her hands]_. What did I tell you? What did I tell you?
+
+HELMER.
+You have just come at a fortunate moment, Mrs Linde.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+How am I to thank you?
+
+HELMER.
+There is no need. _[Puts on his coat.]_ But today you must excuse me—
+
+RANK.
+Wait a minute; I will come with you. _[Brings his fur coat from the
+hall and warms it at the fire.]_
+
+NORA.
+Don’t be long away, Torvald dear.
+
+HELMER.
+About an hour, not more.
+
+NORA.
+Are you going too, Christine?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[putting on her cloak]_. Yes, I must go and look for a room.
+
+HELMER.
+Oh, well then, we can walk down the street together.
+
+NORA.
+_[helping her]_. What a pity it is we are so short of space here; I am
+afraid it is impossible for us—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Please don’t think of it! Goodbye, Nora dear, and many thanks.
+
+NORA.
+Goodbye for the present. Of course you will come back this evening. And
+you too, Dr. Rank. What do you say? If you are well enough? Oh, you
+must be! Wrap yourself up well. _[They go to the door all talking
+together. Children’s voices are heard on the staircase.]_
+
+NORA.
+There they are! There they are! _[She runs to open the door. The NURSE
+comes in with the children.]_ Come in! Come in! _[Stoops and kisses
+them.]_ Oh, you sweet blessings! Look at them, Christine! Aren’t they
+darlings?
+
+RANK.
+Don’t let us stand here in the draught.
+
+HELMER.
+Come along, Mrs Linde; the place will only be bearable for a mother
+now!
+
+_[RANK, HELMER, and Mrs Linde go downstairs. The NURSE comes forward
+with the children; NORA shuts the hall door.]_
+
+NORA.
+How fresh and well you look! Such red cheeks like apples and roses.
+_[The children all talk at once while she speaks to them.]_ Have you
+had great fun? That’s splendid! What, you pulled both Emmy and Bob
+along on the sledge? —both at once?—that was good. You are a clever
+boy, Ivar. Let me take her for a little, Anne. My sweet little baby
+doll! _[Takes the baby from the MAID and dances it up and down.]_ Yes,
+yes, mother will dance with Bob too. What! Have you been snowballing? I
+wish I had been there too! No, no, I will take their things off, Anne;
+please let me do it, it is such fun. Go in now, you look half frozen.
+There is some hot coffee for you on the stove.
+
+_[The NURSE goes into the room on the left. NORA takes off the
+children’s things and throws them about, while they all talk to her at
+once.]_
+
+NORA.
+Really! Did a big dog run after you? But it didn’t bite you? No, dogs
+don’t bite nice little dolly children. You mustn’t look at the parcels,
+Ivar. What are they? Ah, I daresay you would like to know. No, no—it’s
+something nasty! Come, let us have a game! What shall we play at? Hide
+and Seek? Yes, we’ll play Hide and Seek. Bob shall hide first. Must I
+hide? Very well, I’ll hide first. _[She and the children laugh and
+shout, and romp in and out of the room; at last NORA hides under the
+table, the children rush in and out for her, but do not see her; they
+hear her smothered laughter, run to the table, lift up the cloth and
+find her. Shouts of laughter. She crawls forward and pretends to
+frighten them. Fresh laughter. Meanwhile there has been a knock at the
+hall door, but none of them has noticed it. The door is half opened,
+and KROGSTAD appears, he waits a little; the game goes on.]_
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Excuse me, Mrs Helmer.
+
+NORA.
+_[with a stifled cry, turns round and gets up on to her knees]_. Ah!
+what do you want?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Excuse me, the outer door was ajar; I suppose someone forgot to shut
+it.
+
+NORA.
+_[rising]_. My husband is out, Mr. Krogstad.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I know that.
+
+NORA.
+What do you want here, then?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+A word with you.
+
+NORA.
+With me?—_[To the children, gently.]_ Go in to nurse. What? No, the
+strange man won’t do mother any harm. When he has gone we will have
+another game. _[She takes the children into the room on the left, and
+shuts the door after them.]_ You want to speak to me?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Yes, I do.
+
+NORA.
+Today? It is not the first of the month yet.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+No, it is Christmas Eve, and it will depend on yourself what sort of a
+Christmas you will spend.
+
+NORA.
+What do you mean? Today it is absolutely impossible for me—
+
+KROGSTAD.
+We won’t talk about that until later on. This is something different. I
+presume you can give me a moment?
+
+NORA.
+Yes—yes, I can—although—
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Good. I was in Olsen’s Restaurant and saw your husband going down the
+street—
+
+NORA.
+Yes?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+With a lady.
+
+NORA.
+What then?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+May I make so bold as to ask if it was a Mrs Linde?
+
+NORA.
+It was.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Just arrived in town?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, today.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+She is a great friend of yours, isn’t she?
+
+NORA.
+She is. But I don’t see—
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I knew her too, once upon a time.
+
+NORA.
+I am aware of that.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Are you? So you know all about it; I thought as much. Then I can ask
+you, without beating about the bush—is Mrs Linde to have an appointment
+in the Bank?
+
+NORA.
+What right have you to question me, Mr. Krogstad?—You, one of my
+husband’s subordinates! But since you ask, you shall know. Yes, Mrs
+Linde is to have an appointment. And it was I who pleaded her cause,
+Mr. Krogstad, let me tell you that.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I was right in what I thought, then.
+
+NORA.
+_[walking up and down the stage]_. Sometimes one has a tiny little bit
+of influence, I should hope. Because one is a woman, it does not
+necessarily follow that—. When anyone is in a subordinate position, Mr.
+Krogstad, they should really be careful to avoid offending anyone
+who—who—
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Who has influence?
+
+NORA.
+Exactly.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+_[changing his tone]_. Mrs Helmer, you will be so good as to use your
+influence on my behalf.
+
+NORA.
+What? What do you mean?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+You will be so kind as to see that I am allowed to keep my subordinate
+position in the Bank.
+
+NORA.
+What do you mean by that? Who proposes to take your post away from you?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Oh, there is no necessity to keep up the pretence of ignorance. I can
+quite understand that your friend is not very anxious to expose herself
+to the chance of rubbing shoulders with me; and I quite understand,
+too, whom I have to thank for being turned off.
+
+NORA.
+But I assure you—
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Very likely; but, to come to the point, the time has come when I should
+advise you to use your influence to prevent that.
+
+NORA.
+But, Mr. Krogstad, I have no influence.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Haven’t you? I thought you said yourself just now—
+
+NORA.
+Naturally I did not mean you to put that construction on it. I! What
+should make you think I have any influence of that kind with my
+husband?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Oh, I have known your husband from our student days. I don’t suppose he
+is any more unassailable than other husbands.
+
+NORA.
+If you speak slightingly of my husband, I shall turn you out of the
+house.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+You are bold, Mrs Helmer.
+
+NORA.
+I am not afraid of you any longer. As soon as the New Year comes, I
+shall in a very short time be free of the whole thing.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+_[controlling himself]_. Listen to me, Mrs Helmer. If necessary, I am
+prepared to fight for my small post in the Bank as if I were fighting
+for my life.
+
+NORA.
+So it seems.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+It is not only for the sake of the money; indeed, that weighs least
+with me in the matter. There is another reason—well, I may as well tell
+you. My position is this. I daresay you know, like everybody else, that
+once, many years ago, I was guilty of an indiscretion.
+
+NORA.
+I think I have heard something of the kind.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+The matter never came into court; but every way seemed to be closed to
+me after that. So I took to the business that you know of. I had to do
+something; and, honestly, I don’t think I’ve been one of the worst. But
+now I must cut myself free from all that. My sons are growing up; for
+their sake I must try and win back as much respect as I can in the
+town. This post in the Bank was like the first step up for me—and now
+your husband is going to kick me downstairs again into the mud.
+
+NORA.
+But you must believe me, Mr. Krogstad; it is not in my power to help
+you at all.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Then it is because you haven’t the will; but I have means to compel
+you.
+
+NORA.
+You don’t mean that you will tell my husband that I owe you money?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Hm!—suppose I were to tell him?
+
+NORA.
+It would be perfectly infamous of you. _[Sobbing.]_ To think of his
+learning my secret, which has been my joy and pride, in such an ugly,
+clumsy way—that he should learn it from you! And it would put me in a
+horribly disagreeable position—
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Only disagreeable?
+
+NORA.
+_[impetuously]_. Well, do it, then!—and it will be the worse for you.
+My husband will see for himself what a blackguard you are, and you
+certainly won’t keep your post then.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I asked you if it was only a disagreeable scene at home that you were
+afraid of?
+
+NORA.
+If my husband does get to know of it, of course he will at once pay you
+what is still owing, and we shall have nothing more to do with you.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+_[coming a step nearer]_. Listen to me, Mrs Helmer. Either you have a
+very bad memory or you know very little of business. I shall be obliged
+to remind you of a few details.
+
+NORA.
+What do you mean?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+When your husband was ill, you came to me to borrow two hundred and
+fifty pounds.
+
+NORA.
+I didn’t know anyone else to go to.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I promised to get you that amount—
+
+NORA.
+Yes, and you did so.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I promised to get you that amount, on certain conditions. Your mind was
+so taken up with your husband’s illness, and you were so anxious to get
+the money for your journey, that you seem to have paid no attention to
+the conditions of our bargain. Therefore it will not be amiss if I
+remind you of them. Now, I promised to get the money on the security of
+a bond which I drew up.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, and which I signed.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Good. But below your signature there were a few lines constituting your
+father a surety for the money; those lines your father should have
+signed.
+
+NORA.
+Should? He did sign them.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I had left the date blank; that is to say, your father should himself
+have inserted the date on which he signed the paper. Do you remember
+that?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, I think I remember—
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Then I gave you the bond to send by post to your father. Is that not
+so?
+
+NORA.
+Yes.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+And you naturally did so at once, because five or six days afterwards
+you brought me the bond with your father’s signature. And then I gave
+you the money.
+
+NORA.
+Well, haven’t I been paying it off regularly?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Fairly so, yes. But—to come back to the matter in hand—that must have
+been a very trying time for you, Mrs Helmer?
+
+NORA.
+It was, indeed.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Your father was very ill, wasn’t he?
+
+NORA.
+He was very near his end.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+And died soon afterwards?
+
+NORA.
+Yes.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Tell me, Mrs Helmer, can you by any chance remember what day your
+father died?—on what day of the month, I mean.
+
+NORA.
+Papa died on the 29th of September.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+That is correct; I have ascertained it for myself. And, as that is so,
+there is a discrepancy _[taking a paper from his pocket]_ which I
+cannot account for.
+
+NORA.
+What discrepancy? I don’t know—
+
+KROGSTAD.
+The discrepancy consists, Mrs Helmer, in the fact that your father
+signed this bond three days after his death.
+
+NORA.
+What do you mean? I don’t understand—
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Your father died on the 29th of September. But, look here; your father
+has dated his signature the 2nd of October. It is a discrepancy, isn’t
+it? _[NORA is silent.]_ Can you explain it to me? _[NORA is still
+silent.]_ It is a remarkable thing, too, that the words “2nd of
+October,” as well as the year, are not written in your father’s
+handwriting but in one that I think I know. Well, of course it can be
+explained; your father may have forgotten to date his signature, and
+someone else may have dated it haphazard before they knew of his death.
+There is no harm in that. It all depends on the signature of the name;
+and that is genuine, I suppose, Mrs Helmer? It was your father himself
+who signed his name here?
+
+NORA.
+_[after a short pause, throws her head up and looks defiantly at him]_.
+No, it was not. It was I that wrote papa’s name.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Are you aware that is a dangerous confession?
+
+NORA.
+In what way? You shall have your money soon.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Let me ask you a question; why did you not send the paper to your
+father?
+
+NORA.
+It was impossible; papa was so ill. If I had asked him for his
+signature, I should have had to tell him what the money was to be used
+for; and when he was so ill himself I couldn’t tell him that my
+husband’s life was in danger—it was impossible.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+It would have been better for you if you had given up your trip abroad.
+
+NORA.
+No, that was impossible. That trip was to save my husband’s life; I
+couldn’t give that up.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+But did it never occur to you that you were committing a fraud on me?
+
+NORA.
+I couldn’t take that into account; I didn’t trouble myself about you at
+all. I couldn’t bear you, because you put so many heartless
+difficulties in my way, although you knew what a dangerous condition my
+husband was in.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Mrs Helmer, you evidently do not realise clearly what it is that you
+have been guilty of. But I can assure you that my one false step, which
+lost me all my reputation, was nothing more or nothing worse than what
+you have done.
+
+NORA.
+You? Do you ask me to believe that you were brave enough to run a risk
+to save your wife’s life?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+The law cares nothing about motives.
+
+NORA.
+Then it must be a very foolish law.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Foolish or not, it is the law by which you will be judged, if I produce
+this paper in court.
+
+NORA.
+I don’t believe it. Is a daughter not to be allowed to spare her dying
+father anxiety and care? Is a wife not to be allowed to save her
+husband’s life? I don’t know much about law; but I am certain that
+there must be laws permitting such things as that. Have you no
+knowledge of such laws—you who are a lawyer? You must be a very poor
+lawyer, Mr. Krogstad.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Maybe. But matters of business—such business as you and I have had
+together—do you think I don’t understand that? Very well. Do as you
+please. But let me tell you this—if I lose my position a second time,
+you shall lose yours with me. _[He bows, and goes out through the
+hall.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[appears buried in thought for a short time, then tosses her head]_.
+Nonsense! Trying to frighten me like that!—I am not so silly as he
+thinks. _[Begins to busy herself putting the children’s things in
+order.]_ And yet—? No, it’s impossible! I did it for love’s sake.
+
+THE CHILDREN.
+_[in the doorway on the left]_. Mother, the stranger man has gone out
+through the gate.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, dears, I know. But, don’t tell anyone about the stranger man. Do
+you hear? Not even papa.
+
+CHILDREN.
+No, mother; but will you come and play again?
+
+NORA.
+No, no,—not now.
+
+CHILDREN.
+But, mother, you promised us.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, but I can’t now. Run away in; I have such a lot to do. Run away
+in, my sweet little darlings. _[She gets them into the room by degrees
+and shuts the door on them; then sits down on the sofa, takes up a
+piece of needlework and sews a few stitches, but soon stops.]_ No!
+_[Throws down the work, gets up, goes to the hall door and calls out.]_
+Helen! bring the Tree in. _[Goes to the table on the left, opens a
+drawer, and stops again.]_ No, no! it is quite impossible!
+
+MAID.
+_[coming in with the Tree]_. Where shall I put it, ma’am?
+
+NORA.
+Here, in the middle of the floor.
+
+MAID.
+Shall I get you anything else?
+
+NORA.
+No, thank you. I have all I want. [Exit MAID.]
+
+NORA.
+_[begins dressing the tree]_. A candle here-and flowers here—The
+horrible man! It’s all nonsense—there’s nothing wrong. The tree shall
+be splendid! I will do everything I can think of to please you,
+Torvald!—I will sing for you, dance for you—_[HELMER comes in with some
+papers under his arm.]_ Oh! are you back already?
+
+HELMER.
+Yes. Has anyone been here?
+
+NORA.
+Here? No.
+
+HELMER.
+That is strange. I saw Krogstad going out of the gate.
+
+NORA.
+Did you? Oh yes, I forgot, Krogstad was here for a moment.
+
+HELMER.
+Nora, I can see from your manner that he has been here begging you to
+say a good word for him.
+
+NORA.
+Yes.
+
+HELMER.
+And you were to appear to do it of your own accord; you were to conceal
+from me the fact of his having been here; didn’t he beg that of you
+too?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, Torvald, but—
+
+HELMER.
+Nora, Nora, and you would be a party to that sort of thing? To have any
+talk with a man like that, and give him any sort of promise? And to
+tell me a lie into the bargain?
+
+NORA.
+A lie—?
+
+HELMER.
+Didn’t you tell me no one had been here? _[Shakes his finger at her.]_
+My little songbird must never do that again. A songbird must have a
+clean beak to chirp with—no false notes! _[Puts his arm round her
+waist.]_ That is so, isn’t it? Yes, I am sure it is. _[Lets her go.]_
+We will say no more about it. _[Sits down by the stove.]_ How warm and
+snug it is here! _[Turns over his papers.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[after a short pause, during which she busies herself with the
+Christmas Tree.]_ Torvald!
+
+HELMER.
+Yes.
+
+NORA.
+I am looking forward tremendously to the fancy-dress ball at the
+Stenborgs’ the day after tomorrow.
+
+HELMER.
+And I am tremendously curious to see what you are going to surprise me
+with.
+
+NORA.
+It was very silly of me to want to do that.
+
+HELMER.
+What do you mean?
+
+NORA.
+I can’t hit upon anything that will do; everything I think of seems so
+silly and insignificant.
+
+HELMER.
+Does my little Nora acknowledge that at last?
+
+NORA.
+_[standing behind his chair with her arms on the back of it]_. Are you
+very busy, Torvald?
+
+HELMER.
+Well—
+
+NORA.
+What are all those papers?
+
+HELMER.
+Bank business.
+
+NORA.
+Already?
+
+HELMER.
+I have got authority from the retiring manager to undertake the
+necessary changes in the staff and in the rearrangement of the work;
+and I must make use of the Christmas week for that, so as to have
+everything in order for the new year.
+
+NORA.
+Then that was why this poor Krogstad—
+
+HELMER.
+Hm!
+
+NORA.
+_[leans against the back of his chair and strokes his hair]_. If you
+hadn’t been so busy I should have asked you a tremendously big favour,
+Torvald.
+
+HELMER.
+What is that? Tell me.
+
+NORA.
+There is no one has such good taste as you. And I do so want to look
+nice at the fancy-dress ball. Torvald, couldn’t you take me in hand and
+decide what I shall go as, and what sort of a dress I shall wear?
+
+HELMER.
+Aha! so my obstinate little woman is obliged to get someone to come to
+her rescue?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, Torvald, I can’t get along a bit without your help.
+
+HELMER.
+Very well, I will think it over, we shall manage to hit upon something.
+
+NORA.
+That is nice of you. _[Goes to the Christmas Tree. A short pause.]_ How
+pretty the red flowers look—. But, tell me, was it really something
+very bad that this Krogstad was guilty of?
+
+HELMER.
+He forged someone’s name. Have you any idea what that means?
+
+NORA.
+Isn’t it possible that he was driven to do it by necessity?
+
+HELMER.
+Yes; or, as in so many cases, by imprudence. I am not so heartless as
+to condemn a man altogether because of a single false step of that
+kind.
+
+NORA.
+No, you wouldn’t, would you, Torvald?
+
+HELMER.
+Many a man has been able to retrieve his character, if he has openly
+confessed his fault and taken his punishment.
+
+NORA.
+Punishment—?
+
+HELMER.
+But Krogstad did nothing of that sort; he got himself out of it by a
+cunning trick, and that is why he has gone under altogether.
+
+NORA.
+But do you think it would—?
+
+HELMER.
+Just think how a guilty man like that has to lie and play the hypocrite
+with every one, how he has to wear a mask in the presence of those near
+and dear to him, even before his own wife and children. And about the
+children—that is the most terrible part of it all, Nora.
+
+NORA.
+How?
+
+HELMER.
+Because such an atmosphere of lies infects and poisons the whole life
+of a home. Each breath the children take in such a house is full of the
+germs of evil.
+
+NORA.
+_[coming nearer him]_. Are you sure of that?
+
+HELMER.
+My dear, I have often seen it in the course of my life as a lawyer.
+Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has had a
+deceitful mother.
+
+NORA.
+Why do you only say—mother?
+
+HELMER.
+It seems most commonly to be the mother’s influence, though naturally a
+bad father’s would have the same result. Every lawyer is familiar with
+the fact. This Krogstad, now, has been persistently poisoning his own
+children with lies and dissimulation; that is why I say he has lost all
+moral character. _[Holds out his hands to her.]_ That is why my sweet
+little Nora must promise me not to plead his cause. Give me your hand
+on it. Come, come, what is this? Give me your hand. There now, that’s
+settled. I assure you it would be quite impossible for me to work with
+him; I literally feel physically ill when I am in the company of such
+people.
+
+NORA.
+_[takes her hand out of his and goes to the opposite side of the
+Christmas Tree]_. How hot it is in here; and I have such a lot to do.
+
+HELMER.
+_[getting up and putting his papers in order]_. Yes, and I must try and
+read through some of these before dinner; and I must think about your
+costume, too. And it is just possible I may have something ready in
+gold paper to hang up on the Tree. _[Puts his hand on her head.]_ My
+precious little singing-bird! _[He goes into his room and shuts the
+door after him.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[after a pause, whispers]_. No, no—it isn’t true. It’s impossible; it
+must be impossible.
+
+_[The NURSE opens the door on the left.]_
+
+NURSE.
+The little ones are begging so hard to be allowed to come in to mamma.
+
+NORA.
+No, no, no! Don’t let them come in to me! You stay with them, Anne.
+
+NURSE.
+Very well, ma’am. _[Shuts the door.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[pale with terror]_. Deprave my little children? Poison my home? _[A
+short pause. Then she tosses her head.]_ It’s not true. It can’t
+possibly be true.
+
+
+
+
+ACT II
+
+
+_[THE SAME SCENE.—THE Christmas Tree is in the corner by the piano,
+stripped of its ornaments and with burnt-down candle-ends on its
+dishevelled branches. NORA’S cloak and hat are lying on the sofa. She
+is alone in the room, walking about uneasily. She stops by the sofa and
+takes up her cloak.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[drops her cloak]_. Someone is coming now! _[Goes to the door and
+listens.]_ No—it is no one. Of course, no one will come today,
+Christmas Day—nor tomorrow either. But, perhaps—_[opens the door and
+looks out]_. No, nothing in the letterbox; it is quite empty. _[Comes
+forward.]_ What rubbish! of course he can’t be in earnest about it.
+Such a thing couldn’t happen; it is impossible—I have three little
+children.
+
+_[Enter the NURSE from the room on the left, carrying a big cardboard
+box.]_
+
+NURSE.
+At last I have found the box with the fancy dress.
+
+NORA.
+Thanks; put it on the table.
+
+NURSE.
+_[doing so]_. But it is very much in want of mending.
+
+NORA.
+I should like to tear it into a hundred thousand pieces.
+
+NURSE.
+What an idea! It can easily be put in order—just a little patience.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, I will go and get Mrs Linde to come and help me with it.
+
+NURSE.
+What, out again? In this horrible weather? You will catch cold, ma’am,
+and make yourself ill.
+
+NORA.
+Well, worse than that might happen. How are the children?
+
+NURSE.
+The poor little souls are playing with their Christmas presents, but—
+
+NORA.
+Do they ask much for me?
+
+NURSE.
+You see, they are so accustomed to have their mamma with them.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, but, nurse, I shall not be able to be so much with them now as I
+was before.
+
+NURSE.
+Oh well, young children easily get accustomed to anything.
+
+NORA.
+Do you think so? Do you think they would forget their mother if she
+went away altogether?
+
+NURSE.
+Good heavens!—went away altogether?
+
+NORA.
+Nurse, I want you to tell me something I have often wondered about—how
+could you have the heart to put your own child out among strangers?
+
+NURSE.
+I was obliged to, if I wanted to be little Nora’s nurse.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, but how could you be willing to do it?
+
+NURSE.
+What, when I was going to get such a good place by it? A poor girl who
+has got into trouble should be glad to. Besides, that wicked man didn’t
+do a single thing for me.
+
+NORA.
+But I suppose your daughter has quite forgotten you.
+
+NURSE.
+No, indeed she hasn’t. She wrote to me when she was confirmed, and when
+she was married.
+
+NORA.
+_[putting her arms round her neck]_. Dear old Anne, you were a good
+mother to me when I was little.
+
+NURSE.
+Little Nora, poor dear, had no other mother but me.
+
+NORA.
+And if my little ones had no other mother, I am sure you would—What
+nonsense I am talking! _[Opens the box.]_ Go in to them. Now I must—.
+You will see tomorrow how charming I shall look.
+
+NURSE.
+I am sure there will be no one at the ball so charming as you, ma’am.
+_[Goes into the room on the left.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[begins to unpack the box, but soon pushes it away from her]_. If only
+I dared go out. If only no one would come. If only I could be sure
+nothing would happen here in the meantime. Stuff and nonsense! No one
+will come. Only I mustn’t think about it. I will brush my muff. What
+lovely, lovely gloves! Out of my thoughts, out of my thoughts! One,
+two, three, four, five, six— _[Screams.]_ Ah! there is someone coming—.
+_[Makes a movement towards the door, but stands irresolute.]_
+
+_[Enter Mrs Linde from the hall, where she has taken off her cloak and
+hat.]_
+
+NORA.
+Oh, it’s you, Christine. There is no one else out there, is there? How
+good of you to come!
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I heard you were up asking for me.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, I was passing by. As a matter of fact, it is something you could
+help me with. Let us sit down here on the sofa. Look here. Tomorrow
+evening there is to be a fancy-dress ball at the Stenborgs’, who live
+above us; and Torvald wants me to go as a Neapolitan fisher-girl, and
+dance the Tarantella that I learned at Capri.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I see; you are going to keep up the character.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, Torvald wants me to. Look, here is the dress; Torvald had it made
+for me there, but now it is all so torn, and I haven’t any idea—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+We will easily put that right. It is only some of the trimming come
+unsewn here and there. Needle and thread? Now then, that’s all we want.
+
+NORA.
+It is nice of you.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[sewing]_. So you are going to be dressed up tomorrow Nora. I will
+tell you what—I shall come in for a moment and see you in your fine
+feathers. But I have completely forgotten to thank you for a delightful
+evening yesterday.
+
+NORA.
+_[gets up, and crosses the stage]_. Well, I don’t think yesterday was
+as pleasant as usual. You ought to have come to town a little earlier,
+Christine. Certainly Torvald does understand how to make a house dainty
+and attractive.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+And so do you, it seems to me; you are not your father’s daughter for
+nothing. But tell me, is Doctor Rank always as depressed as he was
+yesterday?
+
+NORA.
+No; yesterday it was very noticeable. I must tell you that he suffers
+from a very dangerous disease. He has consumption of the spine, poor
+creature. His father was a horrible man who committed all sorts of
+excesses; and that is why his son was sickly from childhood, do you
+understand?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[dropping her sewing]_. But, my dearest Nora, how do you know anything
+about such things?
+
+NORA.
+_[walking about]_. Pooh! When you have three children, you get visits
+now and then from—from married women, who know something of medical
+matters, and they talk about one thing and another.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[goes on sewing. A short silence]_. Does Doctor Rank come here
+everyday?
+
+NORA.
+Everyday regularly. He is Torvald’s most intimate friend, and a great
+friend of mine too. He is just like one of the family.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+But tell me this—is he perfectly sincere? I mean, isn’t he the kind of
+man that is very anxious to make himself agreeable?
+
+NORA.
+Not in the least. What makes you think that?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+When you introduced him to me yesterday, he declared he had often heard
+my name mentioned in this house; but afterwards I noticed that your
+husband hadn’t the slightest idea who I was. So how could Doctor Rank—?
+
+NORA.
+That is quite right, Christine. Torvald is so absurdly fond of me that
+he wants me absolutely to himself, as he says. At first he used to seem
+almost jealous if I mentioned any of the dear folk at home, so
+naturally I gave up doing so. But I often talk about such things with
+Doctor Rank, because he likes hearing about them.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Listen to me, Nora. You are still very like a child in many things, and
+I am older than you in many ways and have a little more experience. Let
+me tell you this—you ought to make an end of it with Doctor Rank.
+
+NORA.
+What ought I to make an end of?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Of two things, I think. Yesterday you talked some nonsense about a rich
+admirer who was to leave you money—
+
+NORA.
+An admirer who doesn’t exist, unfortunately! But what then?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Is Doctor Rank a man of means?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, he is.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+And has no one to provide for?
+
+NORA.
+No, no one; but—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+And comes here everyday?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, I told you so.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+But how can this well-bred man be so tactless?
+
+NORA.
+I don’t understand you at all.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Don’t prevaricate, Nora. Do you suppose I don’t guess who lent you the
+two hundred and fifty pounds?
+
+NORA.
+Are you out of your senses? How can you think of such a thing! A friend
+of ours, who comes here everyday! Do you realise what a horribly
+painful position that would be?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Then it really isn’t he?
+
+NORA.
+No, certainly not. It would never have entered into my head for a
+moment. Besides, he had no money to lend then; he came into his money
+afterwards.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Well, I think that was lucky for you, my dear Nora.
+
+NORA.
+No, it would never have come into my head to ask Doctor Rank. Although
+I am quite sure that if I had asked him—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+But of course you won’t.
+
+NORA.
+Of course not. I have no reason to think it could possibly be
+necessary. But I am quite sure that if I told Doctor Rank—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Behind your husband’s back?
+
+NORA.
+I must make an end of it with the other one, and that will be behind
+his back too. I must make an end of it with him.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, that is what I told you yesterday, but—
+
+NORA.
+_[walking up and down]_. A man can put a thing like that straight much
+easier than a woman—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+One’s husband, yes.
+
+NORA.
+Nonsense! _[Standing still.]_ When you pay off a debt you get your bond
+back, don’t you?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, as a matter of course.
+
+NORA.
+And can tear it into a hundred thousand pieces, and burn it up—the
+nasty dirty paper!
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[looks hard at her, lays down her sewing and gets up slowly]_. Nora,
+you are concealing something from me.
+
+NORA.
+Do I look as if I were?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Something has happened to you since yesterday morning. Nora, what is
+it?
+
+NORA.
+_[going nearer to her]_. Christine! _[Listens.]_ Hush! there’s Torvald
+come home. Do you mind going in to the children for the present?
+Torvald can’t bear to see dressmaking going on. Let Anne help you.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[gathering some of the things together]_. Certainly—but I am not going
+away from here until we have had it out with one another. _[She goes
+into the room on the left, as HELMER comes in from the hall.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[going up to HELMER]_. I have wanted you so much, Torvald dear.
+
+HELMER.
+Was that the dressmaker?
+
+NORA.
+No, it was Christine; she is helping me to put my dress in order. You
+will see I shall look quite smart.
+
+HELMER.
+Wasn’t that a happy thought of mine, now?
+
+NORA.
+Splendid! But don’t you think it is nice of me, too, to do as you wish?
+
+HELMER.
+Nice?—because you do as your husband wishes? Well, well, you little
+rogue, I am sure you did not mean it in that way. But I am not going to
+disturb you; you will want to be trying on your dress, I expect.
+
+NORA.
+I suppose you are going to work.
+
+HELMER.
+Yes. _[Shows her a bundle of papers.]_ Look at that. I have just been
+into the bank. _[Turns to go into his room.]_
+
+NORA.
+Torvald.
+
+HELMER.
+Yes.
+
+NORA.
+If your little squirrel were to ask you for something very, very
+prettily—?
+
+HELMER.
+What then?
+
+NORA.
+Would you do it?
+
+HELMER.
+I should like to hear what it is, first.
+
+NORA.
+Your squirrel would run about and do all her tricks if you would be
+nice, and do what she wants.
+
+HELMER.
+Speak plainly.
+
+NORA.
+Your skylark would chirp about in every room, with her song rising and
+falling—
+
+HELMER.
+Well, my skylark does that anyhow.
+
+NORA.
+I would play the fairy and dance for you in the moonlight, Torvald.
+
+HELMER.
+Nora—you surely don’t mean that request you made to me this morning?
+
+NORA.
+_[going near him]_. Yes, Torvald, I beg you so earnestly—
+
+HELMER.
+Have you really the courage to open up that question again?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, dear, you must do as I ask; you must let Krogstad keep his post in
+the bank.
+
+HELMER.
+My dear Nora, it is his post that I have arranged Mrs Linde shall have.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, you have been awfully kind about that; but you could just as well
+dismiss some other clerk instead of Krogstad.
+
+HELMER.
+This is simply incredible obstinacy! Because you chose to give him a
+thoughtless promise that you would speak for him, I am expected to—
+
+NORA.
+That isn’t the reason, Torvald. It is for your own sake. This fellow
+writes in the most scurrilous newspapers; you have told me so yourself.
+He can do you an unspeakable amount of harm. I am frightened to death
+of him—
+
+HELMER.
+Ah, I understand; it is recollections of the past that scare you.
+
+NORA.
+What do you mean?
+
+HELMER.
+Naturally you are thinking of your father.
+
+NORA.
+Yes—yes, of course. Just recall to your mind what these malicious
+creatures wrote in the papers about papa, and how horribly they
+slandered him. I believe they would have procured his dismissal if the
+Department had not sent you over to inquire into it, and if you had not
+been so kindly disposed and helpful to him.
+
+HELMER.
+My little Nora, there is an important difference between your father
+and me. Your father’s reputation as a public official was not above
+suspicion. Mine is, and I hope it will continue to be so, as long as I
+hold my office.
+
+NORA.
+You never can tell what mischief these men may contrive. We ought to be
+so well off, so snug and happy here in our peaceful home, and have no
+cares—you and I and the children, Torvald! That is why I beg you so
+earnestly—
+
+HELMER.
+And it is just by interceding for him that you make it impossible for
+me to keep him. It is already known at the Bank that I mean to dismiss
+Krogstad. Is it to get about now that the new manager has changed his
+mind at his wife’s bidding—
+
+NORA.
+And what if it did?
+
+HELMER.
+Of course!—if only this obstinate little person can get her way! Do you
+suppose I am going to make myself ridiculous before my whole staff, to
+let people think that I am a man to be swayed by all sorts of outside
+influence? I should very soon feel the consequences of it, I can tell
+you! And besides, there is one thing that makes it quite impossible for
+me to have Krogstad in the Bank as long as I am manager.
+
+NORA.
+Whatever is that?
+
+HELMER.
+His moral failings I might perhaps have overlooked, if necessary—
+
+NORA.
+Yes, you could—couldn’t you?
+
+HELMER.
+And I hear he is a good worker, too. But I knew him when we were boys.
+It was one of those rash friendships that so often prove an incubus in
+afterlife. I may as well tell you plainly, we were once on very
+intimate terms with one another. But this tactless fellow lays no
+restraint on himself when other people are present. On the contrary, he
+thinks it gives him the right to adopt a familiar tone with me, and
+every minute it is “I say, Helmer, old fellow!” and that sort of thing.
+I assure you it is extremely painful for me. He would make my position
+in the Bank intolerable.
+
+NORA.
+Torvald, I don’t believe you mean that.
+
+HELMER.
+Don’t you? Why not?
+
+NORA.
+Because it is such a narrow-minded way of looking at things.
+
+HELMER.
+What are you saying? Narrow-minded? Do you think I am narrow-minded?
+
+NORA.
+No, just the opposite, dear—and it is exactly for that reason.
+
+HELMER.
+It’s the same thing. You say my point of view is narrow-minded, so I
+must be so too. Narrow-minded! Very well—I must put an end to this.
+_[Goes to the hall door and calls.]_ Helen!
+
+NORA.
+What are you going to do?
+
+HELMER.
+_[looking among his papers]_. Settle it. _[Enter MAID.]_ Look here;
+take this letter and go downstairs with it at once. Find a messenger
+and tell him to deliver it, and be quick. The address is on it, and
+here is the money.
+
+MAID.
+Very well, sir. _[Exit with the letter.]_
+
+HELMER.
+_[putting his papers together]_. Now then, little Miss Obstinate.
+
+NORA.
+_[breathlessly]_. Torvald—what was that letter?
+
+HELMER.
+Krogstad’s dismissal.
+
+NORA.
+Call her back, Torvald! There is still time. Oh Torvald, call her back!
+Do it for my sake—for your own sake—for the children’s sake! Do you
+hear me, Torvald? Call her back! You don’t know what that letter can
+bring upon us.
+
+HELMER.
+It’s too late.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, it’s too late.
+
+HELMER.
+My dear Nora, I can forgive the anxiety you are in, although really it
+is an insult to me. It is, indeed. Isn’t it an insult to think that I
+should be afraid of a starving quill-driver’s vengeance? But I forgive
+you nevertheless, because it is such eloquent witness to your great
+love for me. _[Takes her in his arms.]_ And that is as it should be, my
+own darling Nora. Come what will, you may be sure I shall have both
+courage and strength if they be needed. You will see I am man enough to
+take everything upon myself.
+
+NORA.
+_[in a horror-stricken voice]_. What do you mean by that?
+
+HELMER.
+Everything, I say—
+
+NORA.
+_[recovering herself]_. You will never have to do that.
+
+HELMER.
+That’s right. Well, we will share it, Nora, as man and wife should.
+That is how it shall be. _[Caressing her.]_ Are you content now? There!
+There!—not these frightened dove’s eyes! The whole thing is only the
+wildest fancy!—Now, you must go and play through the Tarantella and
+practise with your tambourine. I shall go into the inner office and
+shut the door, and I shall hear nothing; you can make as much noise as
+you please. _[Turns back at the door.]_ And when Rank comes, tell him
+where he will find me. _[Nods to her, takes his papers and goes into
+his room, and shuts the door after him.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[bewildered with anxiety, stands as if rooted to the spot, and
+whispers]_. He was capable of doing it. He will do it. He will do it in
+spite of everything.—No, not that! Never, never! Anything rather than
+that! Oh, for some help, some way out of it! _[The door-bell rings.]_
+Doctor Rank! Anything rather than that—anything, whatever it is! _[She
+puts her hands over her face, pulls herself together, goes to the door
+and opens it. RANK is standing without, hanging up his coat. During the
+following dialogue it begins to grow dark.]_
+
+NORA.
+Good day, Doctor Rank. I knew your ring. But you mustn’t go in to
+Torvald now; I think he is busy with something.
+
+RANK.
+And you?
+
+NORA.
+_[brings him in and shuts the door after him]_. Oh, you know very well
+I always have time for you.
+
+RANK.
+Thank you. I shall make use of as much of it as I can.
+
+NORA.
+What do you mean by that? As much of it as you can?
+
+RANK.
+Well, does that alarm you?
+
+NORA.
+It was such a strange way of putting it. Is anything likely to happen?
+
+RANK.
+Nothing but what I have long been prepared for. But I certainly didn’t
+expect it to happen so soon.
+
+NORA.
+_[gripping him by the arm]_. What have you found out? Doctor Rank, you
+must tell me.
+
+RANK.
+_[sitting down by the stove]_. It is all up with me. And it can’t be
+helped.
+
+NORA.
+_[with a sigh of relief]_. Is it about yourself?
+
+RANK.
+Who else? It is no use lying to one’s self. I am the most wretched of
+all my patients, Mrs Helmer. Lately I have been taking stock of my
+internal economy. Bankrupt! Probably within a month I shall lie rotting
+in the churchyard.
+
+NORA.
+What an ugly thing to say!
+
+RANK.
+The thing itself is cursedly ugly, and the worst of it is that I shall
+have to face so much more that is ugly before that. I shall only make
+one more examination of myself; when I have done that, I shall know
+pretty certainly when it will be that the horrors of dissolution will
+begin. There is something I want to tell you. Helmer’s refined nature
+gives him an unconquerable disgust at everything that is ugly; I won’t
+have him in my sick-room.
+
+NORA.
+Oh, but, Doctor Rank—
+
+RANK.
+I won’t have him there. Not on any account. I bar my door to him. As
+soon as I am quite certain that the worst has come, I shall send you my
+card with a black cross on it, and then you will know that the
+loathsome end has begun.
+
+NORA.
+You are quite absurd today. And I wanted you so much to be in a really
+good humour.
+
+RANK.
+With death stalking beside me?—To have to pay this penalty for another
+man’s sin? Is there any justice in that? And in every single family, in
+one way or another, some such inexorable retribution is being exacted—
+
+NORA.
+_[putting her hands over her ears]_. Rubbish! Do talk of something
+cheerful.
+
+RANK.
+Oh, it’s a mere laughing matter, the whole thing. My poor innocent
+spine has to suffer for my father’s youthful amusements.
+
+NORA.
+_[sitting at the table on the left]_. I suppose you mean that he was
+too partial to asparagus and pate de foie gras, don’t you?
+
+RANK.
+Yes, and to truffles.
+
+NORA.
+Truffles, yes. And oysters too, I suppose?
+
+RANK.
+Oysters, of course, that goes without saying.
+
+NORA.
+And heaps of port and champagne. It is sad that all these nice things
+should take their revenge on our bones.
+
+RANK.
+Especially that they should revenge themselves on the unlucky bones of
+those who have not had the satisfaction of enjoying them.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, that’s the saddest part of it all.
+
+RANK.
+_[with a searching look at her]_. Hm!—
+
+NORA.
+_[after a short pause]_. Why did you smile?
+
+RANK.
+No, it was you that laughed.
+
+NORA.
+No, it was you that smiled, Doctor Rank!
+
+RANK.
+_[rising]_. You are a greater rascal than I thought.
+
+NORA.
+I am in a silly mood today.
+
+RANK.
+So it seems.
+
+NORA.
+_[putting her hands on his shoulders]_. Dear, dear Doctor Rank, death
+mustn’t take you away from Torvald and me.
+
+RANK.
+It is a loss you would easily recover from. Those who are gone are soon
+forgotten.
+
+NORA.
+_[looking at him anxiously]_. Do you believe that?
+
+RANK.
+People form new ties, and then—
+
+NORA.
+Who will form new ties?
+
+RANK.
+Both you and Helmer, when I am gone. You yourself are already on the
+high road to it, I think. What did that Mrs Linde want here last night?
+
+NORA.
+Oho!—you don’t mean to say you are jealous of poor Christine?
+
+RANK.
+Yes, I am. She will be my successor in this house. When I am done for,
+this woman will—
+
+NORA.
+Hush! don’t speak so loud. She is in that room.
+
+RANK.
+Today again. There, you see.
+
+NORA.
+She has only come to sew my dress for me. Bless my soul, how
+unreasonable you are! _[Sits down on the sofa.]_ Be nice now, Doctor
+Rank, and tomorrow you will see how beautifully I shall dance, and you
+can imagine I am doing it all for you—and for Torvald too, of course.
+_[Takes various things out of the box.]_ Doctor Rank, come and sit down
+here, and I will show you something.
+
+RANK.
+_[sitting down]_. What is it?
+
+NORA.
+Just look at those!
+
+RANK.
+Silk stockings.
+
+NORA.
+Flesh-coloured. Aren’t they lovely? It is so dark here now, but
+tomorrow—. No, no, no! you must only look at the feet. Oh well, you may
+have leave to look at the legs too.
+
+RANK.
+Hm!—
+
+NORA.
+Why are you looking so critical? Don’t you think they will fit me?
+
+RANK.
+I have no means of forming an opinion about that.
+
+NORA.
+_[looks at him for a moment]_. For shame! _[Hits him lightly on the ear
+with the stockings.]_ That’s to punish you. _[Folds them up again.]_
+
+RANK.
+And what other nice things am I to be allowed to see?
+
+NORA.
+Not a single thing more, for being so naughty. _[She looks among the
+things, humming to herself.]_
+
+RANK.
+_[after a short silence]_. When I am sitting here, talking to you as
+intimately as this, I cannot imagine for a moment what would have
+become of me if I had never come into this house.
+
+NORA.
+_[smiling]_. I believe you do feel thoroughly at home with us.
+
+RANK.
+_[in a lower voice, looking straight in front of him]_. And to be
+obliged to leave it all—
+
+NORA.
+Nonsense, you are not going to leave it.
+
+RANK.
+_[as before]_. And not be able to leave behind one the slightest token
+of one’s gratitude, scarcely even a fleeting regret—nothing but an
+empty place which the first comer can fill as well as any other.
+
+NORA.
+And if I asked you now for a—? No!
+
+RANK.
+For what?
+
+NORA.
+For a big proof of your friendship—
+
+RANK.
+Yes, yes!
+
+NORA.
+I mean a tremendously big favour—
+
+RANK.
+Would you really make me so happy for once?
+
+NORA.
+Ah, but you don’t know what it is yet.
+
+RANK.
+No—but tell me.
+
+NORA.
+I really can’t, Doctor Rank. It is something out of all reason; it
+means advice, and help, and a favour—
+
+RANK.
+The bigger a thing it is the better. I can’t conceive what it is you
+mean. Do tell me. Haven’t I your confidence?
+
+NORA.
+More than anyone else. I know you are my truest and best friend, and so
+I will tell you what it is. Well, Doctor Rank, it is something you must
+help me to prevent. You know how devotedly, how inexpressibly deeply
+Torvald loves me; he would never for a moment hesitate to give his life
+for me.
+
+RANK.
+_[leaning towards her]_. Nora—do you think he is the only one—?
+
+NORA.
+_[with a slight start]_. The only one—?
+
+RANK.
+The only one who would gladly give his life for your sake.
+
+NORA.
+_[sadly]_. Is that it?
+
+RANK.
+I was determined you should know it before I went away, and there will
+never be a better opportunity than this. Now you know it, Nora. And now
+you know, too, that you can trust me as you would trust no one else.
+
+NORA.
+_[rises, deliberately and quietly]_. Let me pass.
+
+RANK.
+_[makes room for her to pass him, but sits still]_. Nora!
+
+NORA.
+_[at the hall door]_. Helen, bring in the lamp. _[Goes over to the
+stove.]_ Dear Doctor Rank, that was really horrid of you.
+
+RANK.
+To have loved you as much as anyone else does? Was that horrid?
+
+NORA.
+No, but to go and tell me so. There was really no need—
+
+RANK.
+What do you mean? Did you know—? _[MAID enters with lamp, puts it down
+on the table, and goes out.]_ Nora—Mrs Helmer—tell me, had you any idea
+of this?
+
+NORA.
+Oh, how do I know whether I had or whether I hadn’t? I really can’t
+tell you—To think you could be so clumsy, Doctor Rank! We were getting
+on so nicely.
+
+RANK.
+Well, at all events you know now that you can command me, body and
+soul. So won’t you speak out?
+
+NORA.
+_[looking at him]_. After what happened?
+
+RANK.
+I beg you to let me know what it is.
+
+NORA.
+I can’t tell you anything now.
+
+RANK.
+Yes, yes. You mustn’t punish me in that way. Let me have permission to
+do for you whatever a man may do.
+
+NORA.
+You can do nothing for me now. Besides, I really don’t need any help at
+all. You will find that the whole thing is merely fancy on my part. It
+really is so—of course it is! _[Sits down in the rocking-chair, and
+looks at him with a smile.]_ You are a nice sort of man, Doctor
+Rank!—don’t you feel ashamed of yourself, now the lamp has come?
+
+RANK.
+Not a bit. But perhaps I had better go—for ever?
+
+NORA.
+No, indeed, you shall not. Of course you must come here just as before.
+You know very well Torvald can’t do without you.
+
+RANK.
+Yes, but you?
+
+NORA.
+Oh, I am always tremendously pleased when you come.
+
+RANK.
+It is just that, that put me on the wrong track. You are a riddle to
+me. I have often thought that you would almost as soon be in my company
+as in Helmer’s.
+
+NORA.
+Yes—you see there are some people one loves best, and others whom one
+would almost always rather have as companions.
+
+RANK.
+Yes, there is something in that.
+
+NORA.
+When I was at home, of course I loved papa best. But I always thought
+it tremendous fun if I could steal down into the maids’ room, because
+they never moralised at all, and talked to each other about such
+entertaining things.
+
+RANK.
+I see—it is their place I have taken.
+
+NORA.
+_[jumping up and going to him]_. Oh, dear, nice Doctor Rank, I never
+meant that at all. But surely you can understand that being with
+Torvald is a little like being with papa—_[Enter MAID from the hall.]_
+
+MAID.
+If you please, ma’am. _[Whispers and hands her a card.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[glancing at the card]_. Oh! _[Puts it in her pocket.]_
+
+RANK.
+Is there anything wrong?
+
+NORA.
+No, no, not in the least. It is only something—it is my new dress—
+
+RANK.
+What? Your dress is lying there.
+
+NORA.
+Oh, yes, that one; but this is another. I ordered it. Torvald mustn’t
+know about it—
+
+RANK.
+Oho! Then that was the great secret.
+
+NORA.
+Of course. Just go in to him; he is sitting in the inner room. Keep him
+as long as—
+
+RANK.
+Make your mind easy; I won’t let him escape.
+
+_[Goes into HELMER’S room.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[to the MAID]_. And he is standing waiting in the kitchen?
+
+MAID.
+Yes; he came up the back stairs.
+
+NORA.
+But didn’t you tell him no one was in?
+
+MAID.
+Yes, but it was no good.
+
+NORA.
+He won’t go away?
+
+MAID.
+No; he says he won’t until he has seen you, ma’am.
+
+NORA.
+Well, let him come in—but quietly. Helen, you mustn’t say anything
+about it to anyone. It is a surprise for my husband.
+
+MAID.
+Yes, ma’am, I quite understand. _[Exit.]_
+
+NORA.
+This dreadful thing is going to happen! It will happen in spite of me!
+No, no, no, it can’t happen—it shan’t happen! _[She bolts the door of
+HELMER’S room. The MAID opens the hall door for KROGSTAD and shuts it
+after him. He is wearing a fur coat, high boots and a fur cap.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[advancing towards him]_. Speak low—my husband is at home.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+No matter about that.
+
+NORA.
+What do you want of me?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+An explanation of something.
+
+NORA.
+Make haste then. What is it?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+You know, I suppose, that I have got my dismissal.
+
+NORA.
+I couldn’t prevent it, Mr. Krogstad. I fought as hard as I could on
+your side, but it was no good.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Does your husband love you so little, then? He knows what I can expose
+you to, and yet he ventures—
+
+NORA.
+How can you suppose that he has any knowledge of the sort?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I didn’t suppose so at all. It would not be the least like our dear
+Torvald Helmer to show so much courage—
+
+NORA.
+Mr. Krogstad, a little respect for my husband, please.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Certainly—all the respect he deserves. But since you have kept the
+matter so carefully to yourself, I make bold to suppose that you have a
+little clearer idea, than you had yesterday, of what it actually is
+that you have done?
+
+NORA.
+More than you could ever teach me.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Yes, such a bad lawyer as I am.
+
+NORA.
+What is it you want of me?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Only to see how you were, Mrs Helmer. I have been thinking about you
+all day long. A mere cashier, a quill-driver, a—well, a man like
+me—even he has a little of what is called feeling, you know.
+
+NORA.
+Show it, then; think of my little children.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Have you and your husband thought of mine? But never mind about that. I
+only wanted to tell you that you need not take this matter too
+seriously. In the first place there will be no accusation made on my
+part.
+
+NORA.
+No, of course not; I was sure of that.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+The whole thing can be arranged amicably; there is no reason why anyone
+should know anything about it. It will remain a secret between us
+three.
+
+NORA.
+My husband must never get to know anything about it.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+How will you be able to prevent it? Am I to understand that you can pay
+the balance that is owing?
+
+NORA.
+No, not just at present.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Or perhaps that you have some expedient for raising the money soon?
+
+NORA.
+No expedient that I mean to make use of.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Well, in any case, it would have been of no use to you now. If you
+stood there with ever so much money in your hand, I would never part
+with your bond.
+
+NORA.
+Tell me what purpose you mean to put it to.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I shall only preserve it—keep it in my possession. No one who is not
+concerned in the matter shall have the slightest hint of it. So that if
+the thought of it has driven you to any desperate resolution—
+
+NORA.
+It has.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+If you had it in your mind to run away from your home—
+
+NORA.
+I had.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Or even something worse—
+
+NORA.
+How could you know that?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Give up the idea.
+
+NORA.
+How did you know I had thought of that?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Most of us think of that at first. I did, too—but I hadn’t the courage.
+
+NORA.
+_[faintly]_. No more had I.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+_[in a tone of relief]_. No, that’s it, isn’t it—you hadn’t the courage
+either?
+
+NORA.
+No, I haven’t—I haven’t.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Besides, it would have been a great piece of folly. Once the first
+storm at home is over—. I have a letter for your husband in my pocket.
+
+NORA.
+Telling him everything?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+In as lenient a manner as I possibly could.
+
+NORA.
+_[quickly]_. He mustn’t get the letter. Tear it up. I will find some
+means of getting money.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Excuse me, Mrs Helmer, but I think I told you just now—
+
+NORA.
+I am not speaking of what I owe you. Tell me what sum you are asking my
+husband for, and I will get the money.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I am not asking your husband for a penny.
+
+NORA.
+What do you want, then?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I will tell you. I want to rehabilitate myself, Mrs Helmer; I want to
+get on; and in that your husband must help me. For the last year and a
+half I have not had a hand in anything dishonourable, amid all that
+time I have been struggling in most restricted circumstances. I was
+content to work my way up step by step. Now I am turned out, and I am
+not going to be satisfied with merely being taken into favour again. I
+want to get on, I tell you. I want to get into the Bank again, in a
+higher position. Your husband must make a place for me—
+
+NORA.
+That he will never do!
+
+KROGSTAD.
+He will; I know him; he dare not protest. And as soon as I am in there
+again with him, then you will see! Within a year I shall be the
+manager’s right hand. It will be Nils Krogstad and not Torvald Helmer
+who manages the Bank.
+
+NORA.
+That’s a thing you will never see!
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Do you mean that you will—?
+
+NORA.
+I have courage enough for it now.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Oh, you can’t frighten me. A fine, spoilt lady like you—
+
+NORA.
+You will see, you will see.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Under the ice, perhaps? Down into the cold, coal-black water? And then,
+in the spring, to float up to the surface, all horrible and
+unrecognisable, with your hair fallen out—
+
+NORA.
+You can’t frighten me.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Nor you me. People don’t do such things, Mrs Helmer. Besides, what use
+would it be? I should have him completely in my power all the same.
+
+NORA.
+Afterwards? When I am no longer—
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Have you forgotten that it is I who have the keeping of your
+reputation? _[NORA stands speechlessly looking at him.]_ Well, now, I
+have warned you. Do not do anything foolish. When Helmer has had my
+letter, I shall expect a message from him. And be sure you remember
+that it is your husband himself who has forced me into such ways as
+this again. I will never forgive him for that. Goodbye, Mrs Helmer.
+_[Exit through the hall.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[goes to the hall door, opens it slightly and listens.]_ He is going.
+He is not putting the letter in the box. Oh no, no! that’s impossible!
+_[Opens the door by degrees.]_ What is that? He is standing outside. He
+is not going downstairs. Is he hesitating? Can he—? _[A letter drops
+into the box; then KROGSTAD’S footsteps are heard, until they die away
+as he goes downstairs. NORA utters a stifled cry, and runs across the
+room to the table by the sofa. A short pause.]_
+
+NORA.
+In the letter-box. _[Steals across to the hall door.]_ There it
+lies—Torvald, Torvald, there is no hope for us now!
+
+_[Mrs Linde comes in from the room on the left, carrying the dress.]_
+
+MRS LINDE.
+There, I can’t see anything more to mend now. Would you like to try it
+on—?
+
+NORA.
+_[in a hoarse whisper]_. Christine, come here.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[throwing the dress down on the sofa]_. What is the matter with you?
+You look so agitated!
+
+NORA.
+Come here. Do you see that letter? There, look—you can see it through
+the glass in the letter-box.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, I see it.
+
+NORA.
+That letter is from Krogstad.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Nora—it was Krogstad who lent you the money!
+
+NORA.
+Yes, and now Torvald will know all about it.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Believe me, Nora, that’s the best thing for both of you.
+
+NORA.
+You don’t know all. I forged a name.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Good heavens—!
+
+NORA.
+I only want to say this to you, Christine—you must be my witness.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Your witness? What do you mean? What am I to—?
+
+NORA.
+If I should go out of my mind—and it might easily happen—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Nora!
+
+NORA.
+Or if anything else should happen to me—anything, for instance, that
+might prevent my being here—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Nora! Nora! you are quite out of your mind.
+
+NORA.
+And if it should happen that there were some one who wanted to take all
+the responsibility, all the blame, you understand—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, yes—but how can you suppose—?
+
+NORA.
+Then you must be my witness, that it is not true, Christine. I am not
+out of my mind at all; I am in my right senses now, and I tell you no
+one else has known anything about it; I, and I alone, did the whole
+thing. Remember that.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I will, indeed. But I don’t understand all this.
+
+NORA.
+How should you understand it? A wonderful thing is going to happen!
+
+MRS LINDE.
+A wonderful thing?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, a wonderful thing!—But it is so terrible, Christine; it mustn’t
+happen, not for all the world.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I will go at once and see Krogstad.
+
+NORA.
+Don’t go to him; he will do you some harm.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+There was a time when he would gladly do anything for my sake.
+
+NORA.
+He?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Where does he live?
+
+NORA.
+How should I know—? Yes _[feeling in her pocket]_, here is his card.
+But the letter, the letter—!
+
+HELMER.
+_[calls from his room, knocking at the door]_. Nora!
+
+NORA.
+_[cries out anxiously]_. Oh, what’s that? What do you want?
+
+HELMER.
+Don’t be so frightened. We are not coming in; you have locked the door.
+Are you trying on your dress?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, that’s it. I look so nice, Torvald.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[who has read the card]_. I see he lives at the corner here.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, but it’s no use. It is hopeless. The letter is lying there in the
+box.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+And your husband keeps the key?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, always.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Krogstad must ask for his letter back unread, he must find some
+pretence—
+
+NORA.
+But it is just at this time that Torvald generally—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+You must delay him. Go in to him in the meantime. I will come back as
+soon as I can. _[She goes out hurriedly through the hall door.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[goes to HELMER’S door, opens it and peeps in]_. Torvald!
+
+HELMER.
+_[from the inner room]_. Well? May I venture at last to come into my
+own room again? Come along, Rank, now you will see— _[Halting in the
+doorway.]_ But what is this?
+
+NORA.
+What is what, dear?
+
+HELMER.
+Rank led me to expect a splendid transformation.
+
+RANK.
+_[in the doorway]_. I understood so, but evidently I was mistaken.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, nobody is to have the chance of admiring me in my dress until
+tomorrow.
+
+HELMER.
+But, my dear Nora, you look so worn out. Have you been practising too
+much?
+
+NORA.
+No, I have not practised at all.
+
+HELMER.
+But you will need to—
+
+NORA.
+Yes, indeed I shall, Torvald. But I can’t get on a bit without you to
+help me; I have absolutely forgotten the whole thing.
+
+HELMER.
+Oh, we will soon work it up again.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, help me, Torvald. Promise that you will! I am so nervous about
+it—all the people—. You must give yourself up to me entirely this
+evening. Not the tiniest bit of business—you mustn’t even take a pen in
+your hand. Will you promise, Torvald dear?
+
+HELMER.
+I promise. This evening I will be wholly and absolutely at your
+service, you helpless little mortal. Ah, by the way, first of all I
+will just— _[Goes towards the hall door.]_
+
+NORA.
+What are you going to do there?
+
+HELMER.
+Only see if any letters have come.
+
+NORA.
+No, no! don’t do that, Torvald!
+
+HELMER.
+Why not?
+
+NORA.
+Torvald, please don’t. There is nothing there.
+
+HELMER.
+Well, let me look. _[Turns to go to the letter-box. NORA, at the piano,
+plays the first bars of the Tarantella. HELMER stops in the doorway.]_
+Aha!
+
+NORA.
+I can’t dance tomorrow if I don’t practise with you.
+
+HELMER.
+_[going up to her]_. Are you really so afraid of it, dear?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, so dreadfully afraid of it. Let me practise at once; there is time
+now, before we go to dinner. Sit down and play for me, Torvald dear;
+criticise me, and correct me as you play.
+
+HELMER.
+With great pleasure, if you wish me to. _[Sits down at the piano.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[takes out of the box a tambourine and a long variegated shawl. She
+hastily drapes the shawl round her. Then she springs to the front of
+the stage and calls out]_. Now play for me! I am going to dance!
+
+_[HELMER plays and NORA dances. RANK stands by the piano behind HELMER,
+and looks on.]_
+
+HELMER.
+_[as he plays]_. Slower, slower!
+
+NORA.
+I can’t do it any other way.
+
+HELMER.
+Not so violently, Nora!
+
+NORA.
+This is the way.
+
+HELMER.
+_[stops playing]_. No, no—that is not a bit right.
+
+NORA.
+_[laughing and swinging the tambourine]_. Didn’t I tell you so?
+
+RANK.
+Let me play for her.
+
+HELMER.
+_[getting up]_. Yes, do. I can correct her better then.
+
+_[RANK sits down at the piano and plays. NORA dances more and more
+wildly. HELMER has taken up a position beside the stove, and during her
+dance gives her frequent instructions. She does not seem to hear him;
+her hair comes down and falls over her shoulders; she pays no attention
+to it, but goes on dancing. Enter Mrs Linde.]_
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[standing as if spell-bound in the doorway]_. Oh!—
+
+NORA.
+_[as she dances]_. Such fun, Christine!
+
+HELMER.
+My dear darling Nora, you are dancing as if your life depended on it.
+
+NORA.
+So it does.
+
+HELMER.
+Stop, Rank; this is sheer madness. Stop, I tell you! _[RANK stops
+playing, and NORA suddenly stands still. HELMER goes up to her.]_ I
+could never have believed it. You have forgotten everything I taught
+you.
+
+NORA.
+_[throwing away the tambourine]_. There, you see.
+
+HELMER.
+You will want a lot of coaching.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, you see how much I need it. You must coach me up to the last
+minute. Promise me that, Torvald!
+
+HELMER.
+You can depend on me.
+
+NORA.
+You must not think of anything but me, either today or tomorrow; you
+mustn’t open a single letter—not even open the letter-box—
+
+HELMER.
+Ah, you are still afraid of that fellow—
+
+NORA.
+Yes, indeed I am.
+
+HELMER.
+Nora, I can tell from your looks that there is a letter from him lying
+there.
+
+NORA.
+I don’t know; I think there is; but you must not read anything of that
+kind now. Nothing horrid must come between us until this is all over.
+
+RANK.
+_[whispers to HELMER]_. You mustn’t contradict her.
+
+HELMER.
+_[taking her in his arms]_. The child shall have her way. But tomorrow
+night, after you have danced—
+
+NORA.
+Then you will be free. _[The MAID appears in the doorway to the
+right.]_
+
+MAID.
+Dinner is served, ma’am.
+
+NORA.
+We will have champagne, Helen.
+
+MAID.
+Very good, ma’am. [Exit.
+
+HELMER.
+Hullo!—are we going to have a banquet?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, a champagne banquet until the small hours. _[Calls out.]_ And a
+few macaroons, Helen—lots, just for once!
+
+HELMER.
+Come, come, don’t be so wild and nervous. Be my own little skylark, as
+you used.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, dear, I will. But go in now and you too, Doctor Rank. Christine,
+you must help me to do up my hair.
+
+RANK.
+_[whispers to HELMER as they go out]_. I suppose there is nothing—she
+is not expecting anything?
+
+HELMER.
+Far from it, my dear fellow; it is simply nothing more than this
+childish nervousness I was telling you of. _[They go into the
+right-hand room.]_
+
+NORA.
+Well!
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Gone out of town.
+
+NORA.
+I could tell from your face.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+He is coming home tomorrow evening. I wrote a note for him.
+
+NORA.
+You should have let it alone; you must prevent nothing. After all, it
+is splendid to be waiting for a wonderful thing to happen.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+What is it that you are waiting for?
+
+NORA.
+Oh, you wouldn’t understand. Go in to them, I will come in a moment.
+_[Mrs Linde goes into the dining-room. NORA stands still for a little
+while, as if to compose herself. Then she looks at her watch.]_ Five
+o’clock. Seven hours until midnight; and then four-and-twenty hours
+until the next midnight. Then the Tarantella will be over. Twenty-four
+and seven? Thirty-one hours to live.
+
+HELMER.
+_[from the doorway on the right]_. Where’s my little skylark?
+
+NORA.
+_[going to him with her arms outstretched]_. Here she is!
+
+
+
+
+ACT III
+
+
+_[THE SAME SCENE.—The table has been placed in the middle of the stage,
+with chairs around it. A lamp is burning on the table. The door into
+the hall stands open. Dance music is heard in the room above. Mrs Linde
+is sitting at the table idly turning over the leaves of a book; she
+tries to read, but does not seem able to collect her thoughts. Every
+now and then she listens intently for a sound at the outer door.]_
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[looking at her watch]_. Not yet—and the time is nearly up. If only he
+does not—. _[Listens again.]_ Ah, there he is. _[Goes into the hall and
+opens the outer door carefully. Light footsteps are heard on the
+stairs. She whispers.]_ Come in. There is no one here.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+_[in the doorway]_. I found a note from you at home. What does this
+mean?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+It is absolutely necessary that I should have a talk with you.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Really? And is it absolutely necessary that it should be here?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+It is impossible where I live; there is no private entrance to my
+rooms. Come in; we are quite alone. The maid is asleep, and the Helmers
+are at the dance upstairs.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+_[coming into the room]_. Are the Helmers really at a dance tonight?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, why not?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Certainly—why not?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Now, Nils, let us have a talk.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Can we two have anything to talk about?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+We have a great deal to talk about.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I shouldn’t have thought so.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No, you have never properly understood me.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Was there anything else to understand except what was obvious to all
+the world—a heartless woman jilts a man when a more lucrative chance
+turns up?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Do you believe I am as absolutely heartless as all that? And do you
+believe that I did it with a light heart?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Didn’t you?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Nils, did you really think that?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+If it were as you say, why did you write to me as you did at the time?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I could do nothing else. As I had to break with you, it was my duty
+also to put an end to all that you felt for me.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+_[wringing his hands]_. So that was it. And all this—only for the sake
+of money!
+
+MRS LINDE.
+You must not forget that I had a helpless mother and two little
+brothers. We couldn’t wait for you, Nils; your prospects seemed
+hopeless then.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+That may be so, but you had no right to throw me over for anyone else’s
+sake.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Indeed I don’t know. Many a time did I ask myself if I had the right to
+do it.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+_[more gently]_. When I lost you, it was as if all the solid ground
+went from under my feet. Look at me now—I am a shipwrecked man clinging
+to a bit of wreckage.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+But help may be near.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+It was near; but then you came and stood in my way.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Unintentionally, Nils. It was only today that I learned it was your
+place I was going to take in the Bank.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I believe you, if you say so. But now that you know it, are you not
+going to give it up to me?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No, because that would not benefit you in the least.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Oh, benefit, benefit—I would have done it whether or no.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I have learned to act prudently. Life, and hard, bitter necessity have
+taught me that.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+And life has taught me not to believe in fine speeches.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Then life has taught you something very reasonable. But deeds you must
+believe in?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+What do you mean by that?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+You said you were like a shipwrecked man clinging to some wreckage.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I had good reason to say so.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Well, I am like a shipwrecked woman clinging to some wreckage—no one to
+mourn for, no one to care for.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+It was your own choice.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+There was no other choice—then.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Well, what now?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Nils, how would it be if we two shipwrecked people could join forces?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+What are you saying?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Two on the same piece of wreckage would stand a better chance than each
+on their own.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Christine I...
+
+MRS LINDE.
+What do you suppose brought me to town?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Do you mean that you gave me a thought?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I could not endure life without work. All my life, as long as I can
+remember, I have worked, and it has been my greatest and only pleasure.
+But now I am quite alone in the world—my life is so dreadfully empty
+and I feel so forsaken. There is not the least pleasure in working for
+one’s self. Nils, give me someone and something to work for.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I don’t trust that. It is nothing but a woman’s overstrained sense of
+generosity that prompts you to make such an offer of yourself.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Have you ever noticed anything of the sort in me?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Could you really do it? Tell me—do you know all about my past life?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+And do you know what they think of me here?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+You seemed to me to imply that with me you might have been quite
+another man.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I am certain of it.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Is it too late now?
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Christine, are you saying this deliberately? Yes, I am sure you are. I
+see it in your face. Have you really the courage, then—?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I want to be a mother to someone, and your children need a mother. We
+two need each other. Nils, I have faith in your real character—I can
+dare anything together with you.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+_[grasps her hands]_. Thanks, thanks, Christine! Now I shall find a way
+to clear myself in the eyes of the world. Ah, but I forgot—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[listening]_. Hush! The Tarantella! Go, go!
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Why? What is it?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Do you hear them up there? When that is over, we may expect them back.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Yes, yes—I will go. But it is all no use. Of course you are not aware
+what steps I have taken in the matter of the Helmers.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, I know all about that.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+And in spite of that have you the courage to—?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+I understand very well to what lengths a man like you might be driven
+by despair.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+If I could only undo what I have done!
+
+MRS LINDE.
+You cannot. Your letter is lying in the letter-box now.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Are you sure of that?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Quite sure, but—
+
+KROGSTAD.
+_[with a searching look at her]_. Is that what it all means?—that you
+want to save your friend at any cost? Tell me frankly. Is that it?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Nils, a woman who has once sold herself for another’s sake, doesn’t do
+it a second time.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I will ask for my letter back.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No, no.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Yes, of course I will. I will wait here until Helmer comes; I will tell
+him he must give me my letter back—that it only concerns my
+dismissal—that he is not to read it—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+No, Nils, you must not recall your letter.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+But, tell me, wasn’t it for that very purpose that you asked me to meet
+you here?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+In my first moment of fright, it was. But twenty-four hours have
+elapsed since then, and in that time I have witnessed incredible things
+in this house. Helmer must know all about it. This unhappy secret must
+be disclosed; they must have a complete understanding between them,
+which is impossible with all this concealment and falsehood going on.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+Very well, if you will take the responsibility. But there is one thing
+I can do in any case, and I shall do it at once.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[listening]_. You must be quick and go! The dance is over; we are not
+safe a moment longer.
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I will wait for you below.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, do. You must see me back to my door...
+
+KROGSTAD.
+I have never had such an amazing piece of good fortune in my life!
+_[Goes out through the outer door. The door between the room and the
+hall remains open.]_
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[tidying up the room and laying her hat and cloak ready]_. What a
+difference! what a difference! Someone to work for and live for—a home
+to bring comfort into. That I will do, indeed. I wish they would be
+quick and come—_[Listens.]_ Ah, there they are now. I must put on my
+things. _[Takes up her hat and cloak. HELMER’S and NORA’S voices are
+heard outside; a key is turned, and HELMER brings NORA almost by force
+into the hall. She is in an Italian costume with a large black shawl
+around her; he is in evening dress, and a black domino which is flying
+open.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[hanging back in the doorway, and struggling with him]_. No, no,
+no!—don’t take me in. I want to go upstairs again; I don’t want to
+leave so early.
+
+HELMER.
+But, my dearest Nora—
+
+NORA.
+Please, Torvald dear—please, please—only an hour more.
+
+HELMER.
+Not a single minute, my sweet Nora. You know that was our agreement.
+Come along into the room; you are catching cold standing there. _[He
+brings her gently into the room, in spite of her resistance.]_
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Good evening.
+
+NORA.
+Christine!
+
+HELMER.
+You here, so late, Mrs Linde?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, you must excuse me; I was so anxious to see Nora in her dress.
+
+NORA.
+Have you been sitting here waiting for me?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, unfortunately I came too late, you had already gone upstairs; and
+I thought I couldn’t go away again without having seen you.
+
+HELMER.
+_[taking off NORA’S shawl]_. Yes, take a good look at her. I think she
+is worth looking at. Isn’t she charming, Mrs Linde?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, indeed she is.
+
+HELMER.
+Doesn’t she look remarkably pretty? Everyone thought so at the dance.
+But she is terribly self-willed, this sweet little person. What are we
+to do with her? You will hardly believe that I had almost to bring her
+away by force.
+
+NORA.
+Torvald, you will repent not having let me stay, even if it were only
+for half an hour.
+
+HELMER.
+Listen to her, Mrs Linde! She had danced her Tarantella, and it had
+been a tremendous success, as it deserved—although possibly the
+performance was a trifle too realistic—a little more so, I mean, than
+was strictly compatible with the limitations of art. But never mind
+about that! The chief thing is, she had made a success—she had made a
+tremendous success. Do you think I was going to let her remain there
+after that, and spoil the effect? No, indeed! I took my charming little
+Capri maiden—my capricious little Capri maiden, I should say—on my arm;
+took one quick turn round the room; a curtsey on either side, and, as
+they say in novels, the beautiful apparition disappeared. An exit ought
+always to be effective, Mrs Linde; but that is what I cannot make Nora
+understand. Pooh! this room is hot. _[Throws his domino on a chair, and
+opens the door of his room.]_ Hullo! it’s all dark in here. Oh, of
+course—excuse me—. _[He goes in, and lights some candles.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[in a hurried and breathless whisper]_. Well?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[in a low voice]_. I have had a talk with him.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, and—
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Nora, you must tell your husband all about it.
+
+NORA.
+_[in an expressionless voice]_. I knew it.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+You have nothing to be afraid of as far as Krogstad is concerned; but
+you must tell him.
+
+NORA.
+I won’t tell him.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Then the letter will.
+
+NORA.
+Thank you, Christine. Now I know what I must do. Hush—!
+
+HELMER.
+_[coming in again]_. Well, Mrs Linde, have you admired her?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, and now I will say goodnight.
+
+HELMER.
+What, already? Is this yours, this knitting?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+_[taking it]_. Yes, thank you, I had very nearly forgotten it.
+
+HELMER.
+So you knit?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Of course.
+
+HELMER.
+Do you know, you ought to embroider.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Really? Why?
+
+HELMER.
+Yes, it’s far more becoming. Let me show you. You hold the embroidery
+thus in your left hand, and use the needle with the right—like
+this—with a long, easy sweep. Do you see?
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Yes, perhaps—
+
+HELMER.
+But in the case of knitting—that can never be anything but ungraceful;
+look here—the arms close together, the knitting-needles going up and
+down—it has a sort of Chinese effect—. That was really excellent
+champagne they gave us.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Well,—goodnight, Nora, and don’t be self-willed any more.
+
+HELMER.
+That’s right, Mrs Linde.
+
+MRS LINDE.
+Goodnight, Mr. Helmer.
+
+HELMER.
+_[accompanying her to the door]_. Goodnight, goodnight. I hope you will
+get home all right. I should be very happy to—but you haven’t any great
+distance to go. Goodnight, goodnight. _[She goes out; he shuts the door
+after her, and comes in again.]_ Ah!—at last we have got rid of her.
+She is a frightful bore, that woman.
+
+NORA.
+Aren’t you very tired, Torvald?
+
+HELMER.
+No, not in the least.
+
+NORA.
+Nor sleepy?
+
+HELMER.
+Not a bit. On the contrary, I feel extraordinarily lively. And you?—you
+really look both tired and sleepy.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, I am very tired. I want to go to sleep at once.
+
+HELMER.
+There, you see it was quite right of me not to let you stay there any
+longer.
+
+NORA.
+Everything you do is quite right, Torvald.
+
+HELMER.
+_[kissing her on the forehead]_. Now my little skylark is speaking
+reasonably. Did you notice what good spirits Rank was in this evening?
+
+NORA.
+Really? Was he? I didn’t speak to him at all.
+
+HELMER.
+And I very little, but I have not for a long time seen him in such good
+form. _[Looks for a while at her and then goes nearer to her.]_ It is
+delightful to be at home by ourselves again, to be all alone with
+you—you fascinating, charming little darling!
+
+NORA.
+Don’t look at me like that, Torvald.
+
+HELMER.
+Why shouldn’t I look at my dearest treasure?—at all the beauty that is
+mine, all my very own?
+
+NORA.
+_[going to the other side of the table]_. You mustn’t say things like
+that to me tonight.
+
+HELMER.
+_[following her]_. You have still got the Tarantella in your blood, I
+see. And it makes you more captivating than ever. Listen—the guests are
+beginning to go now. _[In a lower voice.]_ Nora—soon the whole house
+will be quiet.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, I hope so.
+
+HELMER.
+Yes, my own darling Nora. Do you know, when I am out at a party with
+you like this, why I speak so little to you, keep away from you, and
+only send a stolen glance in your direction now and then?—do you know
+why I do that? It is because I make believe to myself that we are
+secretly in love, and you are my secretly promised bride, and that no
+one suspects there is anything between us.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, yes—I know very well your thoughts are with me all the time.
+
+HELMER.
+And when we are leaving, and I am putting the shawl over your beautiful
+young shoulders—on your lovely neck—then I imagine that you are my
+young bride and that we have just come from the wedding, and I am
+bringing you for the first time into our home—to be alone with you for
+the first time—quite alone with my shy little darling! All this evening
+I have longed for nothing but you. When I watched the seductive figures
+of the Tarantella, my blood was on fire; I could endure it no longer,
+and that was why I brought you down so early—
+
+NORA.
+Go away, Torvald! You must let me go. I won’t—
+
+HELMER.
+What’s that? You’re joking, my little Nora! You won’t—you won’t? Am I
+not your husband—? _[A knock is heard at the outer door.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[starting]_. Did you hear—?
+
+HELMER.
+_[going into the hall]_. Who is it?
+
+RANK.
+_[outside]_. It is I. May I come in for a moment?
+
+HELMER.
+_[in a fretful whisper]_. Oh, what does he want now? _[Aloud.]_ Wait a
+minute! _[Unlocks the door.]_ Come, that’s kind of you not to pass by
+our door.
+
+RANK.
+I thought I heard your voice, and felt as if I should like to look in.
+_[With a swift glance round.]_ Ah, yes!—these dear familiar rooms. You
+are very happy and cosy in here, you two.
+
+HELMER.
+It seems to me that you looked after yourself pretty well upstairs too.
+
+RANK.
+Excellently. Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t one enjoy everything in
+this world?—at any rate as much as one can, and as long as one can. The
+wine was capital—
+
+HELMER.
+Especially the champagne.
+
+RANK.
+So you noticed that too? It is almost incredible how much I managed to
+put away!
+
+NORA.
+Torvald drank a great deal of champagne tonight too.
+
+RANK.
+Did he?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, and he is always in such good spirits afterwards.
+
+RANK.
+Well, why should one not enjoy a merry evening after a well-spent day?
+
+HELMER.
+Well spent? I am afraid I can’t take credit for that.
+
+RANK.
+_[clapping him on the back]_. But I can, you know!
+
+NORA.
+Doctor Rank, you must have been occupied with some scientific
+investigation today.
+
+RANK.
+Exactly.
+
+HELMER.
+Just listen!—little Nora talking about scientific investigations!
+
+NORA.
+And may I congratulate you on the result?
+
+RANK.
+Indeed you may.
+
+NORA.
+Was it favourable, then?
+
+RANK.
+The best possible, for both doctor and patient—certainty.
+
+NORA.
+_[quickly and searchingly]_. Certainty?
+
+RANK.
+Absolute certainty. So wasn’t I entitled to make a merry evening of it
+after that?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, you certainly were, Doctor Rank.
+
+HELMER.
+I think so too, so long as you don’t have to pay for it in the morning.
+
+RANK.
+Oh well, one can’t have anything in this life without paying for it.
+
+NORA.
+Doctor Rank—are you fond of fancy-dress balls?
+
+RANK.
+Yes, if there is a fine lot of pretty costumes.
+
+NORA.
+Tell me—what shall we two wear at the next?
+
+HELMER.
+Little featherbrain!—are you thinking of the next already?
+
+RANK.
+We two? Yes, I can tell you. You shall go as a good fairy—
+
+HELMER.
+Yes, but what do you suggest as an appropriate costume for that?
+
+RANK.
+Let your wife go dressed just as she is in everyday life.
+
+HELMER.
+That was really very prettily turned. But can’t you tell us what you
+will be?
+
+RANK.
+Yes, my dear friend, I have quite made up my mind about that.
+
+HELMER.
+Well?
+
+RANK.
+At the next fancy-dress ball I shall be invisible.
+
+HELMER.
+That’s a good joke!
+
+RANK.
+There is a big black hat—have you never heard of hats that make you
+invisible? If you put one on, no one can see you.
+
+HELMER.
+_[suppressing a smile]_. Yes, you are quite right.
+
+RANK.
+But I am clean forgetting what I came for. Helmer, give me a cigar—one
+of the dark Havanas.
+
+HELMER.
+With the greatest pleasure. _[Offers him his case.]_
+
+RANK.
+_[takes a cigar and cuts off the end]_. Thanks.
+
+NORA.
+_[striking a match]_. Let me give you a light.
+
+RANK.
+Thank you. _[She holds the match for him to light his cigar.]_ And now
+goodbye!
+
+HELMER.
+Goodbye, goodbye, dear old man!
+
+NORA.
+Sleep well, Doctor Rank.
+
+RANK.
+Thank you for that wish.
+
+NORA.
+Wish me the same.
+
+RANK.
+You? Well, if you want me to sleep well! And thanks for the light. _[He
+nods to them both and goes out.]_
+
+HELMER.
+_[in a subdued voice]_. He has drunk more than he ought.
+
+NORA.
+_[absently]_. Maybe. _[HELMER takes a bunch of keys out of his pocket
+and goes into the hall.]_ Torvald! what are you going to do there?
+
+HELMER.
+Emptying the letter-box; it is quite full; there will be no room to put
+the newspaper in tomorrow morning.
+
+NORA.
+Are you going to work tonight?
+
+HELMER.
+You know quite well I’m not. What is this? Someone has been at the
+lock.
+
+NORA.
+At the lock—?
+
+HELMER.
+Yes, someone has. What can it mean? I should never have thought the
+maid—. Here is a broken hairpin. Nora, it is one of yours.
+
+NORA.
+_[quickly]_. Then it must have been the children—
+
+HELMER.
+Then you must get them out of those ways. There, at last I have got it
+open. _[Takes out the contents of the letter-box, and calls to the
+kitchen.]_ Helen!—Helen, put out the light over the front door. _[Goes
+back into the room and shuts the door into the hall. He holds out his
+hand full of letters.]_ Look at that—look what a heap of them there
+are. _[Turning them over.]_ What on earth is that?
+
+NORA.
+_[at the window]_. The letter—No! Torvald, no!
+
+HELMER.
+Two cards—of Rank’s.
+
+NORA.
+Of Doctor Rank’s?
+
+HELMER.
+_[looking at them]_. Doctor Rank. They were on the top. He must have
+put them in when he went out.
+
+NORA.
+Is there anything written on them?
+
+HELMER.
+There is a black cross over the name. Look there—what an uncomfortable
+idea! It looks as if he were announcing his own death.
+
+NORA.
+It is just what he is doing.
+
+HELMER.
+What? Do you know anything about it? Has he said anything to you?
+
+NORA.
+Yes. He told me that when the cards came it would be his leave-taking
+from us. He means to shut himself up and die.
+
+HELMER.
+My poor old friend! Certainly I knew we should not have him very long
+with us. But so soon! And so he hides himself away like a wounded
+animal.
+
+NORA.
+If it has to happen, it is best it should be without a word—don’t you
+think so, Torvald?
+
+HELMER.
+_[walking up and down]_. He had so grown into our lives. I can’t think
+of him as having gone out of them. He, with his sufferings and his
+loneliness, was like a cloudy background to our sunlit happiness. Well,
+perhaps it is best so. For him, anyway. _[Standing still.]_ And perhaps
+for us too, Nora. We two are thrown quite upon each other now. _[Puts
+his arms round her.]_ My darling wife, I don’t feel as if I could hold
+you tight enough. Do you know, Nora, I have often wished that you might
+be threatened by some great danger, so that I might risk my life’s
+blood, and everything, for your sake.
+
+NORA.
+_[disengages herself, and says firmly and decidedly]_. Now you must
+read your letters, Torvald.
+
+HELMER.
+No, no; not tonight. I want to be with you, my darling wife.
+
+NORA.
+With the thought of your friend’s death—
+
+HELMER.
+You are right, it has affected us both. Something ugly has come between
+us—the thought of the horrors of death. We must try and rid our minds
+of that. Until then—we will each go to our own room.
+
+NORA.
+_[hanging on his neck]_. Goodnight, Torvald—Goodnight!
+
+HELMER.
+_[kissing her on the forehead]_. Goodnight, my little singing-bird.
+Sleep sound, Nora. Now I will read my letters through. _[He takes his
+letters and goes into his room, shutting the door after him.]_
+
+NORA.
+_[gropes distractedly about, seizes HELMER’S domino, throws it round
+her, while she says in quick, hoarse, spasmodic whispers]_. Never to
+see him again. Never! Never! _[Puts her shawl over her head.]_ Never to
+see my children again either—never again. Never! Never!—Ah! the icy,
+black water—the unfathomable depths—If only it were over! He has got it
+now—now he is reading it. Goodbye, Torvald and my children! _[She is
+about to rush out through the hall, when HELMER opens his door
+hurriedly and stands with an open letter in his hand.]_
+
+HELMER.
+Nora!
+
+NORA.
+Ah!—
+
+HELMER.
+What is this? Do you know what is in this letter?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, I know. Let me go! Let me get out!
+
+HELMER.
+_[holding her back]_. Where are you going?
+
+NORA.
+_[trying to get free]_. You shan’t save me, Torvald!
+
+HELMER.
+_[reeling]_. True? Is this true, that I read here? Horrible! No, no—it
+is impossible that it can be true.
+
+NORA.
+It is true. I have loved you above everything else in the world.
+
+HELMER.
+Oh, don’t let us have any silly excuses.
+
+NORA.
+_[taking a step towards him]_. Torvald—!
+
+HELMER.
+Miserable creature—what have you done?
+
+NORA.
+Let me go. You shall not suffer for my sake. You shall not take it upon
+yourself.
+
+HELMER.
+No tragic airs, please. _[Locks the hall door.]_ Here you shall stay
+and give me an explanation. Do you understand what you have done?
+Answer me! Do you understand what you have done?
+
+NORA.
+_[looks steadily at him and says with a growing look of coldness in her
+face]_. Yes, now I am beginning to understand thoroughly.
+
+HELMER.
+_[walking about the room]_. What a horrible awakening! All these eight
+years—she who was my joy and pride—a hypocrite, a liar—worse, worse—a
+criminal! The unutterable ugliness of it all!—For shame! For shame!
+_[NORA is silent and looks steadily at him. He stops in front of her.]_
+I ought to have suspected that something of the sort would happen. I
+ought to have foreseen it. All your father’s want of principle—be
+silent!—all your father’s want of principle has come out in you. No
+religion, no morality, no sense of duty—. How I am punished for having
+winked at what he did! I did it for your sake, and this is how you
+repay me.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, that’s just it.
+
+HELMER.
+Now you have destroyed all my happiness. You have ruined all my future.
+It is horrible to think of! I am in the power of an unscrupulous man;
+he can do what he likes with me, ask anything he likes of me, give me
+any orders he pleases—I dare not refuse. And I must sink to such
+miserable depths because of a thoughtless woman!
+
+NORA.
+When I am out of the way, you will be free.
+
+HELMER.
+No fine speeches, please. Your father had always plenty of those ready,
+too. What good would it be to me if you were out of the way, as you
+say? Not the slightest. He can make the affair known everywhere; and if
+he does, I may be falsely suspected of having been a party to your
+criminal action. Very likely people will think I was behind it all—that
+it was I who prompted you! And I have to thank you for all this—you
+whom I have cherished during the whole of our married life. Do you
+understand now what it is you have done for me?
+
+NORA.
+_[coldly and quietly]_. Yes.
+
+HELMER.
+It is so incredible that I can’t take it in. But we must come to some
+understanding. Take off that shawl. Take it off, I tell you. I must try
+and appease him some way or another. The matter must be hushed up at
+any cost. And as for you and me, it must appear as if everything
+between us were just as before—but naturally only in the eyes of the
+world. You will still remain in my house, that is a matter of course.
+But I shall not allow you to bring up the children; I dare not trust
+them to you. To think that I should be obliged to say so to one whom I
+have loved so dearly, and whom I still—. No, that is all over. From
+this moment happiness is not the question; all that concerns us is to
+save the remains, the fragments, the appearance—
+
+_[A ring is heard at the front-door bell.]_
+
+HELMER.
+_[with a start]_. What is that? So late! Can the worst—? Can he—? Hide
+yourself, Nora. Say you are ill.
+
+_[NORA stands motionless. HELMER goes and unlocks the hall door.]_
+
+MAID.
+_[half-dressed, comes to the door]_. A letter for the mistress.
+
+HELMER.
+Give it to me. _[Takes the letter, and shuts the door.]_ Yes, it is
+from him. You shall not have it; I will read it myself.
+
+NORA.
+Yes, read it.
+
+HELMER.
+_[standing by the lamp]_. I scarcely have the courage to do it. It may
+mean ruin for both of us. No, I must know. _[Tears open the letter,
+runs his eye over a few lines, looks at a paper enclosed, and gives a
+shout of joy.]_ Nora! _[She looks at him questioningly.]_ Nora!—No, I
+must read it once again—. Yes, it is true! I am saved! Nora, I am
+saved!
+
+NORA.
+And I?
+
+HELMER.
+You too, of course; we are both saved, both you and I. Look, he sends
+you your bond back. He says he regrets and repents—that a happy change
+in his life—never mind what he says! We are saved, Nora! No one can do
+anything to you. Oh, Nora, Nora!—no, first I must destroy these hateful
+things. Let me see—. _[Takes a look at the bond.]_ No, no, I won’t look
+at it. The whole thing shall be nothing but a bad dream to me. _[Tears
+up the bond and both letters, throws them all into the stove, and
+watches them burn.]_ There—now it doesn’t exist any longer. He says
+that since Christmas Eve you—. These must have been three dreadful days
+for you, Nora.
+
+NORA.
+I have fought a hard fight these three days.
+
+HELMER.
+And suffered agonies, and seen no way out but—. No, we won’t call any
+of the horrors to mind. We will only shout with joy, and keep saying,
+“It’s all over! It’s all over!” Listen to me, Nora. You don’t seem to
+realise that it is all over. What is this?—such a cold, set face! My
+poor little Nora, I quite understand; you don’t feel as if you could
+believe that I have forgiven you. But it is true, Nora, I swear it; I
+have forgiven you everything. I know that what you did, you did out of
+love for me.
+
+NORA.
+That is true.
+
+HELMER.
+You have loved me as a wife ought to love her husband. Only you had not
+sufficient knowledge to judge of the means you used. But do you suppose
+you are any the less dear to me, because you don’t understand how to
+act on your own responsibility? No, no; only lean on me; I will advise
+you and direct you. I should not be a man if this womanly helplessness
+did not just give you a double attractiveness in my eyes. You must not
+think anymore about the hard things I said in my first moment of
+consternation, when I thought everything was going to overwhelm me. I
+have forgiven you, Nora; I swear to you I have forgiven you.
+
+NORA.
+Thank you for your forgiveness. _[She goes out through the door to the
+right.]_
+
+HELMER.
+No, don’t go—. _[Looks in.]_ What are you doing in there?
+
+NORA.
+_[from within]_. Taking off my fancy dress.
+
+HELMER.
+_[standing at the open door]_. Yes, do. Try and calm yourself, and make
+your mind easy again, my frightened little singing-bird. Be at rest,
+and feel secure; I have broad wings to shelter you under. _[Walks up
+and down by the door.]_ How warm and cosy our home is, Nora. Here is
+shelter for you; here I will protect you like a hunted dove that I have
+saved from a hawk’s claws; I will bring peace to your poor beating
+heart. It will come, little by little, Nora, believe me. Tomorrow
+morning you will look upon it all quite differently; soon everything
+will be just as it was before. Very soon you won’t need me to assure
+you that I have forgiven you; you will yourself feel the certainty that
+I have done so. Can you suppose I should ever think of such a thing as
+repudiating you, or even reproaching you? You have no idea what a true
+man’s heart is like, Nora. There is something so indescribably sweet
+and satisfying, to a man, in the knowledge that he has forgiven his
+wife—forgiven her freely, and with all his heart. It seems as if that
+had made her, as it were, doubly his own; he has given her a new life,
+so to speak; and she has in a way become both wife and child to him. So
+you shall be for me after this, my little scared, helpless darling.
+Have no anxiety about anything, Nora; only be frank and open with me,
+and I will serve as will and conscience both to you—. What is this? Not
+gone to bed? Have you changed your things?
+
+NORA.
+_[in everyday dress]_. Yes, Torvald, I have changed my things now.
+
+HELMER.
+But what for?—so late as this.
+
+NORA.
+I shall not sleep tonight.
+
+HELMER.
+But, my dear Nora—
+
+NORA.
+_[looking at her watch]_. It is not so very late. Sit down here,
+Torvald. You and I have much to say to one another. _[She sits down at
+one side of the table.]_
+
+HELMER.
+Nora—what is this?—this cold, set face?
+
+NORA.
+Sit down. It will take some time; I have a lot to talk over with you.
+
+HELMER.
+_[sits down at the opposite side of the table]_. You alarm me,
+Nora!—and I don’t understand you.
+
+NORA.
+No, that is just it. You don’t understand me, and I have never
+understood you either—before tonight. No, you mustn’t interrupt me. You
+must simply listen to what I say. Torvald, this is a settling of
+accounts.
+
+HELMER.
+What do you mean by that?
+
+NORA.
+_[after a short silence]_. Isn’t there one thing that strikes you as
+strange in our sitting here like this?
+
+HELMER.
+What is that?
+
+NORA.
+We have been married now eight years. Does it not occur to you that
+this is the first time we two, you and I, husband and wife, have had a
+serious conversation?
+
+HELMER.
+What do you mean by serious?
+
+NORA.
+In all these eight years—longer than that—from the very beginning of
+our acquaintance, we have never exchanged a word on any serious
+subject.
+
+HELMER.
+Was it likely that I would be continually and forever telling you about
+worries that you could not help me to bear?
+
+NORA.
+I am not speaking about business matters. I say that we have never sat
+down in earnest together to try and get at the bottom of anything.
+
+HELMER.
+But, dearest Nora, would it have been any good to you?
+
+NORA.
+That is just it; you have never understood me. I have been greatly
+wronged, Torvald—first by papa and then by you.
+
+HELMER.
+What! By us two—by us two, who have loved you better than anyone else
+in the world?
+
+NORA.
+_[shaking her head]_. You have never loved me. You have only thought it
+pleasant to be in love with me.
+
+HELMER.
+Nora, what do I hear you saying?
+
+NORA.
+It is perfectly true, Torvald. When I was at home with papa, he told me
+his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I
+differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked
+it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used
+to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you—
+
+HELMER.
+What sort of an expression is that to use about our marriage?
+
+NORA.
+_[undisturbed]_. I mean that I was simply transferred from papa’s hands
+into yours. You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so
+I got the same tastes as you—or else I pretended to, I am really not
+quite sure which—I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other.
+When I look back on it, it seems to me as if I had been living here
+like a poor woman—just from hand to mouth. I have existed merely to
+perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and papa
+have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have
+made nothing of my life.
+
+HELMER.
+How unreasonable and how ungrateful you are, Nora! Have you not been
+happy here?
+
+NORA.
+No, I have never been happy. I thought I was, but it has never really
+been so.
+
+HELMER.
+Not—not happy!
+
+NORA.
+No, only merry. And you have always been so kind to me. But our home
+has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at
+home I was papa’s doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls.
+I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they thought it
+great fun when I played with them. That is what our marriage has been,
+Torvald.
+
+HELMER.
+There is some truth in what you say—exaggerated and strained as your
+view of it is. But for the future it shall be different. Playtime shall
+be over, and lesson-time shall begin.
+
+NORA.
+Whose lessons? Mine, or the children’s?
+
+HELMER.
+Both yours and the children’s, my darling Nora.
+
+NORA.
+Alas, Torvald, you are not the man to educate me into being a proper
+wife for you.
+
+HELMER.
+And you can say that!
+
+NORA.
+And I—how am I fitted to bring up the children?
+
+HELMER.
+Nora!
+
+NORA.
+Didn’t you say so yourself a little while ago—that you dare not trust
+me to bring them up?
+
+HELMER.
+In a moment of anger! Why do you pay any heed to that?
+
+NORA.
+Indeed, you were perfectly right. I am not fit for the task. There is
+another task I must undertake first. I must try and educate myself—you
+are not the man to help me in that. I must do that for myself. And that
+is why I am going to leave you now.
+
+HELMER.
+_[springing up]_. What do you say?
+
+NORA.
+I must stand quite alone, if I am to understand myself and everything
+about me. It is for that reason that I cannot remain with you any
+longer.
+
+HELMER.
+Nora, Nora!
+
+NORA.
+I am going away from here now, at once. I am sure Christine will take
+me in for the night—
+
+HELMER.
+You are out of your mind! I won’t allow it! I forbid you!
+
+NORA.
+It is no use forbidding me anything any longer. I will take with me
+what belongs to myself. I will take nothing from you, either now or
+later.
+
+HELMER.
+What sort of madness is this!
+
+NORA.
+Tomorrow I shall go home—I mean, to my old home. It will be easiest for
+me to find something to do there.
+
+HELMER.
+You blind, foolish woman!
+
+NORA.
+I must try and get some sense, Torvald.
+
+HELMER.
+To desert your home, your husband and your children! And you don’t
+consider what people will say!
+
+NORA.
+I cannot consider that at all. I only know that it is necessary for me.
+
+HELMER.
+It’s shocking. This is how you would neglect your most sacred duties.
+
+NORA.
+What do you consider my most sacred duties?
+
+HELMER.
+Do I need to tell you that? Are they not your duties to your husband
+and your children?
+
+NORA.
+I have other duties just as sacred.
+
+HELMER.
+That you have not. What duties could those be?
+
+NORA.
+Duties to myself.
+
+HELMER.
+Before all else, you are a wife and a mother.
+
+NORA.
+I don’t believe that any longer. I believe that before all else I am a
+reasonable human being, just as you are—or, at all events, that I must
+try and become one. I know quite well, Torvald, that most people would
+think you right, and that views of that kind are to be found in books;
+but I can no longer content myself with what most people say, or with
+what is found in books. I must think over things for myself and get to
+understand them.
+
+HELMER.
+Can you not understand your place in your own home? Have you not a
+reliable guide in such matters as that?—have you no religion?
+
+NORA.
+I am afraid, Torvald, I do not exactly know what religion is.
+
+HELMER.
+What are you saying?
+
+NORA.
+I know nothing but what the clergyman said, when I went to be
+confirmed. He told us that religion was this, and that, and the other.
+When I am away from all this, and am alone, I will look into that
+matter too. I will see if what the clergyman said is true, or at all
+events if it is true for me.
+
+HELMER.
+This is unheard of in a girl of your age! But if religion cannot lead
+you aright, let me try and awaken your conscience. I suppose you have
+some moral sense? Or—answer me—am I to think you have none?
+
+NORA.
+I assure you, Torvald, that is not an easy question to answer. I really
+don’t know. The thing perplexes me altogether. I only know that you and
+I look at it in quite a different light. I am learning, too, that the
+law is quite another thing from what I supposed; but I find it
+impossible to convince myself that the law is right. According to it a
+woman has no right to spare her old dying father, or to save her
+husband’s life. I can’t believe that.
+
+HELMER.
+You talk like a child. You don’t understand the conditions of the world
+in which you live.
+
+NORA.
+No, I don’t. But now I am going to try. I am going to see if I can make
+out who is right, the world or I.
+
+HELMER.
+You are ill, Nora; you are delirious; I almost think you are out of
+your mind.
+
+NORA.
+I have never felt my mind so clear and certain as tonight.
+
+HELMER.
+And is it with a clear and certain mind that you forsake your husband
+and your children?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, it is.
+
+HELMER.
+Then there is only one possible explanation.
+
+NORA.
+What is that?
+
+HELMER.
+You do not love me anymore.
+
+NORA.
+No, that is just it.
+
+HELMER.
+Nora!—and you can say that?
+
+NORA.
+It gives me great pain, Torvald, for you have always been so kind to
+me, but I cannot help it. I do not love you any more.
+
+HELMER.
+_[regaining his composure]_. Is that a clear and certain conviction
+too?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, absolutely clear and certain. That is the reason why I will not
+stay here any longer.
+
+HELMER.
+And can you tell me what I have done to forfeit your love?
+
+NORA.
+Yes, indeed I can. It was tonight, when the wonderful thing did not
+happen; then I saw you were not the man I had thought you were.
+
+HELMER.
+Explain yourself better. I don’t understand you.
+
+NORA.
+I have waited so patiently for eight years; for, goodness knows, I knew
+very well that wonderful things don’t happen every day. Then this
+horrible misfortune came upon me; and then I felt quite certain that
+the wonderful thing was going to happen at last. When Krogstad’s letter
+was lying out there, never for a moment did I imagine that you would
+consent to accept this man’s conditions. I was so absolutely certain
+that you would say to him: Publish the thing to the whole world. And
+when that was done—
+
+HELMER.
+Yes, what then?—when I had exposed my wife to shame and disgrace?
+
+NORA.
+When that was done, I was so absolutely certain, you would come forward
+and take everything upon yourself, and say: I am the guilty one.
+
+HELMER.
+Nora—!
+
+NORA.
+You mean that I would never have accepted such a sacrifice on your
+part? No, of course not. But what would my assurances have been worth
+against yours? That was the wonderful thing which I hoped for and
+feared; and it was to prevent that, that I wanted to kill myself.
+
+HELMER.
+I would gladly work night and day for you, Nora—bear sorrow and want
+for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honour for the one he
+loves.
+
+NORA.
+It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.
+
+HELMER.
+Oh, you think and talk like a heedless child.
+
+NORA.
+Maybe. But you neither think nor talk like the man I could bind myself
+to. As soon as your fear was over—and it was not fear for what
+threatened me, but for what might happen to you—when the whole thing
+was past, as far as you were concerned it was exactly as if nothing at
+all had happened. Exactly as before, I was your little skylark, your
+doll, which you would in future treat with doubly gentle care, because
+it was so brittle and fragile. _[Getting up.]_ Torvald—it was then it
+dawned upon me that for eight years I had been living here with a
+strange man, and had borne him three children—. Oh, I can’t bear to
+think of it! I could tear myself into little bits!
+
+HELMER.
+_[sadly]_. I see, I see. An abyss has opened between us—there is no
+denying it. But, Nora, would it not be possible to fill it up?
+
+NORA.
+As I am now, I am no wife for you.
+
+HELMER.
+I have it in me to become a different man.
+
+NORA.
+Perhaps—if your doll is taken away from you.
+
+HELMER.
+But to part!—to part from you! No, no, Nora, I can’t understand that
+idea.
+
+NORA.
+_[going out to the right]_. That makes it all the more certain that it
+must be done. _[She comes back with her cloak and hat and a small bag
+which she puts on a chair by the table.]_
+
+HELMER.
+Nora, Nora, not now! Wait until tomorrow.
+
+NORA.
+_[putting on her cloak]_. I cannot spend the night in a strange man’s
+room.
+
+HELMER.
+But can’t we live here like brother and sister—?
+
+NORA.
+_[putting on her hat]_. You know very well that would not last long.
+_[Puts the shawl round her.]_ Goodbye, Torvald. I won’t see the little
+ones. I know they are in better hands than mine. As I am now, I can be
+of no use to them.
+
+HELMER.
+But some day, Nora—some day?
+
+NORA.
+How can I tell? I have no idea what is going to become of me.
+
+HELMER.
+But you are my wife, whatever becomes of you.
+
+NORA.
+Listen, Torvald. I have heard that when a wife deserts her husband’s
+house, as I am doing now, he is legally freed from all obligations
+towards her. In any case, I set you free from all your obligations. You
+are not to feel yourself bound in the slightest way, any more than I
+shall. There must be perfect freedom on both sides. See, here is your
+ring back. Give me mine.
+
+HELMER.
+That too?
+
+NORA.
+That too.
+
+HELMER.
+Here it is.
+
+NORA.
+That’s right. Now it is all over. I have put the keys here. The maids
+know all about everything in the house—better than I do. Tomorrow,
+after I have left her, Christine will come here and pack up my own
+things that I brought with me from home. I will have them sent after
+me.
+
+HELMER.
+All over! All over!—Nora, shall you never think of me again?
+
+NORA.
+I know I shall often think of you, the children, and this house.
+
+HELMER.
+May I write to you, Nora?
+
+NORA.
+No—never. You must not do that.
+
+HELMER.
+But at least let me send you—
+
+NORA.
+Nothing—nothing—
+
+HELMER.
+Let me help you if you are in want.
+
+NORA.
+No. I can receive nothing from a stranger.
+
+HELMER.
+Nora—can I never be anything more than a stranger to you?
+
+NORA.
+_[taking her bag]_. Ah, Torvald, the most wonderful thing of all would
+have to happen.
+
+HELMER.
+Tell me what that would be!
+
+NORA.
+Both you and I would have to be so changed that—. Oh, Torvald, I don’t
+believe any longer in wonderful things happening.
+
+HELMER.
+But I will believe in it. Tell me! So changed that—?
+
+NORA.
+That our life together would be a real wedlock. Goodbye. _[She goes out
+through the hall.]_
+
+HELMER.
+_[sinks down on a chair at the door and buries his face in his hands]_.
+Nora! Nora! _[Looks round, and rises.]_ Empty. She is gone. _[A hope
+flashes across his mind.]_ The most wonderful thing of all—?
+
+_[The sound of a door shutting is heard from below.]_
diff --git a/search-engine/books/Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.txt b/search-engine/books/Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc03e2d
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+++ b/search-engine/books/Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3406 @@
+Title: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
+Author: Lewis Carroll
+
+Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
+
+by Lewis Carroll
+
+THE MILLENNIUM FULCRUM EDITION 3.0
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I.     Down the Rabbit-Hole
+ CHAPTER II.    The Pool of Tears
+ CHAPTER III.   A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale
+ CHAPTER IV.    The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill
+ CHAPTER V.     Advice from a Caterpillar
+ CHAPTER VI.    Pig and Pepper
+ CHAPTER VII.   A Mad Tea-Party
+ CHAPTER VIII.  The Queen’s Croquet-Ground
+ CHAPTER IX.    The Mock Turtle’s Story
+ CHAPTER X.     The Lobster Quadrille
+ CHAPTER XI.    Who Stole the Tarts?
+ CHAPTER XII.   Alice’s Evidence
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+Down the Rabbit-Hole
+
+
+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 conversations?”
+
+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 daisy-chain 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 waistcoat-pocket, 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 rabbit-hole 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 rabbit-hole 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 book-shelves; 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 underneath, 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 distance—but
+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 spoke—fancy _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 to-night, I should think!”
+(Dinah was the cat.) “I hope they’ll remember her saucer of milk at
+tea-time. 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 three-legged 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 rat-hole: 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
+through 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
+knew how to begin.” For, you see, so many out-of-the-way 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 red-hot 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 cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, 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 out-of-the-way
+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! Good-bye, 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 to-day! 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, and—oh 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 is—oh 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 Rome—no, _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 to-day.”
+
+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 out-of-the-way 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 mouse—of
+a mouse—to a mouse—a mouse—O 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: “Où est ma chatte?” which
+was the first sentence in her French lesson-book. 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 face—and she is such a nice soft thing to
+nurse—and she’s such a capital one for catching mice—oh, 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 you—are you fond—of—of 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 bright-eyed 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 things—I can’t remember half of them—and 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 and—oh 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 Caucus-Race and a Long Tale
+
+
+They were indeed a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank—the
+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 Caucus-race.”
+
+“What _is_ a Caucus-race?” 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 race-course, 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 a-piece, 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 hate—C 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 night-air
+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 low-spirited. 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 good-naturedly began hunting about for them, but
+they were nowhere to be seen—everything 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 gloves—that 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 enough—I hope I shan’t
+grow any more—As it is, I can’t get out at the door—I 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 rabbit-hole—and yet—and
+yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what
+_can_ have happened to me! When I used to read fairy-tales, 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 one—but 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 way—never to be an old woman—but
+then—always 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 lesson-books!”
+
+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
+cucumber-frame, or something of the sort.
+
+Next came an angry voice—the 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 cucumber-frames 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 other—Bill!
+fetch it here, lad!—Here, put ’em up at this corner—No, tie ’em
+together first—they don’t reach half high enough yet—Oh! they’ll do
+well enough; don’t be particular—Here, Bill! catch hold of this
+rope—Will the roof bear?—Mind that loose slate—Oh, it’s coming down!
+Heads below!” (a loud crash)—“Now, who did that?—It was Bill, I
+fancy—Who’s to go down the chimney?—Nay, _I_ shan’t! _You_ do
+it!—_That_ I won’t, then!—Bill’s to go down—Here, 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 head—Brandy
+now—Don’t choke him—How 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 know—No more, thank ye; I’m better now—but I’m
+a deal too flustered to tell you—all I know is, something comes at me
+like a Jack-in-the-box, and up I goes like a sky-rocket!”
+
+“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 guinea-pigs, 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 cart-horse, 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, if—if 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 see—how _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 blue
+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, “I—I 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 chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and 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
+used—and 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 back-somersault 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 ointment—one 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 right-hand 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 look-out 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 a—I’m a—”
+
+“Well! _What_ are you?” said the Pigeon. “I can see you’re trying to
+invent something!”
+
+“I—I’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 garden—how
+_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
+wood—(she considered him to be a footman because he was in livery:
+otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a
+fish)—and 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 Fish-Footman 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 Frog-Footman 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
+Fish-Footman 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 within—a 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 three-legged 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 fire-irons 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 twenty-four 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: “Twenty-four 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 frying-pan 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 star-fish,” thought Alice. The poor little thing was
+snorting like a steam-engine 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_ turn-up 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 to-day?”
+
+“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.
+
+“By-the-bye, 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 mad—at 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 Tea-Party
+
+
+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 arm-chair 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 writing-desk?”
+
+“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 least—at least I mean what I
+say—that’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
+writing-desks, 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 bread-knife.”
+
+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! Half-past 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 then—I
+shouldn’t be hungry for it, you know.”
+
+“Not at first, perhaps,” said the Hatter: “but you could keep it to
+half-past 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 March—just 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 tea-tray 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
+tea-things are put out here?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, that’s it,” said the Hatter with a sigh: “it’s always tea-time,
+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 bread-and-butter, 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 treacle-well.”
+
+“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 sisters—they 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 milk-jug 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 water-well,” said the Hatter; “so I should
+think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well—eh, 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
+things—everything 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
+mouse-traps, 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 tea-party 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 _then_—she found
+herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds
+and the cool fountains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+The Queen’s Croquet-Ground
+
+
+A large rose-tree 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 him—it was for
+bringing the cook tulip-roots 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_ rose-tree, 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 rose-tree; 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 rose-tree, 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
+flower-pot 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’s—it’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 croquet-ground
+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 doubled-up 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 speak—and they don’t seem to have any rules in particular; at
+least, if there are, nobody attends to them—and 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
+ground—and 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 mine—a 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 Duchess, 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 without—Maybe it’s always pepper that makes people
+hot-tempered,” she went on, very much pleased at having found out a new
+kind of rule, “and vinegar that makes them sour—and camomile that makes
+them bitter—and—and barley-sugar and such things that make children
+sweet-tempered. 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 mustard-mine 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
+croquet-ground.
+
+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 _ever_ 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 Turtle—we 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 educations—in fact, we went to school every day—”
+
+“_I’ve_ been to a day-school, 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 washing_—extra.’”
+
+“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 means—to—make—anything—prettier.”
+
+“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 Drawling—the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel,
+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
+sea-shore—”
+
+“Two lines!” cried the Mock Turtle. “Seals, turtles, salmon, and so on;
+then, when you’ve cleared all the jelly-fish 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 lobsters 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 shingle—will 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, “they—you’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 mouths—and 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 adventures—beginning 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 pie-crust, 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!
+    Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
+    Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
+Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
+    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?
+    Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
+    Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
+Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
+    Beautiful, beauti—FUL 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:—
+
+“Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
+    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 them—all 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 jury-box,” 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, “jury-men”
+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 bread-and-butter 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, arm-in-arm 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
+bread-and-butter.
+
+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 tea—not above a week or so—and what with the
+bread-and-butter getting so thin—and 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
+that—only 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-and-butter—”
+
+“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 bread-and-butter, 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 guinea-pigs 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 guinea-pig,
+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 guinea-pig cheered, and was suppressed.
+
+“Come, that finished the guinea-pigs!” 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 pepper-box 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 cross-examine _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 cross-examine 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 jury-box 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
+jury-box, 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 so.
+
+Alice looked at the jury-box, 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: “_Un_important, your Majesty means, of course,” he
+said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as
+he spoke.
+
+“_Un_important, of course, I meant,” the King hastily said, and went on
+to himself in an undertone,
+
+“important—unimportant—unimportant—important—” 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 note-book, cackled out “Silence!” and read out from his book, “Rule
+Forty-two. _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 note-book 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 to—to 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 the 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 first—verdict 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 hers—she 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 eyes—and still as she listened, or
+seemed to listen, the whole place around her became alive with the
+strange creatures of her little sister’s dream.
+
+The long grass rustled at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried by—the
+frightened Mouse splashed his way through the neighbouring pool—she
+could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and his friends
+shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen
+ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution—once more the pig-baby
+was sneezing on the Duchess’s knee, while plates and dishes crashed
+around it—once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the
+Lizard’s slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs,
+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 reality—the grass would be only rustling in the
+wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds—the rattling
+teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen’s shrill
+cries to the voice of the shepherd boy—and the sneeze of the baby, the
+shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change
+(she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard—while 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 after-time, 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 child-life, and the happy summer
+days.
+
+THE END
+
+        
+            *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND ***
+        
+
+    
+
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diff --git a/search-engine/books/Dracula.txt b/search-engine/books/Dracula.txt
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+Title: Dracula
+Author: Bram Stoker
+
+                                DRACULA
+
+                                  _by_
+
+                              Bram Stoker
+
+                        [Illustration: colophon]
+
+                                NEW YORK
+
+                            GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+                              _Publishers_
+
+      Copyright, 1897, in the United States of America, according
+                   to Act of Congress, by Bram Stoker
+
+                        [_All rights reserved._]
+
+                      PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
+                                   AT
+               THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+                                   TO
+
+                             MY DEAR FRIEND
+
+                               HOMMY-BEG
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+CHAPTER I. Jonathan Harker’s Journal
+CHAPTER II. Jonathan Harker’s Journal
+CHAPTER III. Jonathan Harker’s Journal
+CHAPTER IV. Jonathan Harker’s Journal
+CHAPTER V. Letters—Lucy and Mina
+CHAPTER VI. Mina Murray’s Journal
+CHAPTER VII. Cutting from “The Dailygraph,” 8 August
+CHAPTER VIII. Mina Murray’s Journal
+CHAPTER IX. Mina Murray’s Journal
+CHAPTER X. Mina Murray’s Journal
+CHAPTER XI. Lucy Westenra’s Diary
+CHAPTER XII. Dr. Seward’s Diary
+CHAPTER XIII. Dr. Seward’s Diary
+CHAPTER XIV. Mina Harker’s Journal
+CHAPTER XV. Dr. Seward’s Diary
+CHAPTER XVI. Dr. Seward’s Diary
+CHAPTER XVII. Dr. Seward’s Diary
+CHAPTER XVIII. Dr. Seward’s Diary
+CHAPTER XIX. Jonathan Harker’s Journal
+CHAPTER XX. Jonathan Harker’s Journal
+CHAPTER XXI. Dr. Seward’s Diary
+CHAPTER XXII. Jonathan Harker’s Journal
+CHAPTER XXIII. Dr. Seward’s Diary
+CHAPTER XXIV. Dr. Seward’s Phonograph Diary, spoken by Van Helsing
+CHAPTER XXV. Dr. Seward’s Diary
+CHAPTER XXVI. Dr. Seward’s Diary
+CHAPTER XXVII. Mina Harker’s Journal
+
+
+
+
+How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in
+the reading of them. All needless matters have been eliminated, so that
+a history almost at variance with the possibilities of later-day belief
+may stand forth as simple fact. There is throughout no statement of
+past things wherein memory may err, for all the records chosen are
+exactly contemporary, given from the standpoints and within the range
+of knowledge of those who made them.
+
+
+
+
+DRACULA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL
+
+(_Kept in shorthand._)
+
+
+_3 May. Bistritz._--Left Munich at 8:35 P. M., on 1st May, arriving at
+Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an
+hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I
+got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the
+streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived
+late and would start as near the correct time as possible. The
+impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the
+East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is
+here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish
+rule.
+
+We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh.
+Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or
+rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was
+very good but thirsty. (_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 Ordnance Survey maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post
+town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter
+here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my
+travels with Mina.
+
+In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities:
+Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the
+descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the
+East and North. I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended
+from Attila and the Huns. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered
+the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it. I
+read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the
+horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of
+imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. (_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 egg-plant 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 7:30 I had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour
+before we began to move. It seems to me that the further east you go the
+more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?
+
+All day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of
+beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the
+top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by
+rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side
+of them to be subject to great floods. It takes a lot of water, and
+running strong, to sweep the outside edge of a river clear. At every
+station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds, and in all sorts
+of attire. Some of them were just like the peasants at home or those I
+saw coming through France and Germany, with short jackets and round hats
+and home-made trousers; but others were very picturesque. The women
+looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy
+about the waist. They had all full white sleeves of some kind or other,
+and most of them had big belts with a lot of strips of something
+fluttering from them like the dresses in a ballet, but of course there
+were petticoats under them. The strangest figures we saw were the
+Slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy
+hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous
+heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass
+nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and
+had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very
+picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On the stage they would be
+set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands. They are,
+however, I am told, very harmless and rather wanting in natural
+self-assertion.
+
+It was on the dark side of twilight when we got to Bistritz, which is a
+very interesting old place. Being practically on the frontier--for the
+Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina--it has had a very stormy
+existence, and it certainly shows marks of it. Fifty years ago a series
+of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five separate
+occasions. At the very beginning of the seventeenth century it underwent
+a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the casualties of war
+proper being assisted by famine and disease.
+
+Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Golden Krone Hotel, which I
+found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of
+course I wanted to see all I could of the ways of the country. I was
+evidently expected, for when I got near the door I faced a
+cheery-looking elderly woman in the usual peasant dress--white
+undergarment with 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 shirt-sleeves,
+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 to-night. At three to-morrow the diligence will
+     start for Bukovina; a place on it is kept for you. At the Borgo
+     Pass my carriage will await you and will bring you to me. I trust
+     that your journey from London has been a happy one, and that you
+     will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land.
+
+“Your friend,
+
+“DRACULA.”
+
+
+_4 May._--I found that my landlord had got a letter from the Count,
+directing him to secure the best place on the coach for me; but on
+making inquiries as to details he seemed somewhat reticent, and
+pretended that he could not understand my German. This could not be
+true, because up to then he had understood it perfectly; at least, he
+answered my questions exactly as if he did. He and his wife, the old
+lady who had received me, looked at each other in a frightened sort of
+way. He mumbled out that the money had been sent in a letter, and that
+was all he knew. When I asked him if he knew Count Dracula, and could
+tell me anything of his castle, both he and his wife crossed themselves,
+and, saying that they knew nothing at all, simply refused to speak
+further. It was so near the time of starting that I had no time to ask
+any one 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
+very 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 to-night, 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 therefore
+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 good-bye. Here comes the
+coach!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_5 May. The Castle._--The grey 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 the 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 with the landlady. They were evidently talking of me, for every
+now and then they looked at me, and some of the people who were sitting
+on the bench outside the door--which they call by a name meaning
+“word-bearer”--came and listened, and then looked at me, most of them
+pityingly. I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for
+there were many nationalities in the crowd; so I quietly got my polyglot
+dictionary from my bag and looked them out. I must say they were not
+cheering to me, for amongst them were “Ordog”--Satan, “pokol”--hell,
+“stregoica”--witch, “vrolok” and “vlkoslak”--both of which mean the same
+thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is
+either were-wolf 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 every one
+seemed so kind-hearted, and so sorrowful, and so sympathetic that I
+could not but be touched. I shall never forget the last glimpse which I
+had of the inn-yard and its crowd of picturesque figures, all crossing
+themselves, as they stood round the wide archway, with its background of
+rich foliage of oleander and orange trees in green tubs clustered in the
+centre of the yard. Then our driver, whose wide linen drawers covered
+the whole front of the box-seat--“gotza” they call them--cracked his big
+whip over his four small horses, which ran abreast, and we set off on
+our journey.
+
+I soon lost sight and recollection of ghostly fears in the beauty of the
+scene as we drove along, although had I known the language, or rather
+languages, which my fellow-passengers were speaking, I might not have
+been able to throw them off so easily. Before us lay a green sloping
+land full of forests and woods, with here and there steep hills, crowned
+with clumps of trees or with farmhouses, the blank gable end to the
+road. There was everywhere a bewildering mass of fruit blossom--apple,
+plum, pear, cherry; and as we drove by I could see the green grass under
+the trees spangled with the fallen petals. In and out amongst these
+green hills of what they call here the “Mittel Land” ran the road,
+losing itself as it swept round the grassy curve, or was shut out by the
+straggling ends of pine woods, which here and there ran down the
+hillsides like tongues of flame. The road was rugged, but still we
+seemed to fly over it with a feverish haste. I could not understand then
+what the haste meant, but the driver was evidently bent on losing no
+time in reaching Borgo Prund. I was told that this road is in summertime
+excellent, but that it had not yet been put in order after the winter
+snows. In this respect it is different from the general run of roads in
+the Carpathians, for it is an old tradition that they are not to be kept
+in too good order. Of old the Hospadars would not repair them, lest the
+Turk should think that they were preparing to bring in foreign troops,
+and so hasten the war which was always really at loading point.
+
+Beyond the green swelling hills of the Mittel Land rose mighty slopes
+of forest up to the lofty steeps of the Carpathians themselves. Right
+and left of us they towered, with the afternoon sun falling full upon
+them and bringing out all the glorious colours of this beautiful range,
+deep blue and purple in the shadows of the peaks, green and brown where
+grass and rock mingled, and an endless perspective of jagged rock and
+pointed crags, till these were themselves lost in the distance, where
+the snowy peaks rose grandly. Here and there seemed mighty rifts in the
+mountains, through which, as the sun began to sink, we saw now and again
+the white gleam of falling water. One of my companions touched my arm as
+we swept round the base of a hill and opened up the lofty, snow-covered
+peak of a mountain, which seemed, as we wound on our serpentine way, to
+be right before us:--
+
+“Look! Isten szek!”--“God’s seat!”--and he crossed himself reverently.
+
+As we wound on our endless way, and the sun sank lower and lower behind
+us, the shadows of the evening began to creep round us. This was
+emphasised by the fact that the snowy mountain-top still held the
+sunset, and seemed to glow out with a delicate cool pink. Here and there
+we passed Cszeks and Slovaks, all in picturesque attire, but I noticed
+that goitre was painfully prevalent. By the roadside were many crosses,
+and as we swept by, my companions all crossed themselves. Here and there
+was a peasant man or woman kneeling before a shrine, who did not even
+turn round as we approached, but seemed in the self-surrender of
+devotion to have neither eyes nor ears for the outer world. There were
+many things new to me: for instance, hay-ricks in the trees, and here
+and there very beautiful masses of weeping birch, their white stems
+shining like silver through the delicate green of the leaves. Now and
+again we passed a leiter-wagon--the ordinary peasant’s cart--with its
+long, snake-like vertebra, calculated to suit the inequalities of the
+road. On this were sure to be seated quite a group of home-coming
+peasants, the Cszeks with their white, and the Slovaks with their
+coloured, sheepskins, the latter carrying lance-fashion their long
+staves, with axe at end. As the evening fell it began to get very cold,
+and the growing twilight seemed to merge into one dark mistiness the
+gloom of the trees, oak, beech, and pine, though in the valleys which
+ran deep between the spurs of the hills, as we ascended through the
+Pass, the dark firs stood out here and there against the background of
+late-lying snow. Sometimes, as the road was cut through the pine woods
+that seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us, great masses of
+greyness, which here and there bestrewed the trees, produced a
+peculiarly weird and solemn effect, which carried on the thoughts and
+grim fancies engendered earlier in the evening, when the falling sunset
+threw into strange relief the ghost-like clouds which amongst the
+Carpathians seem to wind ceaselessly through the valleys. Sometimes the
+hills were so steep that, despite our driver’s haste, the horses could
+only go slowly. I wished to get down and walk up them, as we do at home,
+but the driver would not hear of it. “No, no,” he said; “you must not
+walk here; the dogs are too fierce”; and then he added, with what he
+evidently meant for grim pleasantry--for he looked round to catch the
+approving smile of the rest--“and you may have enough of such matters
+before you go to sleep.” The only stop he would make was a moment’s
+pause to light his lamps.
+
+When it grew dark there seemed to be some excitement amongst the
+passengers, and they kept speaking to him, one after the other, as
+though urging him to further speed. He lashed the horses unmercifully
+with his long whip, and with wild cries of encouragement urged them on
+to further exertions. Then through the darkness I could see a sort of
+patch of grey light ahead of us, as though there were a cleft in the
+hills. The excitement of the passengers grew greater; the crazy coach
+rocked on its great leather springs, and swayed like a boat tossed on a
+stormy sea. I had to hold on. The road grew more level, and we appeared
+to fly along. Then the mountains seemed to come nearer to us on each
+side and to frown down upon us; we were entering on the Borgo Pass. One
+by one several of the passengers offered me gifts, which they pressed
+upon me with an earnestness which would take no denial; these were
+certainly of an odd and varied kind, but each was given in simple good
+faith, with a kindly word, and a blessing, and that strange mixture of
+fear-meaning movements which I had seen outside the hotel at
+Bistritz--the sign of the cross and the guard against the evil eye.
+Then, as we flew along, the driver leaned forward, and on each side the
+passengers, craning over the edge of the coach, peered eagerly into the
+darkness. It was evident that something very exciting was either
+happening or expected, but though I asked each passenger, no one would
+give me the slightest explanation. This state of excitement kept on for
+some little time; and at last we saw before us the Pass opening out on
+the eastern side. There were dark, rolling clouds overhead, and in the
+air the heavy, oppressive sense of thunder. It seemed as though the
+mountain range had separated two atmospheres, and that now we had got
+into the thunderous one. I was now myself looking out for the conveyance
+which was to take me to the Count. Each moment I expected to see the
+glare of lamps through the blackness; but all was dark. The only light
+was the flickering rays of our own lamps, in which the steam from our
+hard-driven horses rose in a white cloud. We could see now the sandy
+road lying white before us, but there was on it no sign of a vehicle.
+The passengers drew back with a sigh of gladness, which seemed to mock
+my own disappointment. I was already thinking what I had best do, when
+the driver, looking at his watch, said to the others something which I
+could hardly hear, it was spoken so quietly and in so low a tone; I
+thought it was “An hour less than the time.” Then turning to me, he said
+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 to-morrow 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 calèche, with four horses, drove up behind us, overtook
+us, and drew up beside the coach. I could see from the flash of our
+lamps, as the rays fell on them, that the horses were coal-black and
+splendid animals. They were driven by a tall man, with a long brown
+beard and a great black hat, which seemed to hide his face from us. I
+could only see the gleam of a pair of very bright eyes, which seemed red
+in the lamplight, as he turned to us. He said to the driver:--
+
+“You are early to-night, my friend.” The man stammered in reply:--
+
+“The English Herr was in a hurry,” to which the stranger replied:--
+
+“That is why, I suppose, you wished him to go on to Bukovina. You cannot
+deceive me, my friend; I know too much, and my horses are swift.” As he
+spoke he smiled, and the lamplight fell on a hard-looking mouth, with
+very red lips and sharp-looking teeth, as white as ivory. One of my
+companions whispered to another the line from Burger’s “Lenore”:--
+
+    “Denn die Todten reiten schnell”--
+    (“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 calèche. Then I descended from the side of the
+coach, as the calèche 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 came 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. By-and-by, however, as I was curious to know how time was
+passing, I struck a match, and by its flame looked at my watch; it was
+within a few minutes of midnight. This gave me a sort of shock, for I
+suppose the general superstition about midnight was increased by my
+recent experiences. I waited with a sick feeling of suspense.
+
+Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road--a
+long, agonised 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 calèche and run, whilst they reared again and plunged
+madly, so that the driver had to use all his great strength to keep them
+from bolting. In a few minutes, however, my own ears got accustomed to
+the sound, and the horses so far became quiet that the driver was able
+to descend and to stand before them. He petted and soothed them, and
+whispered something in their ears, as I have heard of horse-tamers
+doing, and with extraordinary effect, for under his caresses they became
+quite manageable again, though they still trembled. The driver again
+took his seat, and shaking his reins, started off at a great pace. This
+time, after going to the far side of the Pass, he suddenly turned down a
+narrow roadway which ran sharply to the right.
+
+Soon we were hemmed in with trees, which in places arched right over the
+roadway till we passed as through a tunnel; and again great frowning
+rocks guarded us boldly on either side. Though we were in shelter, we
+could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the
+rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as we swept along.
+It grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery snow began to fall,
+so that soon we and all around us were covered with a white blanket. The
+keen wind still carried the howling of the dogs, though this grew
+fainter as we went on our way. The baying of the wolves sounded nearer
+and nearer, as though they were closing round on us from every side. I
+grew dreadfully afraid, and the horses shared my fear. The driver,
+however, was not in the least disturbed; he kept turning his head to
+left and right, but I could not see anything through the darkness.
+
+Suddenly, away on our left, I saw a faint flickering blue flame. The
+driver saw it at the same moment; he at once checked the horses, and,
+jumping to the ground, disappeared into the darkness. I did not know
+what to do, the less as the howling of the wolves grew closer; but while
+I wondered the driver suddenly appeared again, and without a word took
+his seat, and we resumed our journey. I think I must have fallen asleep
+and kept dreaming of the incident, for it seemed to be repeated
+endlessly, and now looking back, it is like a sort of awful nightmare.
+Once the flame appeared so near the road, that even in the darkness
+around us I could watch the driver’s motions. He went rapidly to where
+the blue flame arose--it must have been very faint, for it did not seem
+to illumine the place around it at all--and gathering a few stones,
+formed them into some device. Once there appeared a strange optical
+effect: when he stood between me and the flame he did not obstruct it,
+for I could see its ghostly flicker all the same. This startled me, but
+as the effect was only momentary, I took it that my eyes deceived me
+straining through the darkness. Then for a time there were no blue
+flames, and we sped onwards through the gloom, with the howling of the
+wolves around us, as though they were following in a moving circle.
+
+At last there came a time when the driver went further afield than he
+had yet gone, and during his absence, the horses began to tremble worse
+than ever and to snort and scream with fright. I could not see any cause
+for it, for the howling of the wolves had ceased altogether; but just
+then the moon, sailing through the black clouds, appeared behind the
+jagged crest of a beetling, pine-clad rock, and by its light I saw
+around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues,
+with long, sinewy limbs and shaggy hair. They were a hundred times more
+terrible in the grim silence which held them than even when they howled.
+For myself, I felt a sort of paralysis of fear. It is only when a man
+feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand
+their true import.
+
+All at once the wolves began to howl as though the moonlight had had
+some peculiar effect on them. The horses jumped about and reared, and
+looked helplessly round with eyes that rolled in a way painful to see;
+but the living ring of terror encompassed them on every side; and they
+had perforce to remain within it. I called to the coachman to come, for
+it seemed to me that our only chance was to try to break out through the
+ring and to aid his approach. I shouted and beat the side of the
+calèche, hoping by the noise to scare the wolves from that 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 calèche, and the
+wolves had 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 moonlit
+sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL--_continued_
+
+
+_5 May._--I must have been asleep, for certainly if I had been fully
+awake I must have noticed the approach of such a remarkable place. In
+the gloom the courtyard looked of considerable size, and as several dark
+ways led from it under great round arches, it perhaps seemed bigger than
+it really is. I have not yet been able to see it by daylight.
+
+When the calèche 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 out my traps, and placed
+them on the ground beside me as I stood close to a great door, old and
+studded with large iron nails, and set in a projecting doorway of
+massive stone. I could see even in the dim light that the stone was
+massively carved, but that the carving had been much worn by time and
+weather. As I stood, the driver jumped again into his seat and shook the
+reins; the horses started forward, and trap and all disappeared down one
+of the dark openings.
+
+I stood in silence where I was, for I did not know what to do. Of bell
+or knocker there was no sign; through these frowning walls and dark
+window openings it was not likely that my voice could penetrate. The
+time I waited seemed endless, and I felt doubts and fears crowding upon
+me. What sort of place had I come to, and among what kind of people?
+What sort of grim adventure was it on which I had embarked? Was this a
+customary incident in the life of a solicitor’s clerk sent out to
+explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner? Solicitor’s
+clerk! Mina would not like that. Solicitor--for just before leaving
+London I got word that my examination was successful; and I am now a
+full-blown solicitor! I began to rub my eyes and pinch myself to see if
+I were awake. It all seemed like a horrible nightmare to me, and I
+expected that I should suddenly awake, and find myself at home, with
+the dawn struggling in through the windows, as I had now and again felt
+in the morning after a day of overwork. But my flesh answered the
+pinching test, and my eyes were not to be deceived. I was indeed awake
+and among the Carpathians. All I could do now was to be patient, and to
+wait the coming of the 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 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 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 as cold as
+ice--more like the hand of a dead than a living man. Again he said:--
+
+“Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the
+happiness you bring!” The strength of the handshake was so much akin to
+that which I had noticed in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that
+for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person to whom I was
+speaking; so to make sure, I said interrogatively:--
+
+“Count Dracula?” He bowed in a courtly way as he replied:--
+
+“I am Dracula; and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in;
+the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest.” As he was
+speaking, he put the lamp on a bracket on the wall, and stepping out,
+took my luggage; he had carried it in before I could forestall him. I
+protested but he insisted:--
+
+“Nay, sir, you are my guest. It is late, and my people are not
+available. Let me see to your comfort myself.” He insisted on carrying
+my traps along the passage, and then up a great winding stair, and
+along another great passage, on whose stone floor our steps rang
+heavily. At the end of this he threw open a heavy door, and I rejoiced
+to see within a well-lit room in which a table was spread for supper,
+and on whose mighty hearth a great fire of logs, freshly replenished,
+flamed and flared.
+
+The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing
+the room, opened another door, which led into a small octagonal room lit
+by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort. Passing
+through this, he opened another door, and motioned me to enter. It was a
+welcome sight; for here was a great bedroom well lighted and warmed with
+another log fire,--also added to but lately, for the top logs were
+fresh--which sent a hollow roar up the wide chimney. The Count himself
+left my luggage inside and withdrew, saying, before he closed the
+door:--
+
+“You will need, after your journey, to refresh yourself by making your
+toilet. I trust you will find all you wish. When you are ready, come
+into the other room, where you will find your supper prepared.”
+
+The light and warmth and the Count’s courteous welcome seemed to have
+dissipated all my doubts and fears. Having then reached my normal state,
+I discovered that I was half famished with hunger; so making a hasty
+toilet, I went into the other room.
+
+I found supper already laid out. My host, who stood on one side of the
+great fireplace, leaning against the stonework, made a graceful wave of
+his hand to the table, and said:--
+
+“I pray you, be seated and sup how you please. You will, I trust, excuse
+me that I do not join you; but I have dined already, and I do not sup.”
+
+I handed to him the sealed letter which Mr. Hawkins had entrusted to me.
+He opened it and read it gravely; then, with a charming smile, he handed
+it to me to read. One passage of it, at least, gave me a thrill of
+pleasure.
+
+“I must regret that an attack of gout, from which malady I am a constant
+sufferer, forbids absolutely any travelling on my part for some time to
+come; but I am happy to say I can send a sufficient substitute, one in
+whom I have every possible confidence. He is a young man, full of energy
+and talent in his own way, and of a very faithful disposition. He is
+discreet and silent, and has grown into manhood in my service. He shall
+be ready to attend on you when you will during his stay, and shall take
+your instructions in all matters.”
+
+The Count himself came forward and took off the cover of a dish, and I
+fell to at once on an excellent roast chicken. This, with some cheese
+and a salad and a bottle of old Tokay, of which I had two glasses, was
+my supper. During the time I was eating it the Count asked me many
+questions as to my journey, and I told him by degrees all I had
+experienced.
+
+By this time I had finished my supper, and by my host’s desire had drawn
+up a chair by the fire and begun to smoke a cigar which he offered me,
+at the same time excusing himself that he did not smoke. I had now an
+opportunity of observing him, and found him of a very marked
+physiognomy.
+
+His face was a strong--a very strong--aquiline, with high bridge of the
+thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and
+hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His
+eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy
+hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I
+could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather
+cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over
+the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a
+man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops
+extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm
+though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.
+
+Hitherto I had noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his knees
+in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine; but seeing
+them now close to me, I could not but notice that they were rather
+coarse--broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in
+the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp
+point. As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not
+repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a
+horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could
+not conceal. The Count, evidently noticing it, drew back; and with a
+grim sort of smile, which showed more than he had yet done his
+protuberant 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 to-morrow you
+shall sleep as late as you will. I have to be away till the afternoon;
+so sleep well and dream well!” With a courteous bow, he opened for me
+himself the door to the octagonal room, and I entered my bedroom....
+
+I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things,
+which I dare not confess to my own soul. God keep me, if only for the
+sake of those dear to me!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_7 May._--It is again early morning, but I have rested and enjoyed the
+last twenty-four hours. I slept till late in the day, and awoke of my
+own accord. When I had dressed myself I went into the room where we had
+supped, and found a cold breakfast laid out, with coffee kept hot by the
+pot being placed on the hearth. There was a card on the table, on which
+was written:--
+
+“I have to be absent for a while. Do not wait for me.--D.” I set to and
+enjoyed a hearty meal. When I had done, I looked for a bell, so that I
+might let the servants know I had finished; but I could not find one.
+There are certainly odd deficiencies in the house, considering the
+extraordinary evidences of wealth which are round me. The table service
+is of gold, and so beautifully wrought that it must be of immense value.
+The curtains and upholstery of the chairs and sofas and the hangings of
+my bed are of the costliest and most beautiful fabrics, and must have
+been of fabulous value when they were made, for they are centuries old,
+though in excellent order. I saw something like them in Hampton Court,
+but there they were worn and frayed and moth-eaten. But still in none of
+the rooms is there a mirror. There is not even a toilet glass on my
+table, and I had to get the little shaving glass from my bag before I
+could either shave or brush my hair. I have not yet seen a servant
+anywhere, or heard a sound near the castle except the howling of wolves.
+Some time after I had finished my meal--I do not know whether to call it
+breakfast or dinner, for it was between five and six o’clock when I had
+it--I looked about for something to read, for I did not like to go about
+the castle until I had asked the Count’s permission. There was
+absolutely nothing in the room, book, newspaper, or even writing
+materials; so I opened another door in the room and found a sort of
+library. The door opposite mine I tried, but found it locked.
+
+In the library I found, to my great delight, a vast number of English
+books, whole shelves full of them, and bound volumes of magazines and
+newspapers. A table in the centre was littered with English magazines
+and newspapers, though none of them were of very recent date. The books
+were of the most varied kind--history, geography, politics, political
+economy, botany, geology, law--all relating to England and English life
+and customs and manners. There were even such books of reference as the
+London Directory, the “Red” and “Blue” books, Whitaker’s Almanac, the
+Army and Navy Lists, and--it somehow gladdened my heart to see it--the
+Law List.
+
+Whilst I was looking at the books, the door opened, and the Count
+entered. He saluted me in a hearty way, and hoped that I had had a good
+night’s rest. Then he went on:--
+
+“I am glad you found your way in here, for I am sure there is much that
+will interest you. These companions”--and he laid his hand on some of
+the books--“have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever
+since I had the idea of going to London, have given me many, many hours
+of pleasure. Through them I have come to know your great England; and to
+know her is to love her. I long to go through the crowded streets of
+your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of
+humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes
+it what it is. But alas! as yet I only know your tongue through books.
+To you, my friend, I look that I know it to speak.”
+
+“But, Count,” I said, “you know and speak English thoroughly!” He bowed
+gravely.
+
+“I thank you, my friend, for your all too-flattering estimate, but yet I
+fear that I am but a little way on the road I would travel. True, I know
+the grammar and the words, but yet I know not how to speak them.”
+
+“Indeed,” I said, “you speak excellently.”
+
+“Not so,” he answered. “Well, I know that, did I move and speak in your
+London, none there are who would not know me for a stranger. That is not
+enough for me. Here I am noble; I am _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 see me, or pause in his
+speaking if he hear 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 awhile, 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 to-day; 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 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 by-road, 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 is surrounded by a high wall, of ancient structure,
+built of heavy stones, and has not been repaired for a large number of
+years. The closed gates are of heavy old oak and iron, all eaten with
+rust.
+
+“The estate is called Carfax, no doubt a corruption of the old _Quatre
+Face_, as the house is four-sided, agreeing with the cardinal points of
+the compass. It contains in all some twenty acres, quite surrounded by
+the solid stone wall above mentioned. There are many trees on it, which
+make it in places gloomy, and there is a deep, dark-looking pond or
+small lake, evidently fed by some springs, as the water is clear and
+flows away in a fair-sized stream. The house is very large and of all
+periods back, I should say, to mediæval 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 has 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 put all 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 at
+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
+the dawn or at the turn of the tide; any one 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 a 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 own room and drew the curtains, but there was little to
+notice; my window opened into the courtyard, all I could see was the
+warm grey of quickening sky. So I pulled the curtains again, and have
+written of this day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_8 May._--I began to fear as I wrote in this book that I was getting too
+diffuse; but now I am glad that I went into detail from the first, for
+there is something so strange about this place and all in it that I
+cannot but feel uneasy. I wish I were safe out of it, or that I had
+never come. It may be that this strange night-existence is telling on
+me; but would that that were all! If there were any one to talk to I
+could bear it, but there is no one. I have only the Count to speak with,
+and he!--I fear I am myself the only living soul within the place. Let
+me be prosaic so far as facts can be; it will help me to bear up, and
+imagination must not run riot with me. If it does I am lost. Let me say
+at once how I stand--or seem to.
+
+I only slept a few hours when I went to bed, and feeling that I could
+not sleep any more, got up. I had hung my shaving glass by the window,
+and was just beginning to shave. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder,
+and heard the Count’s voice saying to me, “Good-morning.” I started, for
+it amazed me that I had not seen him, since the reflection of the glass
+covered the whole room behind me. In starting I had cut myself slightly,
+but did not notice it at the moment. Having answered the Count’s
+salutation, I turned to the glass again to see how I had been mistaken.
+This time there could be no error, for the man was close to me, and I
+could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in
+the mirror! The whole room behind me was displayed; but there was no
+sign of a man in it, except myself. This was startling, and, coming on
+the top of so many strange things, was beginning to increase that vague
+feeling of uneasiness which I always have when the Count is near; but at
+the instant I saw that the cut had bled a little, and the blood was
+trickling over my chin. I laid down the razor, turning as I did so half
+round to look for some sticking plaster. When the Count saw my face, his
+eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury, and he suddenly made a grab at
+my throat. I drew away, and his hand touched the string of beads which
+held the crucifix. It made an instant change in him, for the fury passed
+so quickly that I could hardly believe that it was ever there.
+
+“Take care,” he said, “take care how you cut yourself. It is more
+dangerous than 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 heavy window with one wrench of his terrible hand, he flung
+out the glass, which was shattered into a thousand pieces on the stones
+of the courtyard far below. Then he withdrew without a word. It is very
+annoying, for I do not see how I am to shave, unless in my watch-case or
+the bottom of the shaving-pot, which is fortunately of metal.
+
+When I went into the dining-room, breakfast was prepared; but I could
+not find the Count anywhere. So I breakfasted alone. It is strange that
+as yet I have not seen the Count eat or drink. He must be a very
+peculiar man! After breakfast I did a little exploring in the castle. I
+went out on the stairs, and found a room looking towards the South. The
+view was magnificent, and from where I stood there was every opportunity
+of seeing it. The castle is on the very edge of a terrible 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 III
+
+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 were 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 to do them.
+This gave me a fright, for if 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 in 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. To-night 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, ay,
+and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the
+were-wolves 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 Turkey-land; ay, and more
+than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for, as the Turks say,
+‘water sleeps, and 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 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! 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 Mohács, 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.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_12 May._--Let me begin with facts--bare, meagre 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 examining 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 him 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’s 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 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 in shorthand, which would puzzle the Count, if he
+did see it. When I had written my two letters I sat quiet, reading a
+book whilst the Count wrote several notes, referring as he wrote them to
+some books on his table. Then he took up my two and placed them with his
+own, and put by his writing materials, after which, the instant the door
+had closed behind him, I leaned over and looked at the letters, which
+were face down on the table. I felt no compunction in doing so, for
+under the circumstances I felt that I should protect myself in every way
+I could.
+
+One of the letters was directed to Samuel F. Billington, No. 7, The
+Crescent, Whitby, another to Herr Leutner, Varna; the third was to
+Coutts & Co., London, and the fourth to Herren Klopstock & Billreuth,
+bankers, Buda-Pesth. The second and fourth were unsealed. I was just
+about to look at them when I saw the door-handle move. I sank back in my
+seat, having just had time to replace the letters as they had been and
+to resume my book before the Count, holding still another letter in his
+hand, entered the room. He took up the letters on the table and stamped
+them carefully, and then turning to me, said:--
+
+“I trust you will forgive me, but I have much work to do in private this
+evening. You will, I hope, find all things as you wish.” At the door he
+turned, and after a moment’s pause said:--
+
+“Let me advise you, my dear young friend--nay, let me warn you with all
+seriousness, that should you leave these rooms you will not by any
+chance go to sleep in any other part of the castle. It is old, and has
+many memories, and there are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely. Be
+warned! Should sleep now or ever overcome you, or be like to do, then
+haste to your own chamber or to these rooms, for your rest will then be
+safe. But if you be not careful in this respect, then”--He finished his
+speech in a gruesome way, for he motioned with his hands as if he were
+washing them. I quite understood; my only doubt was as to whether any
+dream could be more terrible than the unnatural, horrible net of gloom
+and mystery which seemed closing around me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Later._--I endorse the last words written, but this time there is no
+doubt in question. I shall not fear to sleep in any place where he is
+not. I have placed the crucifix over the head of my bed--I imagine that
+my rest is thus freer from dreams; and there it shall remain.
+
+When he left me I went to my room. After a little while, not hearing any
+sound, I came out and went up the stone stair to where I could look out
+towards the South. There was some sense of freedom in the vast expanse,
+inaccessible though it was to me, as compared with the narrow darkness
+of the courtyard. Looking out on this, I felt that I was indeed in
+prison, and I seemed to want a breath of fresh air, though it were of
+the night. I am beginning to feel this nocturnal existence tell on me.
+It is destroying my nerve. I start at my own shadow, and am full of all
+sorts of horrible imaginings. God knows that there is ground for my
+terrible fear in this accursed place! I looked out over the beautiful
+expanse, bathed in soft yellow moonlight till it was almost as light as
+day. In the soft light the distant hills became melted, and the shadows
+in the valleys and gorges of velvety blackness. The mere beauty seemed
+to cheer me; there was peace and comfort in every breath I drew. As I
+leaned from the window my eye was caught by something moving a storey
+below me, and somewhat to my left, where I imagined, from the order of
+the rooms, that the windows of the Count’s own room would look out. The
+window at which I stood was tall and deep, stone-mullioned, and though
+weatherworn, was still complete; but it was evidently many a day since
+the case had been there. I drew back behind the stonework, and looked
+carefully out.
+
+What I saw was the Count’s head coming out from the window. I did not
+see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his
+back and arms. In any case I could not mistake the hands which I had had
+so 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 that dreadful abyss,
+_face down_ with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At
+first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the
+moonlight, some weird effect of shadow; but I kept looking, and it could
+be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the
+stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus
+using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable
+speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall.
+
+What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the
+semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering
+me; I am in fear--in awful fear--and there is no escape for me; I am
+encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_15 May._--Once more have I seen the Count go out in his lizard fashion.
+He moved downwards in a sidelong way, some hundred feet down, and a good
+deal to the left. He vanished into some hole or window. When his head
+had disappeared, I leaned out to try and see more, but without
+avail--the distance was too great to allow a proper angle of sight. I
+knew he had left the castle now, and thought to use the opportunity to
+explore more than I had dared to do as yet. I went back to the room, and
+taking a lamp, tried all the doors. They were all locked, as I had
+expected, and the locks were comparatively new; but I went down the
+stone stairs to the hall where I had entered originally. I found I could
+pull back the bolts easily enough and unhook the great chains; but the
+door was locked, and the key was gone! That key must be in the Count’s
+room; I must watch should his door be unlocked, so that I may get it and
+escape. I went on to make a thorough examination of the various stairs
+and passages, and to try the doors that opened from them. One or two
+small rooms near the hall were open, but there was nothing to see in
+them except old furniture, dusty with age and moth-eaten. At last,
+however, I found one door at the top of the stairway which, though it
+seemed to be 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 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 the moth. My
+lamp seemed to be of little effect in the brilliant moonlight, but I was
+glad to have it with me, for there was a dread loneliness in the place
+which chilled my heart and made my nerves tremble. Still, it was better
+than living alone in the rooms which I had come to hate from the
+presence of the Count, and after trying a little to school my nerves, I
+found a soft quietude come over me. Here I am, sitting at a little oak
+table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much
+thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter, and writing in my
+diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last. It is
+nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my
+senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own
+which mere “modernity” cannot kill.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Later: the Morning of 16 May._--God preserve my sanity, for to this I
+am reduced. Safety and the assurance of safety are things of the past.
+Whilst I live on here there is but one thing to hope for, that I may not
+go mad, if, indeed, I be not mad already. If I be sane, then surely it
+is maddening to think that of all the foul things that lurk in this
+hateful place the Count is the least dreadful to me; that to him alone I
+can look for safety, even though this be only whilst I can serve his
+purpose. Great God! merciful God! Let me be calm, for out of that way
+lies madness indeed. I begin to get new lights on certain things which
+have puzzled me. Up to now I never quite knew what Shakespeare meant
+when he made Hamlet say:--
+
+    “My tablets! quick, my tablets!
+    ’Tis meet that I put it down,” etc.,
+
+for now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock
+had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose.
+The habit of entering accurately must help to soothe me.
+
+The Count’s mysterious warning frightened me at the time; it frightens
+me more now when I think of it, for in 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 a 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 to-night to the
+gloom-haunted rooms, but to sleep here, where, of old, ladies had sat
+and sung and lived sweet lives whilst their gentle breasts were sad for
+their menfolk away in the midst of remorseless wars. I drew a great
+couch out of its place near the corner, so that as I lay, I could look
+at the lovely view to east and south, and unthinking of and uncaring for
+the dust, composed myself for sleep. I suppose I must have fallen
+asleep; I hope so, but I fear, for all that followed was startlingly
+real--so real that now sitting here in the broad, full sunlight of the
+morning, I cannot in the least believe that it was all sleep.
+
+I was not alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I
+came into it; I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight,
+my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumulation of
+dust. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by
+their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming
+when I saw them, for, though the moonlight was behind 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 wavy 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 water-glasses 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 under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation.
+The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement
+of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent
+the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter
+underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood.
+
+I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under
+the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply
+gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling
+and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips
+like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining
+on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp
+teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of
+my mouth and chin and seemed about 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 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 a languorous ecstasy and waited--waited with beating
+heart.
+
+But at that instant, another sensation swept through me as quick as
+lightning. I was conscious of the presence of the Count, and of his
+being as if lapped in a storm of fury. As my eyes opened involuntarily I
+saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with
+giant’s power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the
+white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with
+passion. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to
+the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light
+in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell-fire blazed behind them. His
+face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires;
+the thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar
+of white-hot metal. With a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman
+from him, and then motioned to the others, as though he were beating
+them back; it was the same imperious gesture that I had seen used to the
+wolves. In a voice which, though low and almost in a whisper seemed to
+cut through the air and then ring round 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 to-night?” 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 IV
+
+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, from some cause or
+another, I had certainly been much upset. I must watch for proof. Of one
+thing I am glad: if it was that the Count carried me here and undressed
+me, he must have been hurried in his task, for my pockets are intact. I
+am sure this diary would have been a mystery to him which he would not
+have brooked. He would have taken or destroyed it. As I look round this
+room, although it has been to me so full of fear, it is now a sort of
+sanctuary, for nothing can be more dreadful than those awful women, who
+were--who _are_--waiting to suck my blood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_18 May._--I have been down to look at that room again in daylight, for
+I _must_ know the truth. When I got to the doorway at the top of the
+stairs I found it closed. It had been so forcibly driven against the
+jamb that part of the woodwork was splintered. I could see that the bolt
+of the lock had not been shot, but the door is fastened from the inside.
+I fear it was no dream, and must act on this surmise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_19 May._--I am surely in the toils. Last night the Count asked me in
+the suavest tones to write three letters, one saying that my work here
+was nearly done, and that I should start for home within a few days,
+another that I was starting on the next morning from the time of the
+letter, and the third that I had left the castle and arrived at
+Bistritz. I would fain have rebelled, but felt that in the present state
+of things it would be madness to quarrel openly with the Count whilst I
+am so absolutely in his power; and to refuse would be to excite his
+suspicion and to arouse his anger. He knows that I know too much, and
+that I must not live, lest I be dangerous to him; my only chance is to
+prolong my opportunities. Something may occur which will give me a
+chance to escape. I saw in his eyes something of that gathering wrath
+which was manifest when he hurled that fair woman from him. He explained
+to me that posts were few and uncertain, and that my writing now would
+ensure ease of mind to my friends; and he assured me with so much
+impressiveness that he would countermand the later letters, which would
+be held over at Bistritz until due time in case chance would admit of my
+prolonging my stay, that to oppose him would have been to create new
+suspicion. I therefore pretended to fall in with his views, and asked
+him what dates I should put on the letters. He calculated a minute, and
+then said:--
+
+“The first should be June 12, the second June 19, and the third June
+29.”
+
+I know now the span of my life. God help me!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_28 May._--There is a chance of escape, or at any rate of being able to
+send word home. A band of Szgany have come to the castle, and are
+encamped in the courtyard. These Szgany 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 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 to talk to-night, since there are many labours
+to me; but you will sleep, I pray.” I passed to my room and went to bed,
+and, strange to say, slept without dreaming. Despair has its own calms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_31 May._--This morning when I woke I thought I would provide myself
+with some paper and envelopes from my bag and keep them in my pocket, so
+that I might write in case I should get an opportunity, but again a
+surprise, again a shock!
+
+Every scrap of paper was gone, and with it all my notes, my memoranda,
+relating to railways and travel, my letter of credit, in fact all that
+might be useful to me were I once outside the castle. I sat and pondered
+awhile, and then some thought occurred to me, and I made search of my
+portmanteau and in the wardrobe where I had placed my clothes.
+
+The suit in which I had travelled was gone, and also my overcoat and
+rug; I could find no trace of them anywhere. This looked like some new
+scheme of villainy....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_17 June._--This morning, as I was sitting on the edge of my bed
+cudgelling my brains, I heard without a cracking of whips and pounding
+and scraping of horses’ feet up the rocky path beyond the courtyard.
+With joy I hurried to the window, and saw drive into the yard two great
+leiter-wagons, each drawn by eight sturdy horses, and at the head of
+each pair a Slovak, with his wide hat, great nail-studded belt, dirty
+sheepskin, and high boots. They had also their long staves in hand. I
+ran to the door, intending to descend and try and join them through the
+main hall, as I thought that way might be opened for them. Again a
+shock: my door was fastened on the outside.
+
+Then I ran to the window and cried to them. They looked up at me
+stupidly and pointed, but just then the “hetman” of the Szgany came out,
+and seeing them pointing to my window, said something, at which they
+laughed. Henceforth no effort of mine, no piteous cry or agonised
+entreaty, would make them even look at me. They resolutely turned away.
+The leiter-wagons contained great, square boxes, with handles of thick
+rope; these were evidently empty by the ease with which the Slovaks
+handled them, and by their resonance as they were roughly moved. When
+they were all unloaded and packed in a great heap in one corner of the
+yard, the Slovaks were given some money by the Szgany, and spitting on
+it for luck, lazily went each to his horse’s head. Shortly afterwards, I
+heard the cracking of their whips die away in the distance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_24 June, before morning._--Last night the Count left me early, and
+locked himself into his own room. As soon as I dared I ran up the
+winding stair, and looked out of the window, which opened south. I
+thought I would watch for the Count, for there is something going on.
+The Szgany are quartered somewhere in the castle and are doing work of
+some kind. I know it, for now and then I hear a far-away muffled sound
+as of mattock and spade, and, whatever it is, it must be the end of some
+ruthless villainy.
+
+I had been at the window somewhat less than half an hour, when I saw
+something coming out of the Count’s window. I drew back and watched
+carefully, and saw the whole man emerge. It was a new shock to me to
+find that he had on the suit of clothes which I had worn whilst
+travelling here, and slung over his shoulder the terrible bag which I
+had seen the women take away. There could be no doubt as to his quest,
+and in my garb, too! This, then, is his new scheme of evil: that he will
+allow others to see me, as they think, so that he may both leave
+evidence that I have been seen in the towns or villages posting my own
+letters, and that any wickedness which he may do shall by the local
+people be attributed to me.
+
+It makes me rage to think that this can go on, and whilst I am shut up
+here, a veritable prisoner, but without that protection of the law which
+is even a criminal’s right and consolation.
+
+I thought I would watch for the Count’s return, and for a long time sat
+doggedly at the window. Then I began to notice that there were some
+quaint little specks floating in the rays of the moonlight. They were
+like the tiniest grains of dust, and they whirled round and gathered in
+clusters in a nebulous sort of way. I watched them with a sense of
+soothing, and a sort of calm stole over me. I leaned back in the
+embrasure in a more comfortable position, so that I could enjoy more
+fully the aërial 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 motes of dust to take new shapes to
+the sound as they danced in the moonlight. I felt myself struggling to
+awake to some call of my instincts; nay, my very soul was struggling,
+and my half-remembered sensibilities were striving to answer the call. I
+was becoming hypnotised! Quicker and quicker danced the dust; the
+moonbeams seemed to quiver as they went by me into the mass of gloom
+beyond. More and more they gathered till they seemed to take dim phantom
+shapes. And then I started, broad awake and in full possession of my
+senses, and ran screaming from the place. The phantom shapes, which were
+becoming gradually materialised from the moonbeams, were those of the
+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 out 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 a corner of the gateway. When she saw my face at the window she
+threw herself forward, and shouted in a voice laden with menace:--
+
+“Monster, give me my child!”
+
+She threw herself on her knees, and raising up her hands, cried the same
+words in tones which wrung my heart. Then she tore her hair and beat her
+breast, and abandoned herself to all the violences of extravagant
+emotion. Finally, she threw herself forward, and, though I could not see
+her, I could hear the beating of her naked hands against the door.
+
+Somewhere high overhead, probably on the tower, I heard the voice of the
+Count calling in his harsh, metallic whisper. His call seemed to be
+answered from far and wide by the howling of wolves. Before many minutes
+had passed a pack of them poured, like a pent-up dam when liberated,
+through the wide entrance into the courtyard.
+
+There was no cry from the woman, and the howling of the wolves was but
+short. Before long they streamed away singly, licking their lips.
+
+I could not pity her, for I knew now what had become of her child, and
+she was better dead.
+
+What shall I do? what can I do? How can I escape from this dreadful
+thing of night and gloom and fear?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_25 June, morning._--No man knows till he has suffered from the night
+how sweet and how dear to his heart and eye the morning can be. When the
+sun grew so high this morning that it struck the top of the great
+gateway opposite my window, the high spot which it touched seemed to me
+as if the dove from the ark had lighted there. My fear fell from me as
+if it had been a vaporous garment which dissolved in the warmth. I must
+take action of some sort whilst the courage of the day is upon me. Last
+night one of my post-dated letters went to post, the first of that fatal
+series which is to blot out the very traces of my existence from the
+earth.
+
+Let me not think of it. Action!
+
+It has always been at night-time that I have been molested or
+threatened, or in some way in danger or in fear. I have not yet seen the
+Count in the daylight. Can it be that he sleeps when others wake, that
+he may be awake whilst they sleep? If I could only get into his room!
+But there is no possible way. The door is always locked, no way for me.
+
+Yes, there is a way, if one dares to take it. Where his body has gone
+why may not another body go? I have seen him myself crawl from his
+window. Why should not I imitate him, and go in by his window? The
+chances are desperate, but my need is more desperate still. I shall risk
+it. At the worst it can only be death; and a man’s death is not a
+calf’s, and the dreaded Hereafter may still be open to me. God help me
+in my task! Good-bye, Mina, if I fail; good-bye, my faithful friend and
+second father; good-bye, 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 the narrow ledge of stone which runs
+around the building 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 knew pretty
+well the direction and distance of the Count’s window, and made for it
+as well as I could, having regard to the opportunities available. I did
+not feel dizzy--I suppose I was too excited--and the time seemed
+ridiculously short till I found myself standing on the window-sill and
+trying to raise up the sash. I was filled with agitation, however, when
+I bent down and slid feet foremost in through the window. Then I looked
+around for the Count, but, with surprise and gladness, made a discovery.
+The room was empty! It was barely furnished with odd things, which
+seemed to have never been used; the furniture was something the same
+style as that in the south rooms, and was covered with dust. I looked
+for the key, but it was not in the lock, and I could not find it
+anywhere. The only thing I found was a great heap of gold in one
+corner--gold of all kinds, Roman, and British, and Austrian, and
+Hungarian, and Greek and Turkish money, covered with a film of dust, as
+though it had lain long in the ground. None of it that I noticed was
+less than three hundred years old. There were also chains and ornaments,
+some jewelled, but all of them old and stained.
+
+At one corner of the room was a heavy door. I tried it, for, since I
+could not find the key of the room or the key of the outer door, which
+was the main object of my search, I must make further examination, or
+all my efforts would be in vain. It was open, and led through a stone
+passage to a circular stairway, which went steeply down. I descended,
+minding carefully where I went, for the stairs were dark, being only lit
+by loopholes in the heavy masonry. At the bottom there was a dark,
+tunnel-like passage, through which came a deathly, sickly odour, the
+odour of old earth newly turned. As I went through the passage the smell
+grew closer and heavier. At last I pulled open a heavy door which stood
+ajar, and found myself in an old, ruined chapel, which had evidently
+been used as a graveyard. The roof was broken, and in two places were
+steps leading to vaults, but the ground had recently been dug over, and
+the earth placed in great wooden boxes, manifestly those which had been
+brought by the Slovaks. There was nobody about, and I made search for
+any further outlet, but there was none. Then I went 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 the eyes were open and stony, but without the
+glassiness of death--and the cheeks had the warmth of life through all
+their pallor; the lips were as red as ever. But there was no sign of
+movement, no pulse, no breath, no beating of the heart. I bent over him,
+and tried to find any sign of life, but in vain. He could not have lain
+there long, for the earthy smell would have passed away in a few hours.
+By the side of the box was its cover, pierced with holes here and there.
+I thought he might have the keys on him, but when I went to search I saw
+the dead eyes, and in them, dead though they were, such a look of hate,
+though unconscious of me or my presence, that I fled from the place, and
+leaving the Count’s room by the window, crawled again up the castle
+wall. Regaining my room, I threw myself panting upon the bed and tried
+to think....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_29 June._--To-day 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 alone 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 can
+look as he said:--
+
+“To-morrow, 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; to-morrow 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 asked him point-blank:--
+
+“Why may I not go to-night?”
+
+“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 bâton of the conductor. After a pause
+of a moment, he proceeded, in his stately way, to the door, drew back
+the ponderous bolts, unhooked the heavy chains, and began to draw it
+open.
+
+To my intense astonishment I saw that it was unlocked. Suspiciously, I
+looked all round, but could see no key of any kind.
+
+As the door began to open, the howling of the wolves without grew louder
+and angrier; their red jaws, with champing teeth, and their blunt-clawed
+feet as they leaped, came in through the opening door. I knew then 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 a last chance I cried out:--
+
+“Shut the door; I shall wait till morning!” and 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! To-night is mine. To-morrow 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? To-morrow! to-morrow! Lord, help me, and those to whom I am
+dear!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_30 June, morning._--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 cock-crow, and I felt that I was safe.
+With a glad heart, I opened my door and ran down to 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 drew 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 that 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 renewed, for the white hair
+and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey; the cheeks were fuller,
+and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than
+ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the
+corners of the mouth and ran 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 way to those
+horrid three. I felt all over the body, but no sign could I find of the
+key. Then I stopped and looked at the Count. There was a mocking smile
+on the bloated face which seemed to drive me mad. This was the being I
+was helping to transfer to London, where, perhaps, for centuries to come
+he might, amongst its teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and
+create a new and ever-widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the
+helpless. The very thought drove me mad. A terrible desire came upon me
+to rid the world of such a monster. There was no lethal weapon at hand,
+but I seized a shovel which the workmen had been using to fill the
+cases, and lifting it high, struck, with the edge downward, at the
+hateful face. But as I did so the head turned, and the eyes fell full
+upon me, with all their blaze of basilisk horror. The sight seemed to
+paralyse me, and the shovel turned in my hand and glanced from the face,
+merely making a deep gash above the forehead. The shovel fell from my
+hand across the box, and as I pulled it away the flange of the blade
+caught the edge of the lid which fell over again, and hid the horrid
+thing from my sight. The last glimpse I had was of the bloated face,
+blood-stained and fixed with a grin of malice which would have held its
+own in the nethermost hell.
+
+I thought and thought what should be my next move, but my brain seemed
+on fire, and I waited with a despairing feeling growing over me. As I
+waited I heard in the distance a gipsy song sung by merry voices coming
+closer, and through their song the rolling of heavy wheels and the
+cracking of whips; the Szgany and the Slovaks of whom the Count had
+spoken were coming. With a last look around and at the box which
+contained the vile body, I ran from the place and gained the Count’s
+room, determined to rush out at the moment the door should be opened.
+With strained ears, I listened, and heard downstairs the grinding of the
+key in the great lock and the falling back of the heavy door. There must
+have been some other means of entry, or some one had a key for one of
+the locked doors. Then there came the sound of many feet tramping and
+dying away in some passage which sent up a clanging echo. I turned to
+run down again towards the vault, where I might find the new entrance;
+but at the moment there seemed to come a violent puff of wind, and the
+door to the winding stair blew to with a shock that set the dust from
+the lintels flying. When I ran to push it open, I found that it was
+hopelessly fast. I was again a prisoner, and the net of doom was closing
+round me more closely.
+
+As I write there is in the passage below a sound of many tramping feet
+and the crash of weights being set down heavily, doubtless the boxes,
+with their freight of earth. There is a sound of hammering; it is the
+box being nailed down. Now I can hear the heavy feet tramping again
+along the hall, with many other idle feet coming behind them.
+
+The door is shut, and the chains rattle; there is a grinding of the key
+in the lock; I can hear the key withdraw: 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 awful 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 this 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 these monsters, and the
+precipice is steep and high. At its foot a man may sleep--as a man.
+Good-bye, all! Mina!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_Letter from Miss Mina Murray to Miss Lucy Westenra._
+
+
+“_9 May._
+
+“My dearest Lucy,--
+
+“Forgive my long delay in writing, but I have been simply overwhelmed
+with work. The life of an assistant schoolmistress is sometimes trying.
+I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together
+freely and build our castles in the air. I have been working very hard
+lately, because I want to keep up with Jonathan’s studies, and I have
+been practising 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 practising very hard. He
+and I sometimes write letters in shorthand, and he is keeping a
+stenographic journal of his travels abroad. When I am with you I
+shall keep a diary in the same way. I don’t mean one of those
+two-pages-to-the-week-with-Sunday-squeezed-in-a-corner diaries, but a
+sort of journal which I can write in whenever I feel inclined. I do not
+suppose there will be much of interest to other people; but it is not
+intended for them. I may show it to Jonathan some day if there is in it
+anything worth sharing, but it is really an exercise book. I shall try
+to do what I see lady journalists do: interviewing and writing
+descriptions and trying to remember conversations. I am told that, with
+a little practice, one can remember all that goes on or that one hears
+said during a day. However, we shall see. I will tell you of my little
+plans when we meet. I have just had a few hurried lines from Jonathan
+from Transylvania. He is well, and will be returning in about a week. I
+am longing to hear all his news. It must be so 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. Good-bye.
+
+“Your loving
+
+“MINA.
+
+“Tell me all the news when you write. You have not told me anything for
+a long time. I hear rumours, and especially of a tall, handsome,
+curly-haired man???”
+
+
+_Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray_.
+
+“_17, Chatham Street_,
+
+“_Wednesday_.
+
+“My dearest Mina,--
+
+“I must say you tax me _very_ unfairly with being a bad correspondent. I
+wrote to 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 good deal
+to picture-galleries and for walks and rides in the park. As to the
+tall, curly-haired man, I suppose it was the one who was with me at the
+last Pop. Some one has evidently been telling tales. That was Mr.
+Holmwood. He often comes to see us, and he and mamma get on very well
+together; they have so many things to talk about in common. We met some
+time ago a man that would just _do for you_, if you were not already
+engaged to Jonathan. He is an excellent _parti_, being handsome, well
+off, and of good birth. He is a doctor and really clever. Just fancy! He
+is only nine-and-twenty, and he has an immense lunatic asylum all under
+his own care. Mr. Holmwood introduced him to me, and he called here to
+see us, and often comes now. I think he is one of the most resolute men
+I ever saw, and yet the most calm. He seems absolutely imperturbable. I
+can fancy what a wonderful power he must have over his patients. He has
+a curious habit of looking one straight in the face, as if trying to
+read one’s thoughts. He tries this on very much with me, but I flatter
+myself he has got a tough nut to crack. I know that from my glass. Do
+you ever try to read your own face? _I do_, and I can tell you it is not
+a bad study, and gives you more trouble than you can well fancy if you
+have never tried it. He says that I afford him a curious psychological
+study, and I humbly think I do. I do not, as you know, take sufficient
+interest in dress to be able to describe the new fashions. Dress is a
+bore. That is slang again, but never mind; Arthur says that every day.
+There, it is all out. Mina, we have told all our secrets to each other
+since we were _children_; we have slept together and eaten together, and
+laughed and cried together; and now, though I have spoken, I would like
+to speak more. Oh, Mina, couldn’t you guess? I love him. I am blushing
+as I write, for although I _think_ he loves me, he has not told me so in
+words. But oh, Mina, I love him; I love him; 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, I must stop. Good-night. Bless me in your
+prayers; and, Mina, pray for my happiness.
+
+“LUCY.
+
+“P.S.--I need not tell you this is a secret. Good-night again.
+
+“L.”
+
+_Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray_.
+
+“_24 May_.
+
+“My dearest Mina,--
+
+“Thanks, and thanks, and thanks again for your sweet letter. It was so
+nice to be able to tell you and to have your sympathy.
+
+“My dear, it never rains but it pours. How true the old proverbs are.
+Here am I, who shall be twenty in September, and yet I never had a
+proposal till to-day, not a real proposal, and to-day I have 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 that 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
+quite 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 had such adventures. I sympathise
+with poor Desdemona when she had such a dangerous 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. Quincey 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, an occasion for him, I would forgive him. He
+really did look serious when he was saying it, and I couldn’t help
+feeling a bit serious too--I know, Mina, you will think me a horrid
+flirt--though I couldn’t help feeling a sort of exultation that he was
+number two in one day. And then, my dear, before I could say a word he
+began pouring out a perfect torrent of love-making, laying his very
+heart and soul at my feet. He looked so earnest over it that I shall
+never again think that a man must be playful always, and never earnest,
+because he is merry at times. I suppose he saw something in my face
+which checked him, for he suddenly stopped, and said with a sort of
+manly fervour that I could have loved him for if I had been free:--
+
+“‘Lucy, you are an honest-hearted girl, I know. I should not be here
+speaking to you as I am now if I did not believe you clean grit, right
+through to the very depths of your soul. Tell me, like one good fellow
+to another, is there any one else that you care for? And if there is
+I’ll never trouble you a hair’s breadth again, but will be, if you will
+let me, a very faithful friend.’
+
+“My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy
+of them? Here was I almost making fun of this great-hearted, true
+gentleman. I burst into tears--I am afraid, my dear, you will think
+this a very sloppy letter in more ways than one--and I really felt very
+badly. Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want
+her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say
+it. I am glad to say that, though I was crying, I was able to look into
+Mr. Morris’s 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 unselfish 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--he must be a good fellow,
+my dear, and a fine 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 good-bye.’ 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.
+
+“Good-bye.”
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+(Kept in phonograph)
+
+_25 May._--Ebb tide in appetite to-day. 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 down 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. To-day 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 Romæ venalia sunt._ Hell has its price! _verb. sap._ 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, ætat 59.--Sanguine temperament; great physical strength;
+morbidly excitable; periods of gloom, ending in some fixed idea which I
+cannot make out. I presume that the sanguine temperament itself and the
+disturbing influence end in a mentally-accomplished finish; a possibly
+dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish. In selfish men caution
+is as secure an armour for their foes as for themselves. What I think of
+on this point is, when self is the fixed point the centripetal force is
+balanced with the centrifugal; when duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed
+point, the latter force is paramount, and only accident or a series of
+accidents can balance it.
+
+
+_Letter, Quincey P. Morris to Hon. Arthur Holmwood._
+
+“_25 May._
+
+“My dear Art,--
+
+“We’ve told yarns by the camp-fire 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 camp-fire to-morrow 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 the best worth winning. We promise you a hearty
+welcome, and a loving greeting, and a health as true as your own right
+hand. We shall both swear to leave you at home if you drink too deep to
+a certain pair of eyes. Come!
+
+“Yours, as ever and always,
+
+“QUINCEY P. MORRIS.”
+
+
+_Telegram from Arthur Holmwood to Quincey P. Morris._
+
+“_26 May._
+
+“Count me in every time. I bear messages which will make both your ears
+tingle.
+
+“ART.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MINA MURRAY’S JOURNAL
+
+
+_24 July. Whitby._--Lucy met me at the station, looking sweeter and
+lovelier than ever, and we drove up to the house at the Crescent in
+which they have rooms. This is a lovely place. The little river, the
+Esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near the
+harbour. A great viaduct runs across, with high piers, through which the
+view seems somehow further away than it really is. The valley is
+beautifully green, and it is so steep that when you are on the high land
+on either side you look right across it, unless you are near enough to
+see down. The houses of the old town--the side away from us--are all
+red-roofed, and seem piled up one over the other anyhow, like the
+pictures we see of Nuremberg. Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby
+Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes, and which is the scene of part of
+“Marmion,” where the girl was built up in the wall. It is a most noble
+ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is
+a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows. Between it and
+the town there is another church, the parish one, round which is a big
+graveyard, all full of tombstones. This is to my mind the nicest spot in
+Whitby, for it lies right over the town, and has a full view of the
+harbour and all up the bay to where the headland called Kettleness
+stretches out into the sea. It descends so steeply over the harbour that
+part of the bank has fallen away, and some of the graves have been
+destroyed. In one place part of the stonework of the graves stretches
+out over the sandy pathway far below. There are walks, with seats beside
+them, through the churchyard; and people go and sit there all day long
+looking at the beautiful view and enjoying the breeze. I shall come and
+sit here very 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 up 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 sea-wall runs along outside
+of it. On the near side, the sea-wall 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 edge 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 all
+gnarled and twisted like the bark of a tree. He tells me that he is
+nearly a hundred, and that he was a sailor in the Greenland fishing
+fleet when Waterloo was fought. He is, I am afraid, a very sceptical
+person, for when I asked him about the bells at sea and the White Lady
+at the abbey he said very brusquely:--
+
+“I wouldn’t fash masel’ about them, miss. Them things be all wore out.
+Mind, I don’t say that they never was, but I do say that they wasn’t in
+my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers, an’ the like,
+but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks from York and
+Leeds that be always eatin’ cured herrin’s an’ drinkin’ tea an’ lookin’
+out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder masel’ who’d be
+bothered tellin’ lies to them--even the newspapers, which is full of
+fool-talk.” I thought he would be a good person to learn interesting
+things from, so I asked him if he would mind telling me something about
+the whale-fishing in the old days. He was just settling himself to begin
+when the clock struck six, whereupon he laboured to get up, and said:--
+
+“I must gang ageeanwards home now, miss. My grand-daughter doesn’t like
+to be kept waitin’ when the tea is ready, for it takes me time to
+crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of ’em; an’, miss, I lack
+belly-timber sairly by the clock.”
+
+He hobbled away, and I could see him hurrying, as well as he could, down
+the steps. The steps are a great feature on the place. They lead from
+the town up 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. They will be home by this.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_1 August._--I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and we had a most
+interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come
+and join him. He is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should think
+must have been in his time a most dictatorial person. He will not admit
+anything, and downfaces everybody. If he can’t out-argue them he bullies
+them, and then takes their silence for agreement with his views. Lucy
+was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn frock; she has got a
+beautiful colour since she has been here. I noticed that the old men did
+not lose any time in coming up and sitting near her when we sat down.
+She is so sweet with old people; I think they all fell in love with her
+on the spot. Even my old man succumbed and did not contradict her, but
+gave me double share instead. I got him on the subject of the legends,
+and he went off at once into a sort of sermon. I must try to remember it
+and put it down:--
+
+“It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel; that’s what it be, an’
+nowt else. These bans an’ wafts an’ boh-ghosts an’ barguests an’ bogles
+an’ all anent them is only fit to set bairns an’ dizzy women
+a-belderin’. They be nowt but air-blebs. They, an’ all grims an’ signs
+an’ warnin’s, be all invented by parsons an’ illsome beuk-bodies an’
+railway touters to skeer an’ scunner hafflin’s, an’ to get folks to do
+somethin’ that they don’t other incline to. It makes me ireful to think
+o’ them. Why, it’s them that, not content with printin’ lies on paper
+an’ preachin’ them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin’ them on the
+tombstones. Look here all around you in what airt ye will; all them
+steans, holdin’ up their heads as well as they can out of their pride,
+is acant--simply tumblin’ down with the weight o’ the lies wrote on
+them, ‘Here lies the body’ or ‘Sacred to the memory’ wrote on all of
+them, an’ yet in nigh half of them there bean’t no bodies at all; an’
+the memories of them bean’t cared a pinch of snuff about, much less
+sacred. Lies all of them, nothin’ but lies of one kind or another! My
+gog, but it’ll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they
+come tumblin’ up in their death-sarks, all jouped together an’ tryin’ to
+drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was; some of them
+trimmlin’ and ditherin’, with their hands that dozzened an’ slippy from
+lyin’ in the sea that they can’t even keep their grup o’ them.”
+
+I could see from the old fellow’s self-satisfied air and the way in
+which he looked round for the approval of his cronies that he was
+“showing off,” so I put in a word to keep him going:--
+
+“Oh, Mr. Swales, you can’t be serious. Surely these tombstones are not
+all wrong?”
+
+“Yabblins! There may be a poorish few not wrong, savin’ where they make
+out the people too good; for there be folk that do think a balm-bowl be
+like the sea, if only it be their own. The whole thing be only lies. Now
+look you here; you come here a stranger, an’ you see this kirk-garth.” 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
+happed here, snod an’ snog?” I assented again. “Then that be just where
+the lie comes in. Why, there be scores of these lay-beds that be toom as
+old Dun’s ’bacca-box on Friday night.” He nudged one of his companions,
+and they all laughed. “And my gog! how could they be otherwise? Look at
+that one, the aftest abaft the bier-bank: read it!” I went over and
+read:--
+
+“Edward Spencelagh, master mariner, murdered by pirates off the coast of
+Andres, April, 1854, æt. 30.” When I came back Mr. Swales went on:--
+
+“Who brought him home, I wonder, to hap him here? Murdered off the coast
+of Andres! an’ you consated his body lay under! Why, I could name ye a
+dozen whose bones lie in the Greenland seas above”--he pointed
+northwards--“or where the currents 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 Lowrey--I knew his father, lost in
+the _Lively_ off Greenland in ’20; or Andrew Woodhouse, drowned in the
+same seas in 1777; or John Paxton, drowned off Cape Farewell a year
+later; or old John Rawlings, whose grandfather sailed with me, drowned
+in the Gulf of Finland in ’50. Do ye think that all these men will have
+to make a rush to Whitby when the trumpet sounds? I have me antherums
+aboot it! I tell ye that when they got here they’d be jommlin’ an’
+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 light of the aurora borealis.” This was
+evidently local pleasantry, for the old man cackled over it, and his
+cronies joined in with gusto.
+
+“But,” I said, “surely you are not quite correct, for you start on the
+assumption that all the poor people, or their spirits, will have to
+take their tombstones with them on the Day of Judgment. Do you think
+that will be really necessary?”
+
+“Well, what else be they tombstones for? Answer me that, miss!”
+
+“To please their relatives, I suppose.”
+
+“To please their relatives, you suppose!” This he said with intense
+scorn. “How will it pleasure their relatives to know that lies is wrote
+over them, and that everybody in the place knows that they be lies?” He
+pointed to a stone at our feet which had been laid down as a slab, on
+which the seat was rested, close to the edge of the cliff. “Read the
+lies on that thruff-stean,” he said. The letters were upside down to me
+from where I sat, but Lucy was more opposite to them, so she leant over
+and read:--
+
+“Sacred to the memory of George Canon, who died, in the hope of a
+glorious resurrection, on July, 29, 1873, falling from the rocks at
+Kettleness. This tomb was erected by his sorrowing mother to her dearly
+beloved son. ‘He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.’
+Really, Mr. Swales, I don’t see anything very funny in that!” She spoke
+her comment very gravely and somewhat severely.
+
+“Ye don’t see aught funny! Ha! ha! But that’s because ye don’t gawm the
+sorrowin’ mother was a hell-cat that hated him because he was
+acrewk’d--a regular lamiter he was--an’ he hated her so that he
+committed suicide in order that she mightn’t get an insurance she put on
+his life. He blew nigh the top of his head off with an old musket that
+they had for scarin’ the 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’ up the grees with the tombstean balanced on
+his hump, and asks it to be took as evidence!”
+
+I did not know what to say, but Lucy turned the conversation as she
+said, rising up:--
+
+“Oh, why did you tell us of this? It is my favourite seat, and I cannot
+leave it; and now I find I must go on sitting over the grave of a
+suicide.”
+
+“That won’t harm ye, my pretty; an’ it may make poor Geordie gladsome to
+have so trim a lass sittin’ on his lap. That won’t hurt ye. Why, I’ve
+sat here off an’ on for nigh twenty years past, an’ it hasn’t done me
+no harm. Don’t ye fash about them as lies under ye, or that doesn’ lie
+there either! It’ll be time for ye to be getting scart when ye see the
+tombsteans all run away with, and the place as bare as a stubble-field.
+There’s the clock, an’ I must gang. My service to ye, ladies!” And off
+he hobbled.
+
+Lucy and I sat awhile, and it was all so beautiful before us that we
+took hands as we sat; and she told me all over again about Arthur and
+their coming marriage. That made me just a little heart-sick, for I
+haven’t heard from Jonathan for a whole month.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_The same day._ I came up here alone, for I am very sad. There was no
+letter for me. I hope there cannot be anything the matter with Jonathan.
+The clock has just struck nine. I see the lights scattered all over the
+town, sometimes in rows where the streets are, and sometimes singly;
+they run right up the Esk and die away in the curve of the valley. To my
+left the view is cut off by a black line of roof of the old house next
+the abbey. The sheep and lambs are bleating in the fields away behind
+me, and there is a clatter of a donkey’s hoofs up the paved road below.
+The band on the pier is playing a harsh waltz in good time, and further
+along the quay there is a Salvation Army meeting in a back street.
+Neither of the bands hears the other, but up here I hear and see them
+both. I wonder where Jonathan is and if he is thinking of me! I wish he
+were here.
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_5 June._--The case of Renfield grows more interesting the more I get to
+understand the man. He has certain qualities very largely developed;
+selfishness, secrecy, and purpose. I wish I could get at what is the
+object of the latter. He seems to have some settled scheme of his own,
+but what it is I do not yet know. His redeeming quality is a love of
+animals, though, indeed, he has such curious turns in it that I
+sometimes imagine he is only abnormally cruel. His pets are of odd
+sorts. Just now his hobby is catching flies. He has at present such a
+quantity that I have had myself to expostulate. To my astonishment, he
+did not break out into a fury, as I expected, but took the matter in
+simple seriousness. He thought for a moment, and then said: “May I have
+three days? I shall clear them away.” Of course, I said that would do. I
+must watch him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_18 June._--He has turned his mind now to spiders, and has got several
+very big fellows in a box. He keeps feeding them with his flies, and
+the number of the latter is becoming sensibly diminished, although he
+has used half his food in attracting more flies from outside to his
+room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_1 July._--His spiders are now becoming as great a nuisance as his
+flies, and to-day I told him that he must get rid of them. He looked
+very sad at this, so I said that he must clear out 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 blow-fly, 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 note-book in which he is always
+jotting down something. Whole pages of it are filled with masses of
+figures, generally single numbers added up in batches, and then the
+totals added in batches again, as though he were “focussing” some
+account, as the auditors put it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_8 July._--There is a method in his madness, and the rudimentary idea in
+my mind is growing. It will be a whole idea soon, and then, oh,
+unconscious cerebration! you will have to give the wall to your
+conscious brother. I kept away from my friend for a few days, so that I
+might notice if there were any change. Things remain as they were except
+that he has parted with some of his pets and got a new one. He has
+managed to get a sparrow, and has already partially tamed it. His means
+of taming is simple, for already the spiders have diminished. Those that
+do remain, however, are well fed, for he still brings in the flies by
+tempting them with his food.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_19 July._--We are progressing. My friend has now a whole colony of
+sparrows, and his flies and spiders are almost obliterated. When I came
+in he ran to me and said he wanted to ask me a great favour--a very,
+very great favour; and as he spoke he fawned on me like a dog. I asked
+him what it was, and he said, with a sort of rapture in his voice and
+bearing:--
+
+“A kitten, a nice little, sleek playful kitten, that I can play with,
+and teach, and feed--and feed--and feed!” I was not unprepared for this
+request, for I had noticed how his pets went on increasing in size and
+vivacity, but I did not care that his pretty family of tame sparrows
+should be wiped out in the same manner as the flies and the spiders; so
+I said I would see about it, and asked him if he would not rather have a
+cat than a kitten. His eagerness betrayed him as he answered:--
+
+“Oh, yes, I would like a cat! I only asked for a kitten lest you should
+refuse me a cat. No one would refuse me a kitten, would they?” I shook
+my head, and said that at present I feared it would not be possible, but
+that I would see about it. His face fell, and I could see a warning of
+danger in it, for there was a sudden fierce, sidelong look which meant
+killing. The man is an undeveloped homicidal maniac. I shall test him
+with his present craving and see how it will work out; then I shall know
+more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_10 p. m._--I have visited him again and found him sitting in a corner
+brooding. When I came in he threw himself on his knees before me and
+implored me to let him have a cat; that his salvation depended upon it.
+I was firm, however, and told him that he could not have it, whereupon
+he went without a word, and sat down, gnawing his fingers, in the corner
+where I had found him. I shall see him in the morning early.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_20 July._--Visited Renfield very early, before the attendant went his
+rounds. Found him up and humming a tune. He was spreading out his sugar,
+which he had saved, in the window, and was manifestly beginning his
+fly-catching again; and beginning it cheerfully and with a good grace. I
+looked around for his birds, and not seeing them, asked him where they
+were. He replied, without turning round, that they had all flown away.
+There were a few feathers about the room and on his pillow a drop of
+blood. I said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report to me if
+there were anything odd about him during the day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_11 a. m._--The attendant has just been to me to say that Renfield has
+been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers. “My belief is,
+doctor,” he said, “that he has eaten his birds, and that he just took
+and ate them raw!”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_11 p. m._--I gave Renfield a strong opiate to-night, enough to make
+even him sleep, and took away his pocket-book 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 zoöphagous
+(life-eating) 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 to-day! Why not advance science
+in its most difficult and vital aspect--the knowledge of the brain? Had
+I even the secret of one such mind--did I hold the key to the fancy of
+even one lunatic--I might advance my own branch of science to a pitch
+compared with which Burdon-Sanderson’s physiology or Ferrier’s
+brain-knowledge would be as nothing. If only there were a sufficient
+cause! I must not think too much of this, or I may be tempted; a good
+cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an
+exceptional brain, congenitally?
+
+How well the man reasoned; lunatics always do within their own scope. I
+wonder at how many lives he values a man, or if at only one. He has
+closed the account most accurately, and to-day 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 will 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 only could have as strong a cause as my poor mad friend there--a
+good, unselfish cause to make me work--that would be indeed happiness.
+
+
+_Mina Murray’s Journal._
+
+_26 July._--I am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here; it
+is like whispering to one’s self and listening at the same time. And
+there is also something about the shorthand symbols that makes it
+different from writing. I am unhappy about Lucy and about Jonathan. I
+had not heard from Jonathan for some time, and was very concerned; but
+yesterday dear Mr. Hawkins, who is always so kind, sent me a letter from
+him. I had written asking him if he had heard, and he said the enclosed
+had just been received. It is only a line dated from Castle Dracula,
+and says that he is just starting for home. That is not like Jonathan;
+I do not understand it, and it makes me uneasy. Then, too, Lucy,
+although she is so well, has lately taken to her old habit of walking in
+her sleep. Her mother has spoken to me about it, and we have decided
+that I am to lock the door of our room every night. Mrs. Westenra has
+got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of houses and
+along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly wakened and fall over
+with a despairing cry that echoes all over the place. Poor dear, she is
+naturally anxious about Lucy, and she tells me that her husband, Lucy’s
+father, had the same habit; that he would get up in the night and dress
+himself and go out, if he were not stopped. Lucy is to be married in the
+autumn, and she is already planning out her dresses and how her house is
+to be arranged. I sympathise with her, for I do the same, only Jonathan
+and I will start in life in a very simple way, and shall have to try to
+make both ends meet. Mr. Holmwood--he is the Hon. Arthur Holmwood, only
+son of Lord Godalming--is coming up here very shortly--as soon as he can
+leave town, for his father is not very well, and I think dear Lucy is
+counting the moments till he comes. She wants to take him up to the seat
+on the churchyard cliff and show him the beauty of Whitby. I daresay it
+is the waiting which disturbs her; she will be all right when he
+arrives.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_27 July._--No news from Jonathan. I am getting quite uneasy about him,
+though why I should I do not know; but I do wish that he would write, if
+it were only a single line. Lucy walks more than ever, and each night I
+am awakened by her moving about the room. Fortunately, the weather is so
+hot that she cannot get cold; but still the anxiety and the perpetually
+being wakened is beginning to tell on me, and I am getting nervous and
+wakeful myself. Thank God, Lucy’s health keeps up. Mr. Holmwood has been
+suddenly called to Ring to see his father, who has been taken seriously
+ill. Lucy frets at the postponement of seeing him, but it does not touch
+her looks; she is a trifle stouter, and her cheeks are a lovely
+rose-pink. She has lost that anæmic look which she had. I pray it will
+all last.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_3 August._--Another week gone, and no news from Jonathan, not even to
+Mr. Hawkins, from whom I have heard. Oh, I do hope he is not ill. He
+surely would have written. I look at that last letter of his, but
+somehow it does not satisfy me. It does not read like him, and yet it is
+his writing. There is no mistake of that. Lucy has not walked much in
+her sleep the last week, but there is an odd concentration about her
+which I do not understand; even in her sleep she seems to be watching
+me. She tries the door, and finding it locked, goes about the room
+searching for the key.
+
+_6 August._--Another three days, and no news. This suspense is getting
+dreadful. If I only knew where to write to or where to go to, I should
+feel easier; but no one has heard a word of Jonathan since that last
+letter. I must only pray to God for patience. Lucy is more excitable
+than ever, but is otherwise well. Last night was very threatening, and
+the fishermen say that we are in for a storm. I must try to watch it and
+learn the weather signs. To-day is a grey day, and the sun as I write is
+hidden in thick clouds, high over Kettleness. Everything is grey--except
+the green grass, which seems like emerald amongst it; grey earthy rock;
+grey clouds, tinged with the sunburst at the far edge, hang over the
+grey sea, into which the sand-points stretch like grey fingers. The sea
+is tumbling in over the shallows and the sandy flats with a roar,
+muffled in the sea-mists drifting inland. The horizon is lost in a grey
+mist. All is vastness; the clouds are piled up like giant rocks, and
+there is a “brool” over the sea that sounds like some presage of doom.
+Dark figures are on the beach here and there, sometimes half shrouded in
+the mist, and seem “men like trees walking.” The fishing-boats are
+racing for home, and rise and dip in the ground swell as they sweep into
+the harbour, bending to the scuppers. Here comes old Mr. Swales. He is
+making straight for me, and I can see, by the way he lifts his hat, that
+he wants to talk....
+
+I have been quite touched by the change in the poor old man. When he sat
+down beside me, he said in a very gentle way:--
+
+“I want to say something to you, miss.” I could see he was not at ease,
+so I took his poor old wrinkled hand in mine and asked him to speak
+fully; so he said, leaving his hand in mine:--
+
+“I’m afraid, my deary, that I must have shocked you by all the wicked
+things I’ve been sayin’ about the dead, and such like, for weeks past;
+but I didn’t mean them, and I want ye to remember that when I’m gone. We
+aud folks that be daffled, and with one foot abaft the krok-hooal, don’t
+altogether like to think of it, and we don’t want to feel scart of it;
+an’ 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 good-bye, and hobbled
+off. It all touched me, and upset me very much.
+
+I was glad when the coastguard came along, with his spy-glass 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 to-morrow.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CUTTING FROM “THE DAILYGRAPH,” 8 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 holiday-makers laid out yesterday for visits to Mulgrave Woods,
+Robin Hood’s Bay, Rig Mill, Runswick, Staithes, and the various trips in
+the neighbourhood 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 that 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 north-west. The wind was then
+blowing from the south-west in the mild degree which in barometrical
+language is ranked “No. 2: light breeze.” The coastguard on duty at once
+made report, and one old fisherman, who for more than half a century has
+kept watch on weather signs from the East Cliff, foretold in an emphatic
+manner the coming of a sudden storm. The approach of sunset was so very
+beautiful, so grand in its masses of splendidly-coloured clouds, that
+there was quite an assemblage on the walk along the cliff in the old
+churchyard to enjoy the beauty. Before the sun dipped below the black
+mass of Kettleness, standing boldly athwart the western sky, its
+downward way was marked by myriad clouds of every sunset-colour--flame,
+purple, pink, green, violet, and all the tints of gold; with here and
+there masses not large, but of seemingly absolute blackness, in all
+sorts of shapes, as well outlined as colossal silhouettes. The
+experience was not lost on the painters, and doubtless some of the
+sketches of the “Prelude to the Great Storm” will grace the R. A. and R.
+I. walls in May next. More than one captain made up his mind then and
+there that his “cobble” or his “mule,” as they term the different
+classes of boats, would remain in the harbour till the storm had passed.
+The wind fell away entirely during the evening, and at midnight there
+was a dead calm, a sultry heat, and that prevailing intensity which, on
+the approach of thunder, affects persons of a sensitive nature. There
+were but few lights in sight at sea, for even the coasting steamers,
+which usually “hug” the shore so closely, kept well to seaward, and but
+few fishing-boats were in sight. The only sail noticeable was a foreign
+schooner with all sails set, which was seemingly going westwards. The
+foolhardiness or ignorance of her officers was a prolific theme for
+comment whilst she remained in sight, and efforts were made to signal
+her to reduce sail in 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 discord 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.
+White-crested waves beat madly on the level sands and rushed up the
+shelving cliffs; others broke over the piers, and with their spume swept
+the lanthorns of the lighthouses which rise from the end of either pier
+of Whitby Harbour. The wind roared like thunder, and blew with such
+force that it was with difficulty that even strong men kept their feet,
+or clung with grim clasp to the iron stanchions. It was found necessary
+to clear the entire piers from the mass of onlookers, or else the
+fatalities of the night would have been increased manifold. To add to
+the difficulties and dangers of the time, masses of sea-fog came
+drifting inland--white, wet clouds, which swept by in ghostly fashion,
+so dank and damp and cold that it needed but little effort of
+imagination to think that the spirits of those lost at sea were
+touching their living brethren with the clammy hands of death, and many
+a one shuddered as the wreaths of sea-mist swept by. At times the mist
+cleared, and the sea for some distance could be seen in the glare of the
+lightning, which now came thick and fast, followed by such sudden peals
+of thunder that the whole sky overhead seemed trembling under the shock
+of the footsteps of the storm.
+
+Some of the scenes thus revealed were of immeasurable grandeur and of
+absorbing interest--the sea, running mountains high, threw skywards with
+each wave mighty masses of white foam, which the tempest seemed to
+snatch at and whirl away into space; here and there a fishing-boat, with
+a rag of sail, running madly for shelter before the blast; now and again
+the white wings of a storm-tossed sea-bird. 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 the inrushing 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 shore, a shout which for a moment seemed
+to cleave the gale and was then swept away in its rush.
+
+Before long the searchlight discovered some distance away a schooner
+with all sails set, apparently the same vessel which had been noticed
+earlier in the evening. The wind had by this time backed to the east,
+and there was a shudder amongst the watchers on the cliff as they
+realized the terrible danger in which she now was. Between her and the
+port lay the great flat reef on which so many good ships have from time
+to time suffered, and, with the wind blowing from its present quarter,
+it would be quite impossible that she should fetch the entrance of the
+harbour. It was now nearly the hour of high tide, but the waves were so
+great that in their troughs the shallows of the shore were almost
+visible, and the schooner, with all sails set, was rushing with such
+speed that, in the words of one old salt, “she must fetch up somewhere,
+if it was only in hell.” Then came another rush of sea-fog, greater than
+any hitherto--a mass of dank mist, which seemed to close on all things
+like a grey 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 north-east, 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 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 south-east corner of the pier jutting under the East
+Cliff, known locally as Tate Hill Pier.
+
+There was of course a considerable concussion as the vessel drove up on
+the sand heap. Every spar, rope, and stay was strained, and some of the
+“top-hammer” came crashing down. But, strangest of all, the very instant
+the shore was touched, an immense dog sprang up on deck from below, as
+if shot up by the concussion, and running forward, jumped from the bow
+on the sand. Making straight for the steep cliff, where the churchyard
+hangs over the laneway to the East Pier so steeply that some of the flat
+tombstones--“thruff-steans” or “through-stones,” as they call them in
+the 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 on board. 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 dragged him to and fro, so that the cords with which he
+was tied had cut the flesh to the bone. Accurate note was made of the
+state of things, and a doctor--Surgeon J. M. Caffyn, of 33, East Elliot
+Place--who came immediately after me, declared, after making
+examination, that the man must have been dead for quite two days. In his
+pocket was a bottle, carefully corked, empty save for a little roll of
+paper, which proved to be the addendum to the log. The coastguard said
+the man must have tied up his own hands, fastening the knots with his
+teeth. The fact that a coastguard was the first on board may save some
+complications, later on, in the Admiralty Court; for coastguards cannot
+claim the salvage which is the right of the first civilian entering on a
+derelict. Already, however, the legal tongues are wagging, and one young
+law student is loudly asserting that the rights of the owner are already
+completely sacrificed, his property being held in contravention of the
+statutes 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 homeward, 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.
+
+_Whitby_
+
+_9 August._--The sequel to the strange arrival of the derelict in the
+storm last night is almost more startling than the thing itself. It
+turns out that the schooner is a Russian from Varna, and is called the
+_Demeter_. She is almost entirely in ballast of silver sand, with only a
+small amount of cargo--a number of great wooden boxes filled with mould.
+This cargo was consigned to a Whitby solicitor, Mr. S. F. Billington, of
+7, The Crescent, who this morning went aboard and formally took
+possession of the goods consigned to him. The Russian consul, too,
+acting for the charter-party, took formal possession of the ship, and
+paid all harbour dues, etc. Nothing is talked about here to-day 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 after
+complaint. A good deal of interest was abroad concerning the dog which
+landed when the ship struck, and more than a few of the members of the
+S. P. C. A., which is very strong in Whitby, have tried to befriend the
+animal. To the general disappointment, however, it was not to be found;
+it seems to have disappeared entirely from the town. It may be that it
+was frightened and made its way on to the moors, where it is still
+hiding in terror. There are some who look with dread on such a
+possibility, lest later on it should in itself become a danger, for it
+is evidently a fierce brute. Early this morning a large dog, a half-bred
+mastiff belonging to a coal merchant close to Tate Hill Pier, was found
+dead in the roadway opposite to 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 to-day 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
+rescript, simply omitting technical details of seamanship and
+supercargo. It almost seems as though the captain had been seized with
+some kind of mania before he had got well into blue water, and that
+this had developed persistently throughout the voyage. Of course my
+statement must be taken _cum grano_, since I am writing from the
+dictation of a clerk of the Russian consul, who kindly translated for
+me, time being short.
+
+                         LOG OF THE “DEMETER.”
+
+
+_Varna to Whitby._
+
+_Written 18 July, things so strange happening, that I shall keep
+accurate note henceforth till we land._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On 6 July we finished taking in cargo, silver sand and boxes of earth.
+At noon set sail. East wind, fresh. Crew, five hands ... two mates,
+cook, and myself (captain).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On 11 July at dawn entered Bosphorus. Boarded by Turkish Customs
+officers. Backsheesh. All correct. Under way at 4 p. m.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On 12 July through Dardanelles. More Customs officers and flagboat of
+guarding squadron. Backsheesh again. Work of officers thorough, but
+quick. Want us off soon. At dark passed into Archipelago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On 13 July passed Cape Matapan. Crew dissatisfied about something.
+Seemed scared, but would not speak out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On 14 July was somewhat anxious about crew. Men all steady fellows, who
+sailed with me before. Mate could not make out what was wrong; they only
+told him there was _something_, and crossed themselves. Mate lost temper
+with one of them that day and struck him. Expected fierce quarrel, but
+all was quiet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On 16 July mate reported in the morning that one of crew, Petrofsky, was
+missing. Could not account for it. Took larboard watch eight bells last
+night; was relieved by Abramoff, but did not go to bunk. Men more
+downcast than ever. All said they expected something of the kind, but
+would not say more than there was _something_ aboard. Mate getting very
+impatient with them; feared some trouble ahead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On 17 July, yesterday, one of the men, Olgaren, came to my cabin, and in
+an awestruck way confided to me that he thought there was a strange man
+aboard the ship. He said that in his watch he had been sheltering
+behind the deck-house, as there was a rain-storm, when he saw a tall,
+thin man, who was not like any of the crew, come up the companion-way,
+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 to-day search 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 a handspike. I let him take the helm, while the
+rest began thorough search, all keeping abreast, with lanterns: we left
+no corner unsearched. As there were only the big wooden boxes, there
+were no odd corners where a man could hide. Men much relieved when
+search over, and went back to work cheerfully. First mate scowled, but
+said nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_22 July_.--Rough weather last three days, and all hands busy with
+sails--no time to be frightened. Men seem to have forgotten their dread.
+Mate cheerful again, and all on good terms. Praised men for work in bad
+weather. Passed Gibralter and out through Straits. All well.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_24 July_.--There seems some doom over this ship. Already a hand short,
+and entering on the Bay of Biscay with wild weather ahead, and yet last
+night another man lost--disappeared. Like the first, he came off his
+watch and was not seen again. Men all in a panic of fear; sent a round
+robin, asking to have double watch, as they fear to be alone. Mate
+angry. Fear there will be some trouble, as either he or the men will do
+some violence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_28 July_.--Four days in hell, knocking about in a sort of maelstrom,
+and the wind a tempest. No sleep for any one. Men all worn out. Hardly
+know how to set a watch, since no one fit to go on. Second mate
+volunteered to steer and watch, and let men snatch a few hours’ sleep.
+Wind abating; seas still terrific, but feel them less, as ship is
+steadier.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_29 July_.--Another tragedy. Had single watch to-night, as crew too
+tired to double. When morning watch came on deck could find no one
+except steersman. Raised outcry, and all came on deck. Thorough search,
+but no one found. Are now without second mate, and crew in a panic. Mate
+and I agreed to go armed henceforth and wait for any sign of cause.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_30 July_.--Last night. Rejoiced we are nearing England. Weather fine,
+all sails set. Retired worn out; slept soundly; awaked by mate telling
+me that both man of watch and steersman missing. Only self and mate and
+two hands left to work ship.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_1 August_.--Two days of fog, and not a sail sighted. Had hoped when in
+the English Channel to be able to signal for help or get in somewhere.
+Not having power to work sails, have to run before wind. Dare not lower,
+as could not raise them again. We seem to be drifting to some terrible
+doom. Mate now more demoralised than either of men. His stronger nature
+seems to have worked inwardly against himself. Men are beyond fear,
+working stolidly and patiently, with minds made up to worst. They are
+Russian, he Roumanian.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_2 August, midnight_.--Woke up from few minutes’ sleep by hearing a cry,
+seemingly outside my port. Could see nothing in fog. Rushed on deck, and
+ran against mate. Tells me heard cry and ran, but no sign of man on
+watch. One more gone. Lord, help us! Mate says we must be past Straits
+of Dover, as in a moment of fog lifting he saw North Foreland, just as
+he heard the man cry out. If so we are now off in the North Sea, and
+only God can guide us in the fog, which seems to move with us; and God
+seems to have deserted us.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_3 August_.--At midnight I went to relieve the man at the wheel, and
+when I got to it found no one there. The wind was steady, and as we ran
+before it there was no yawing. I dared not leave it, so shouted for the
+mate. After a few seconds he rushed up on deck in his flannels. He
+looked wild-eyed and haggard, and I greatly fear his reason has given
+way. He came close to me and whispered hoarsely, with his mouth to my
+ear, as though fearing the very air might hear: “_It_ is here; I know
+it, now. On the watch last night I saw It, like a man, tall and thin,
+and ghastly pale. It was in the bows, and looking out. I crept behind
+It, and gave It my knife; but the knife went through It, empty as the
+air.” And as he spoke he took his 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 a lantern, and go down the forward hatchway. He is mad, stark,
+raving mad, and it’s no use my trying to stop him. He can’t hurt those
+big boxes: they are invoiced as “clay,” and to pull them about is as
+harmless a thing as he can do. So here I stay, and mind the helm, and
+write these notes. I can only trust in God and wait till the fog clears.
+Then, if I can’t steer to any harbour with the wind that is, I shall cut
+down sails and lie by, and signal for help....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is nearly all over now. Just as I was beginning to hope that the mate
+would come out calmer--for I heard him knocking away at something in the
+hold, and work is good for him--there came up the hatchway a sudden,
+startled scream, which made my blood run cold, and up on the deck he
+came as if shot from a gun--a raging madman, with his eyes rolling and
+his face convulsed with fear. “Save me! save me!” he cried, and then
+looked round on the blanket of fog. His horror turned to despair, and in
+a steady voice he said: “You had better come too, captain, before it is
+too late. _He_ is there. I know the secret now. The sea will save me
+from Him, and it is all that is left!” Before I could say a word, or
+move forward to seize him, he sprang on the bulwark and deliberately
+threw himself into the sea. I suppose I know the secret too, now. It was
+this madman who had got rid of the men one by one, and now he has
+followed them himself. God help me! How am I to account for all these
+horrors when I get to port? _When_ I get to port! Will that ever be?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_4 August._--Still fog, which the sunrise cannot pierce. I know there is
+sunrise because I am a sailor, why else I know not. I dared not go
+below, I dared not leave the helm; so here all night I stayed, and in
+the dimness of the night I saw It--Him! God forgive me, but the mate was
+right to jump overboard. It was better to die like a man; to die like a
+sailor in blue water no man can object. But I am captain, and I must not
+leave my ship. But I shall baffle this fiend or monster, for I shall tie
+my hands to the wheel when my strength begins to fail, and along with
+them I shall tie that which He--It!--dare not touch; and then, come good
+wind or foul, I shall save my soul, and my honour as a captain. I am
+growing weaker, and the night is coming on. If He can look me in the
+face again, I may not have time to act.... If we are wrecked, mayhap
+this bottle may be found, and those who find it may understand; if not,
+... well, then all men shall know that I have been true to my trust. God
+and the Blessed Virgin and the saints help a poor ignorant soul trying
+to do his duty....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of course the verdict was an open one. There is no evidence to adduce;
+and whether or not the man himself committed the murders there is now
+none to say. The folk here hold almost universally that the captain is
+simply a hero, and he is to be given a public funeral. Already it is
+arranged that his body is to be taken with a train of boats up the Esk
+for a piece and then brought back to Tate Hill Pier and up the abbey
+steps; for he is to be buried in the churchyard on the cliff. The owners
+of more than a hundred boats have already given in their names as
+wishing to follow him to the grave.
+
+No trace has ever been found of the great dog; at which there is much
+mourning, for, with public opinion in its present state, he would, I
+believe, be adopted by the town. To-morrow will see the funeral; and so
+will end this one more “mystery of the sea.”
+
+
+_Mina Murray’s Journal._
+
+_8 August._--Lucy was very restless all night, and I, too, could not
+sleep. The storm was fearful, and as it boomed loudly among the
+chimney-pots, it made me shudder. When a sharp puff came it seemed to be
+like a distant gun. Strangely enough, Lucy did not wake; but she got up
+twice and dressed herself. Fortunately, each time I awoke in time and
+managed to undress her without waking her, and got her back to bed. It
+is a very strange thing, this sleep-walking, for as soon as her will is
+thwarted in any physical way, her intention, if there be any,
+disappears, and she yields herself almost exactly to the routine of her
+life.
+
+Early in the morning we both got up and went down to the harbour to see
+if anything had happened in the night. There were very few people about,
+and though the sun was bright, and the air clear and fresh, the big,
+grim-looking waves, that seemed dark themselves because the foam that
+topped them was like snow, forced themselves in through the narrow mouth
+of the harbour--like a bullying man going through a crowd. Somehow I
+felt glad that Jonathan was not on the sea last night, but on land. But,
+oh, is he on land or sea? Where is he, and how? I am getting fearfully
+anxious about him. If I only knew what to do, and could do anything!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_10 August._--The funeral of the poor sea-captain to-day 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 cortège 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 quite 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 old 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! Perhaps he had seen Death with his dying eyes! 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 sort of fury, with its eyes savage, and all its hairs
+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 became quiet and fell all into a 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 to-night, I am sure. The
+whole agglomeration of things--the ship steered into port by a dead
+man; his attitude, tied to the wheel with a crucifix and beads; the
+touching funeral; the dog, now furious and now in terror--will all
+afford material for her dreams.
+
+I think it will be best for her to go to bed tired out physically, so I
+shall take her for a long walk by the cliffs to Robin Hood’s Bay and
+back. She ought not to have much inclination for sleep-walking then.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+MINA MURRAY’S JOURNAL
+
+
+_Same day, 11 o’clock p. m._--Oh, but I am tired! If it were not that I
+had made my diary a duty I should not open it to-night. We had a lovely
+walk. Lucy, after a while, was in gay spirits, owing, I think, to some
+dear cows who came nosing towards us in a field close to the lighthouse,
+and frightened the wits out of us. I believe we forgot everything
+except, of course, personal fear, and it seemed to wipe the slate clean
+and give us a fresh start. We had a capital “severe tea” at Robin Hood’s
+Bay in a sweet little old-fashioned inn, with a bow-window right over
+the seaweed-covered rocks of the strand. I believe we should have
+shocked the “New Woman” with our appetites. Men are more tolerant, bless
+them! Then we walked home with some, or rather many, stoppages to rest,
+and with our hearts full of a constant dread of wild bulls. Lucy was
+really tired, and we intended to creep off to bed as soon as we could.
+The young curate came in, however, and Mrs. Westenra asked him to stay
+for supper. Lucy and I had both a fight for it with the dusty miller; I
+know it was a hard fight on my part, and I am quite heroic. I think that
+some day the bishops must get together and see about breeding up a new
+class of curates, who don’t take supper, no matter how 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 to-night,
+because dear Lucy seems better. I really believe she has turned the
+corner, and that we are over her troubles with dreaming. I should be
+quite happy if I only knew if Jonathan.... God bless and keep him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_11 August, 3 a. m._--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
+agonising experience. I fell asleep as soon as I had closed my diary....
+Suddenly I became broad awake, and sat up, with a horrible sense of fear
+upon me, and of some feeling of emptiness around me. The room was dark,
+so I could not see Lucy’s bed; I stole across and felt for her. The bed
+was empty. I lit a match and found that she was not in the room. The
+door was shut, but not locked, as I had left it. I feared to wake her
+mother, who has been more than usually ill lately, so threw on some
+clothes and got ready to look for her. As I was leaving the room it
+struck me that the clothes she wore might give me some clue to her
+dreaming intention. Dressing-gown would mean house; dress, outside.
+Dressing-gown and dress were both in their places. “Thank God,” I said
+to myself, “she cannot be far, as she is only in her nightdress.” I ran
+downstairs and looked in the sitting-room. Not there! Then I looked in
+all the other open rooms of the house, with an ever-growing fear
+chilling my heart. Finally I came to the hall door and found it open. It
+was not wide open, but the catch of the lock had not caught. The people
+of the house are careful to lock the door every night, so I feared that
+Lucy must have gone out as she was. There was no time to think of what
+might happen; a vague, 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 sword-cut moved along, the church and the churchyard became gradually
+visible. Whatever my expectation was, it was not disappointed, for
+there, on our favourite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a
+half-reclining figure, snowy white. The coming of the cloud was too
+quick for me to see much, for shadow shut down on light almost
+immediately; but it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind
+the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was,
+whether man or beast, I could not tell; I did not wait to catch another
+glance, but flew down the steep steps to the pier and along by the
+fish-market to the bridge, which was the only way to reach the East
+Cliff. The town seemed as dead, for not a soul did I see; I rejoiced
+that it was so, for I wanted no witness of poor Lucy’s condition. The
+time and distance seemed endless, and my knees trembled and my breath
+came laboured as I toiled up the endless steps to the abbey. I must have
+gone fast, and yet it seemed to me as if my feet were weighted with
+lead, and as though every joint in my body were rusty. When I got almost
+to the top I could see the seat and the white figure, for I was now
+close enough to distinguish it even through the spells of shadow. There
+was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the
+half-reclining white figure. I called in fright, “Lucy! Lucy!” and
+something raised a head, and from where I was I could see a white face
+and red, gleaming eyes. Lucy did not answer, and I ran on to the
+entrance of the churchyard. As I entered, the church was between me and
+the seat, and for a minute or so I lost sight of her. When I came in
+view again the cloud had passed, and the moonlight struck so brilliantly
+that I could see Lucy half reclining with her head lying over the back
+of the seat. She was quite alone, and there was not a sign of any living
+thing about.
+
+When I bent over her I could see that she was still asleep. Her lips
+were parted, and she was breathing--not softly as usual with her, but in
+long, heavy gasps, as though striving to get her lungs full at every
+breath. As I came close, she put up her hand in her sleep and pulled the
+collar of her nightdress close around her throat. Whilst she did so
+there came a little shudder through her, as though she felt the cold. I
+flung the warm shawl over her, and drew the edges tight round 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 that I might help her, I fastened the shawl at her
+throat with a big safety-pin; but I must have been clumsy in my anxiety
+and pinched or pricked her with it, for by-and-by, when her breathing
+became quieter, she put her hand to her throat again and moaned. When I
+had her carefully wrapped up I put my shoes on her feet and then began
+very gently to wake her. At first she did not respond; but gradually she
+became more and more uneasy in her sleep, moaning and sighing
+occasionally. At last, as time was passing fast, and, for many other
+reasons, I wished to get her home at once, I shook her more forcibly,
+till finally she opened her eyes and awoke. She did not seem surprised
+to see me, as, of course, she did not realise 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 churchyard, 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 that sometimes I thought I
+should faint. I was filled with anxiety about Lucy, not only for her
+health, lest she should suffer from the exposure, but for her reputation
+in case the story should get wind. When we got in, and had washed our
+feet, and had said a prayer of thankfulness together, I tucked her into
+bed. Before falling asleep she asked--even implored--me not to say a
+word to any one, even her mother, about her sleep-walking adventure. I
+hesitated at first to promise; but on thinking of the state of her
+mother’s health, and how the knowledge of such a thing would fret her,
+and thinking, too, of how such a story might become distorted--nay,
+infallibly would--in case it should leak out, I thought it wiser to do
+so. I hope I did right. I have locked the door, and the key is tied to
+my wrist, so perhaps I shall not be again disturbed. Lucy is sleeping
+soundly; the reflex of the dawn is high and far over the sea....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Same day, noon._--All goes well. Lucy slept till I woke her and seemed
+not to have even changed her side. The adventure of the night does not
+seem to have harmed her; on the contrary, it has benefited her, for she
+looks better this morning than she has done for weeks. I was sorry to
+notice that my clumsiness with the safety-pin hurt her. Indeed, it might
+have been serious, for the skin of her throat was pierced. I must have
+pinched up a piece of loose skin and have transfixed it, for there are
+two little red points like pin-pricks, and on the band of her nightdress
+was a drop of blood. When I apologised and was concerned about it, she
+laughed and petted me, and said she did not even feel it. Fortunately it
+cannot leave a scar, as it is so tiny.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Same day, night._--We passed a happy day. The air was clear, and the
+sun bright, and there was a cool breeze. We took our lunch to Mulgrave
+Woods, Mrs. Westenra driving by the road and Lucy and I walking by the
+cliff-path and joining her at the gate. I felt a little sad myself, for
+I could not but feel how _absolutely_ happy it would have been had
+Jonathan been with me. But there! I must only be patient. In the evening
+we strolled in the Casino Terrace, and heard some good music by Spohr
+and Mackenzie, and went to bed early. Lucy seems more restful than she
+has been for some time, and fell asleep at once. I shall lock the door
+and secure the key the same as before, though I do not expect any
+trouble to-night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_12 August._--My expectations were wrong, for twice during the night I
+was wakened by Lucy trying to get out. She seemed, even in her sleep, to
+be a little impatient at finding the door shut, and went back to bed
+under a sort of protest. I woke with the dawn, and heard the birds
+chirping outside of the window. Lucy woke, too, and, I was glad to see,
+was even better than on the previous morning. All her old gaiety of
+manner seemed to have come back, and she came and snuggled in beside me
+and told me all about Arthur. I told her how anxious I was about
+Jonathan, and then she tried to comfort me. Well, she succeeded
+somewhat, for, though sympathy can’t alter facts, it can help to make
+them more bearable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_13 August._--Another quiet day, and to bed with the key on my wrist as
+before. Again I awoke in the night, and found Lucy sitting up in bed,
+still asleep, pointing to the window. I got up quietly, and pulling
+aside the blind, looked out. It was brilliant moonlight, and the soft
+effect of the light over the sea and sky--merged together in one great,
+silent mystery--was beautiful beyond words. Between me and the moonlight
+flitted a great bat, coming and going in great whirling circles. Once or
+twice it came quite close, but was, I suppose, frightened at seeing me,
+and flitted away across the harbour towards the abbey. When I came back
+from the window Lucy had lain down again, and was sleeping peacefully.
+She did not stir again all night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_14 August._--On the East Cliff, reading and writing all day. Lucy seems
+to have become as much in love with the spot as I am, and it is hard to
+get her away from it when it is time to come home for lunch or tea or
+dinner. This afternoon she made a funny remark. We were coming home for
+dinner, and had come to the top of the steps up from the West Pier and
+stopped to look at the view, as we generally do. The setting sun, low
+down in the sky, was just dropping behind Kettleness; the red light was
+thrown over on the East Cliff and the old abbey, and seemed to bathe
+everything in a beautiful rosy glow. We were silent for a while, and
+suddenly Lucy murmured as if to herself:--
+
+“His red eyes again! They are just the same.” It was such an odd
+expression, coming _apropos_ of nothing, that it quite startled me. I
+slewed round a little, so as to see Lucy well without seeming to stare
+at her, and saw that she was in a half-dreamy state, with an odd look on
+her face that I could not quite make out; so I said nothing, but
+followed her eyes. She appeared to be looking over at our own seat,
+whereon was a dark figure seated alone. I was 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 thought that
+perhaps she was looking out for me, so I opened my handkerchief and
+waved it. She did not notice or make any movement whatever. Just then,
+the moonlight crept round an angle of the building, and the light fell
+on the window. There distinctly was Lucy with her head lying up against
+the side of the window-sill and her eyes shut. She was fast asleep, and
+by her, seated on the window-sill, was something that looked like a
+good-sized bird. I was afraid she might get a chill, so I ran upstairs,
+but as I came into the room she was moving back to her bed, fast
+asleep, and breathing heavily; she was holding her hand to her throat,
+as though to protect it from cold.
+
+I did not wake her, but tucked her up warmly; I have taken care that the
+door is locked and the window securely fastened.
+
+She looks so sweet as she sleeps; but she is paler than is her wont, and
+there is a drawn, haggard look under her eyes which I do not like. I
+fear she is fretting about something. I wish I could find out what it
+is.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_15 August._--Rose later than usual. Lucy was languid and tired, and
+slept on after we had been called. We had a happy surprise at breakfast.
+Arthur’s father is better, and wants the marriage to come off soon. Lucy
+is full of quiet joy, and her mother is glad and sorry at once. Later on
+in the day she told me the cause. She is grieved to lose Lucy as her
+very own, but she is rejoiced that she is soon to have some one to
+protect her. Poor dear, sweet lady! She confided to me that she has got
+her death-warrant. She has not told Lucy, and made me promise secrecy;
+her doctor told her that within a few months, at most, she must die, for
+her heart is weakening. At any time, even now, a sudden shock would be
+almost sure to kill her. Ah, we were wise to keep from her the affair of
+the dreadful night of Lucy’s sleep-walking.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_17 August._--No diary for two whole days. I have not had the heart to
+write. Some sort of shadowy pall seems to be coming over our happiness.
+No news from Jonathan, and Lucy seems to be growing weaker, whilst her
+mother’s hours are numbering to a close. I do not understand Lucy’s
+fading away as she is doing. She eats well and sleeps well, and enjoys
+the fresh air; but all the time the roses in her cheeks are fading, and
+she gets weaker and more languid day by day; at night I hear her gasping
+as if for air. I keep the key of our door always fastened to my wrist at
+night, but she gets up and walks about the room, and sits at the open
+window. Last night I found her leaning out when I woke up, and when I
+tried to wake her I could not; she was in a faint. When I managed to
+restore her she was as weak as water, and cried silently between long,
+painful struggles for breath. When I asked her how she came to be at the
+window she shook her head and turned away. I trust her feeling ill may
+not be from that unlucky prick of the safety-pin. I looked at her throat
+just now as she lay asleep, and the tiny wounds seem not to have healed.
+They are still open, and, if anything, larger than before, and the
+edges of them are faintly white. They are like little white dots with
+red centres. Unless they heal within a day or two, I shall insist on the
+doctor seeing about them.
+
+
+_Letter, Samuel F. Billington & Son, Solicitors, Whitby, to Messrs.
+Carter, Paterson & Co., London._
+
+“_17 August._
+
+“Dear Sirs,--
+
+“Herewith please receive invoice of goods sent by Great Northern
+Railway. Same are to be delivered at Carfax, near Purfleet, immediately
+on receipt at goods station King’s Cross. The house is at present empty,
+but enclosed please find keys, all of which are labelled.
+
+“You will please deposit the boxes, fifty in number, which form the
+consignment, in the partially ruined building forming part of the house
+and marked ‘A’ on rough diagram enclosed. Your agent will easily
+recognise the locality, as it is the ancient chapel of the mansion. The
+goods leave by the train at 9:30 to-night, and will be due at King’s
+Cross at 4:30 to-morrow 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 (£10), receipt of which please acknowledge.
+Should the charge be less than this amount, you can return balance; if
+greater, we shall at once send cheque for difference on hearing from
+you. You are to leave the keys on coming away in the main hall of the
+house, where the proprietor may get them on his entering the house by
+means of his duplicate key.
+
+“Pray do not take us as exceeding the bounds of business courtesy in
+pressing you in all ways to use the utmost expedition.
+
+_“We are, dear Sirs,
+
+“Faithfully yours,
+
+“SAMUEL F. BILLINGTON & SON.”_
+
+
+_Letter, Messrs. Carter, Paterson & Co., London, to Messrs. Billington &
+Son, Whitby._
+
+“_21 August._
+
+“Dear Sirs,--
+
+“We beg to acknowledge £10 received and to return cheque £1 17s. 9d,
+amount of overplus, as shown in receipted account herewith. Goods are
+delivered in exact accordance with instructions, and keys left in parcel
+in main hall, as directed.
+
+“We are, dear Sirs,
+
+“Yours respectfully.
+
+“_Pro_ CARTER, PATERSON & CO.”
+
+
+_Mina Murray’s Journal._
+
+_18 August._--I am happy to-day, and write sitting on the seat in the
+churchyard. Lucy is ever so much better. Last night she slept well all
+night, and did not disturb me once. The roses seem coming back already
+to her cheeks, though she is still sadly pale and wan-looking. If she
+were in any way anæmic I could understand it, but she is not. She is in
+gay spirits and full of life and cheerfulness. All the morbid reticence
+seems to have passed from her, and she has just reminded me, as if I
+needed any reminding, of _that_ night, and that it was here, on this
+very seat, I found her asleep. As she told me she tapped playfully with
+the heel of her boot on the stone slab and said:--
+
+“My poor little feet didn’t make much noise then! I daresay poor old Mr.
+Swales would have told me that it was because I didn’t want to wake up
+Geordie.” As she was in such a communicative humour, I asked her if she
+had dreamed at all that night. Before she answered, that sweet, puckered
+look came into her forehead, which Arthur--I call him Arthur from her
+habit--says he loves; and, indeed, I don’t wonder that he does. Then she
+went on in a half-dreaming kind of way, as if trying to recall it to
+herself:--
+
+“I didn’t quite dream; but it all seemed to be real. I only wanted to be
+here in this spot--I don’t know why, for I was afraid of something--I
+don’t know what. I remember, though I suppose I was asleep, passing
+through the streets and over the bridge. A fish leaped as I went by, and
+I leaned over to look at it, and I heard a lot of dogs howling--the
+whole town seemed as if it must be full of dogs all howling at once--as
+I went up the steps. Then I had a vague memory of something long and
+dark with red eyes, just as we saw in the sunset, and something very
+sweet and very bitter all around me at once; and then I seemed sinking
+into deep green water, and there was a singing in my ears, as I have
+heard there is to drowning men; and then everything seemed passing away
+from me; my soul seemed to go out from my body and float about the air.
+I seem to remember that once the West Lighthouse was right under me,
+and then there was a sort of agonising 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 other
+subjects, and Lucy was like her old self again. When we got home the
+fresh breeze had braced her up, and her pale cheeks were really more
+rosy. Her mother rejoiced when she saw her, and we all spent a very
+happy evening together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_19 August._--Joy, joy, joy! although not all joy. At last, news of
+Jonathan. The dear fellow has been ill; that is why he did not write. I
+am not afraid to think it or 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 next my heart, for he is _in_ my heart. My journey
+is all mapped out, and my luggage ready. I am only taking one change of
+dress; Lucy will bring my trunk to London and keep it till I send for
+it, for it may be that ... I must write no more; I must keep it to say
+to Jonathan, my husband. The letter that he has seen and touched must
+comfort me till we meet.
+
+
+_Letter, Sister Agatha, Hospital of St. Joseph and Ste. Mary,
+Buda-Pesth, to Miss Wilhelmina Murray._
+
+“_12 August._
+
+“Dear Madam,--
+
+“I write by desire of Mr. Jonathan Harker, who is himself not strong
+enough to write, though progressing well, thanks to God and St. Joseph
+and Ste. Mary. He has been under our care for nearly six weeks,
+suffering from a violent brain fever. He wishes me to convey his love,
+and to say that by this post I write for him to Mr. Peter Hawkins,
+Exeter, to say, with his dutiful respects, that he is sorry for his
+delay, and that all of his work is completed. He will require some few
+weeks’ rest in our sanatorium in the hills, but will then return. He
+wishes me to say that he has not sufficient money with him, and that he
+would like to pay for his staying here, so that others who need shall
+not be wanting for help.
+
+“Believe me,
+
+“Yours, with sympathy and all blessings,
+
+“SISTER AGATHA.
+
+“P. S.--My patient being asleep, I open this to let you know something
+more. He has told me all about you, and that you are shortly to be his
+wife. All blessings to you both! He has had some fearful shock--so says
+our doctor--and in his delirium his ravings have been dreadful; of
+wolves and poison and blood; of ghosts and demons; and I fear to say of
+what. Be careful with 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 on him nothing that any one
+could understand. He came in the train from Klausenburg, and the guard
+was told by the station-master there that he rushed into the station
+shouting for a ticket for home. Seeing from his violent demeanour that
+he was English, they gave him a ticket for the furthest station on the
+way thither that the train reached.
+
+“Be assured that he is well cared for. He has won all hearts by his
+sweetness and gentleness. He is truly getting on well, and I have no
+doubt will in a few weeks be all himself. But be careful of him for
+safety’s sake. There are, I pray God and St. Joseph and Ste. Mary, many,
+many, happy years for you both.”
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_19 August._--Strange and sudden change in Renfield last night. About
+eight o’clock he began to get excited and sniff about as a dog does when
+setting. The attendant was struck by his manner, and knowing my interest
+in him, encouraged him to talk. He is usually respectful to the
+attendant and at times servile; but to-night, the man tells me, he was
+quite haughty. Would not condescend to talk with him at all. All he
+would say was:--
+
+     “I don’t want to talk to you: you don’t count now; the Master is at
+     hand.”
+
+The attendant thinks it is some sudden form of religious mania which has
+seized him. If so, we must look out for squalls, for a strong man with
+homicidal and religious mania at once might be dangerous. The
+combination is a dreadful one. At nine o’clock I visited him myself. His
+attitude to me was the same as that to the attendant; in his sublime
+self-feeling the difference between myself and attendant seemed to him
+as nothing. It looks like religious mania, and he will soon think that
+he himself is God. These infinitesimal distinctions between man and man
+are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being. How these madmen give themselves
+away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall; but the God created
+from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow. Oh,
+if men only knew!
+
+For half an hour or more Renfield kept getting excited in greater and
+greater degree. I did not pretend to be watching him, but I kept strict
+observation all the same. All at once that shifty look came into his
+eyes which we always see when a madman has seized an idea, and with it
+the shifty movement of the head and back which asylum attendants come to
+know so well. He became quite quiet, and went and sat on the edge of his
+bed resignedly, and looked into space with lack-lustre 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 note-book 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 to-night 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--C_{2}HCl_{3}O. H_{2}O! I must be careful not to let
+it grow into a habit. No, I shall take none to-night! I have thought of
+Lucy, and I shall not dishonour her by mixing the two. If need be,
+to-night 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 he 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 to-night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+_Letter, Mina Harker to Lucy Westenra._
+
+“_Buda-Pesth, 24 August._
+
+“My dearest Lucy,--
+
+“I know you will be anxious to hear all that has happened since we
+parted at the railway station at Whitby. Well, my dear, I got to Hull
+all right, and caught the boat to Hamburg, and then the train on here. I
+feel that I can hardly recall anything of the journey, except that I
+knew I was coming to Jonathan, and, that as I should have to do some
+nursing, I had better get all the sleep I could.... I found my dear one,
+oh, so thin and pale and weak-looking. All the resolution has gone out
+of his dear eyes, and that quiet dignity which I told you was in his
+face has vanished. He is only a wreck of himself, and he does not
+remember anything that has happened to him for a long time past. At
+least, he wants me to believe so, and I shall never ask. He has had some
+terrible shock, and I fear it might tax his poor brain if he were to try
+to recall it. Sister Agatha, who is a good creature and a born nurse,
+tells me that he raved of dreadful things whilst he was off his head. I
+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 again,
+and after saying that she could never mention what 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 of 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 that amongst them was his note-book, and was going to ask him to
+let me look at it--for I knew then 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 when I came he had his hand over the
+note-book, 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 all real or the dreaming of a madman. You know I have 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 strongly. I could hardly speak; my heart was so full that even those
+words seemed to choke me. The dear sisters were so kind. Please God, I
+shall never, never forget them, nor the grave and sweet responsibilities
+I have taken upon me. I must tell you of my wedding present. When the
+chaplain and the sisters had left me alone with my husband--oh, Lucy, it
+is the first time I have written the words ‘my husband’--left me alone
+with my husband, I took the book from under his pillow, and wrapped it
+up in white paper, and tied it with a little bit of pale blue ribbon
+which was round my neck, and sealed it over the knot with sealing-wax,
+and for my seal I used my wedding ring. Then I kissed it and showed it
+to my husband, and told him that I would keep it so, and then it would
+be an outward and visible sign for us all our lives that we trusted each
+other; that I would never open it unless it were for his own dear sake
+or for the sake of some stern duty. Then he took my hand in his, and oh,
+Lucy, it was the first time he took _his wife’s_ hand, and said that it
+was the dearest thing in all the wide world, and that he would go
+through all the past again to win it, if need be. The poor dear meant to
+have said a part of the past, but he cannot think of time yet, and I
+shall not wonder if at first he mixes up not only the month, but the
+year.
+
+“Well, my dear, what could I say? I could only tell him that I was the
+happiest woman in all the wide world, and that I had nothing to give him
+except myself, my life, and my trust, and that with these went my love
+and duty for all the days of my life. And, my dear, when he kissed me,
+and drew me to him with his poor weak hands, it was like a very 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_. Good-bye, 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 to my husband!
+
+“Your ever-loving
+
+“MINA HARKER.”
+
+
+_Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Harker._
+
+“_Whitby, 30 August._
+
+“My dearest Mina,--
+
+“Oceans of love and millions of kisses, and may you soon be in your own
+home with your husband. I wish you could be coming home soon enough to
+stay with us here. The strong air would soon restore Jonathan; it has
+quite restored me. I have an appetite like a cormorant, am full of
+life, and sleep well. You will be glad to know that I have quite given
+up walking in my sleep. I think I have not stirred out of my bed for a
+week, that is when I once got into it at night. Arthur says I am getting
+fat. By the way, I forgot to tell you that Arthur is here. We have such
+walks and drives, and rides, and rowing, and tennis, and fishing
+together; and I love him more than ever. He _tells_ me that he loves me
+more, but I doubt that, for at first he told me that he couldn’t love me
+more than he did then. But this is nonsense. There he is, calling to me.
+So no more just at present from your loving
+
+“LUCY.
+
+“P. S.--Mother sends her love. She seems better, poor dear.
+“P. P. S.--We are to be married on 28 September.”
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_20 August._--The case of Renfield grows even more interesting. He has
+now so far quieted that there are spells of cessation from his passion.
+For the first week after his attack he was perpetually violent. Then one
+night, just as the moon rose, he grew quiet, and kept murmuring to
+himself: “Now I can wait; now I can wait.” The attendant came to tell
+me, so I ran down at once to have a look at him. He was still in the
+strait-waistcoat and in the padded room, but the suffused look had gone
+from his face, and his eyes had something of their old pleading--I might
+almost say, “cringing”--softness. I was satisfied with his present
+condition, and directed him to be relieved. The attendants hesitated,
+but finally carried out my wishes without protest. It was a strange
+thing that the patient had humour enough to see their distrust, for,
+coming close to me, he said in a whisper, all the while looking
+furtively at them:--
+
+“They think I could hurt you! Fancy _me_ hurting _you_! The fools!”
+
+It was soothing, somehow, to the feelings to find myself dissociated
+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. To-night he will not speak. Even the
+offer of a kitten or even a full-grown cat will not tempt him. He will
+only say: “I don’t take any stock in cats. I have more to think of now,
+and I can wait; I can wait.”
+
+After a while I left him. The attendant tells me that he was quiet
+until just before dawn, and that then he began to get uneasy, and at
+length violent, until at last he fell into a paroxysm which exhausted
+him so that he swooned into a sort of coma.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+... Three nights has the same thing happened--violent all day then quiet
+from moonrise to sunrise. I wish I could get some clue to the cause. It
+would almost seem as if there was some influence which came and went.
+Happy thought! We shall to-night play sane wits against mad ones. He
+escaped before without our help; to-night he shall escape with it. We
+shall give him a chance, and have the men ready to follow in case they
+are required....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_23 August._--“The unexpected 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 an 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 moonlit sky except a big bat, which was flapping its silent and
+ghostly way to the west. Bats usually wheel and flit about, but this one
+seemed to go straight on, as if it knew where it was bound for or had
+some intention of its own. The patient grew calmer every instant, and
+presently said:--
+
+“You needn’t tie me; I shall go quietly!” Without trouble we came back
+to the house. I feel there is something ominous in his calm, and shall
+not forget this night....
+
+
+_Lucy Westenra’s Diary_
+
+_Hillingham, 24 August._--I must imitate Mina, and keep writing things
+down. Then we can have long talks when we do meet. I wonder when it will
+be. I wish she were with me again, for I feel so unhappy. Last night I
+seemed to be dreaming again just as I was at Whitby. Perhaps it is the
+change of air, or getting home again. It is all dark and horrid to me,
+for I can remember nothing; but I am full of vague fear, and I feel so
+weak and worn out. When Arthur came to lunch he looked quite grieved
+when he saw me, and I hadn’t the spirit to try to be cheerful. I wonder
+if I could sleep in mother’s room to-night. I shall make an excuse and
+try.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_25 August._--Another bad night. Mother did not seem to take to my
+proposal. She seems not too well herself, and doubtless she fears to
+worry me. I tried to keep awake, and succeeded for a while; but when the
+clock struck twelve it waked me from a doze, so I must have been falling
+asleep. There was a sort of scratching or flapping at the window, but I
+did not mind it, and as I remember no more, I suppose I must then 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 ever to
+get 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 Holmwood to Dr. Seward._
+
+“_Albemarle Hotel, 31 August._
+
+“My dear Jack,--
+
+“I want you to do me a favour. Lucy is ill; that is, she has no special
+disease, but she looks awful, and is getting worse every day. I have
+asked her if there is any cause; I do 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 to-morrow, 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 shall come in for tea, and we can go away together; I
+am filled with anxiety, and want to consult with you alone as soon as I
+can after you have seen her. Do not fail!
+
+“ARTHUR.”
+
+
+_Telegram, Arthur Holmwood to Seward._
+
+“_1 September._
+
+“Am summoned to see my father, who is worse. Am writing. Write me fully
+by to-night’s post to Ring. Wire me if necessary.”
+
+
+_Letter from Dr. Seward to Arthur Holmwood._
+
+“_2 September._
+
+“My dear old fellow,--
+
+“With regard to Miss Westenra’s health I hasten to let you know at once
+that in my opinion there is not any functional disturbance or any malady
+that I know of. At the same time, I am not by any means satisfied with
+her appearance; she is woefully different from what she was when I saw
+her last. Of course you must bear in mind that I did not have full
+opportunity of examination such as I should wish; our very friendship
+makes a little difficulty which not even medical science or custom can
+bridge over. I had better tell you exactly what happened, leaving you to
+draw, in a measure, your own conclusions. I shall then say what I have
+done and propose doing.
+
+“I found Miss Westenra in seemingly gay spirits. Her mother was present,
+and in a few seconds I made up my mind that she was trying all she knew
+to mislead her mother and prevent her from being anxious. I have no
+doubt she guesses, if she does not know, what need of caution there is.
+We lunched alone, and as we all exerted ourselves to be cheerful, we
+got, as some kind of reward for our labours, some real cheerfulness
+amongst us. Then Mrs. Westenra went to lie down, and Lucy was left with
+me. We went into her boudoir, and till we got there her gaiety remained,
+for the servants were coming and going. As soon as the door was closed,
+however, the mask fell from her face, and she sank down into a chair
+with a great sigh, and hid her eyes with her hand. When I saw that her
+high spirits had failed, I at once took advantage of her reaction to
+make a diagnosis. She said to me very sweetly:--
+
+“‘I cannot tell you how I loathe talking about myself.’ I reminded her
+that a doctor’s confidence was sacred, but that you were grievously
+anxious about her. She caught on to my meaning at once, and settled that
+matter in a word. ‘Tell Arthur everything you choose. I do not care for
+myself, but all for him!’ So I am quite free.
+
+“I could easily see that she is somewhat bloodless, but I could not see
+the usual anæmic signs, and by a chance I was actually able to test the
+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 gives 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 in 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, but this is because he knows
+what he is talking about better than any one else. He is a philosopher
+and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day;
+and he has, I believe, an absolutely open mind. This, with an iron
+nerve, a temper of the ice-brook, an indomitable resolution,
+self-command, and toleration exalted from virtues to blessings, and the
+kindliest and truest heart that beats--these form his equipment for the
+noble work that he is doing for mankind--work both in theory and
+practice, for his views are as wide as his all-embracing sympathy. I
+tell you these facts that you may know why I have such confidence in
+him. I have asked him to come at once. I shall see Miss Westenra
+to-morrow 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, M. D., D. Ph., D. Lit., etc., etc., to Dr.
+Seward._
+
+“_2 September._
+
+“My good Friend,--
+
+“When I have 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 then rooms for me at the Great Eastern Hotel, so that I may be near
+to hand, and please it so arrange that we may see the young lady not too
+late on to-morrow, 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 good-bye, my friend John.
+
+ “VAN HELSING.”
+
+
+_Letter, Dr. Seward to Hon. Arthur Holmwood._
+
+“_3 September._
+
+“My dear Art,--
+
+“Van Helsing has come and gone. He came on with me to Hillingham, and
+found that, by Lucy’s discretion, her mother was lunching out, so that
+we were alone with her. Van Helsing made a very careful examination of
+the patient. He is to report to me, and I shall advise you, for of
+course I was not present all the time. He is, I fear, much concerned,
+but says he must think. When I told him of our friendship and how you
+trust to me in the matter, he said: ‘You must tell him all you think.
+Tell him 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 in London were not quite so bad as they used to be when he was a
+student here. I am to get his report to-morrow 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 that 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, ever 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 once he pointed me out to 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 madmans 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 anæmic. I have
+asked her to send me her maid, that I may ask just one or two question,
+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 to me the telegram every day; and if
+there be cause I shall come again. The disease--for not to be all well
+is a disease--interest me, and the sweet young dear, she interest me
+too. She charm me, and for her, if not for you or disease, I come.’
+
+“As I tell you, he would not say a word more, even when we were alone.
+And so now, Art, you know all I know. I shall keep stern watch. I trust
+your poor father is rallying. It must be a terrible thing to you, my
+dear old fellow, to be placed in such a position between two people who
+are both so dear to you. I know your idea of duty to your father, and
+you are right to stick to it; but, if need be, I shall send you word to
+come at once to Lucy; so do not be over-anxious unless you hear from
+me.”
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_4 September._--Zoöphagous 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 and more quiet, and finally sank
+into a sort of melancholy, in which state he has remained up to now. The
+attendant tells me that his screams whilst in the paroxysm were really
+appalling; I found my hands full when I got in, attending to some of the
+other patients who were frightened by him. Indeed, I can quite
+understand the effect, for the sounds disturbed even me, though I was
+some distance away. It is now after the dinner-hour of the asylum, and
+as yet my patient sits in a corner brooding, with a dull, sullen,
+woe-begone look in his face, which seems rather to indicate than to show
+something directly. I cannot quite understand it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Later._--Another change in my patient. At five o’clock I looked in on
+him, and found him seemingly as happy and contented as he used to be. He
+was catching flies and eating them, and was keeping note of his capture
+by making nail-marks on the edge of the door between the ridges of
+padding. When he saw me, he came over and apologised 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 note-book 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 for 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 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 realise 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 not 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 to-day his paroxysms came on at high noon
+and at sunset. Can it be that there is a malign influence of the sun at
+periods which affects certain natures--as at times the moon does others?
+We shall see.
+
+
+_Telegram, Seward, London, to Van Helsing, Amsterdam._
+
+“_4 September._--Patient still better to-day.”
+
+
+_Telegram, Seward, London, to Van Helsing, Amsterdam._
+
+“_5 September._--Patient greatly improved. Good appetite; sleeps
+naturally; good spirits; colour coming back.”
+
+
+_Telegram, Seward, London, to Van Helsing, Amsterdam._
+
+“_6 September._--Terrible change for the worse. Come at once; do not
+lose an hour. I hold over telegram to Holmwood till have seen you.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+_Letter, Dr. Seward to Hon. Arthur Holmwood._
+
+“_6 September._
+
+“My dear Art,--
+
+“My news to-day 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 old fellow; but, please God, we shall
+come through them all right. If any need I shall write, so that, if you
+do not hear from me, take it for granted that I am simply waiting for
+news. In haste
+
+“Yours ever,
+
+“JOHN SEWARD.”
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_7 September._--The first thing Van Helsing said to me when we met at
+Liverpool Street was:--
+
+“Have you said anything to our young friend the 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 shall 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 stopped and 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 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, and very
+gravely:--
+
+“You were always a careful student, and your case-book was ever more
+full than the rest. You were only student then; now you are master, 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 practise, 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 peoples 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 beneficent 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 laid 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 to-day. 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 no 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 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 recognised the strong young manhood which
+seemed to emanate from him, his eyes gleamed. Without a pause he said to
+him gravely 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 nostril
+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 not so bright than yours!” Arthur turned to him
+and said:--
+
+“If you only knew how gladly I would die for her you would
+understand----”
+
+He stopped, with a sort of choke in his voice.
+
+“Good boy!” said Van Helsing. “In the not-so-far-off you will be happy
+that you have done all for her you love. Come now and be silent. You
+shall kiss her once before it is done, but then you must go; and you
+must leave at my sign. Say no word to Madame; you know how it is with
+her! There must be no shock; any knowledge of this would be one. Come!”
+
+We all went up to Lucy’s room. Arthur by direction remained outside.
+Lucy turned her head and looked at us, but said nothing. She was not
+asleep, but she was simply too weak to make the effort. Her eyes spoke
+to us; that was all. Van Helsing took some things from his bag and laid
+them on a little table out of sight. Then he mixed a narcotic, and
+coming over to the bed, said cheerily:--
+
+“Now, little miss, here is your medicine. Drink it off, like a good
+child. See, I lift you so that to swallow is easy. Yes.” She had made
+the effort with success.
+
+It astonished me how long the drug took to act. This, in fact, marked
+the extent of her weakness. The time seemed endless until sleep began to
+flicker in her eyelids. At last, however, the narcotic began to manifest
+its potency; and she fell into a deep sleep. When the Professor was
+satisfied he called Arthur into the room, and bade him strip off his
+coat. Then he added: “You may take that one little kiss whiles I bring
+over the table. Friend John, help to me!” So neither of us looked whilst
+he bent over her.
+
+Van Helsing turning to me, said:
+
+“He is so young and strong and of blood so pure that we need not
+defibrinate it.”
+
+Then with swiftness, but with absolute method, Van Helsing performed the
+operation. As the transfusion went on something like life seemed to come
+back to poor Lucy’s cheeks, and through Arthur’s growing pallor the joy
+of his face seemed absolutely to shine. After a bit I began to grow
+anxious, for the loss of blood was telling on Arthur, strong man as he
+was. It gave me an idea of what a terrible strain Lucy’s system must
+have undergone that what weakened Arthur only partially restored her.
+But the Professor’s face was set, and he stood watch in hand and with
+his eyes fixed now on the patient and now on Arthur. I could hear my own
+heart beat. Presently he said in a soft voice: “Do not stir an instant.
+It is enough. You attend him; I will look to her.” When all was over I
+could see how much Arthur was weakened. I dressed the wound and took his
+arm to bring him away, when Van Helsing spoke without turning round--the
+man seems to have eyes in the back of his head:--
+
+“The brave lover, I think, deserve another kiss, which he shall have
+presently.” And as he had now finished his operation, he adjusted the
+pillow to the patient’s head. As he did so the narrow black velvet band
+which she seems always to wear round her throat, buckled with an old
+diamond buckle which her lover had given her, was dragged a little up,
+and showed a red mark on her throat. Arthur did not notice it, but I
+could hear the deep hiss of indrawn breath which is one of Van Helsing’s
+ways of betraying emotion. He said nothing at the moment, but turned to
+me, saying: “Now take down our brave young lover, give him of the port
+wine, and let him lie down a while. He must then go home and rest, sleep
+much and eat much, that he may be recruited of what he has so given to
+his love. He must not stay here. Hold! a moment. I may take it, sir,
+that you are anxious of result. Then bring it with you that in all ways
+the operation is successful. You have saved her life this time, and you
+can go home and rest easy in mind that all that can be is. I shall tell
+her all when she is well; she shall love you none the less for what you
+have done. Good-bye.”
+
+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 this wound, or whatever it
+was, might be the means of that manifest loss of blood; but I abandoned
+the idea as soon as 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 to-night,” he said. “There are books and
+things there which I want. You must remain here all the 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 warning finger held
+up:--
+
+“Remember, she is your charge. If you leave her, and harm befall, you
+shall not sleep easy hereafter!”
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary--continued._
+
+_8 September._--I sat up all night with Lucy. The opiate worked itself
+off towards dusk, and she waked naturally; she looked a different being
+from what she had been before the operation. Her spirits even were good,
+and she was full of a happy vivacity, but I could see evidences of the
+absolute prostration which she had undergone. When I told Mrs. Westenra
+that Dr. Van Helsing had directed that I should sit up with her she
+almost pooh-poohed the idea, pointing out her daughter’s renewed
+strength and excellent spirits. I was firm, however, and made
+preparations for my long vigil. When her maid had prepared her for the
+night I came in, having in the meantime had supper, and took a seat by
+the bedside. She did not in any way make objection, but looked at me
+gratefully whenever I caught her eye. After a long spell she seemed
+sinking off to sleep, but with an effort seemed to pull herself together
+and shook it off. This was repeated several times, with greater effort
+and with shorter pauses as the time moved on. It was apparent that she
+did not want to sleep, so I tackled the subject at once:--
+
+“You do not want to go 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 to-night. I am here watching you, and
+I can promise that nothing will happen.”
+
+“Ah, I can trust you!” I seized the opportunity, and said: “I promise
+you that if I see any evidence of bad dreams I will wake you at once.”
+
+“You will? Oh, will you really? How good you are to me. Then I will
+sleep!” And almost at the word she gave a deep sigh of relief, and sank
+back, asleep.
+
+All night long I watched by her. She never stirred, but slept on and on
+in a deep, tranquil, life-giving, health-giving sleep. Her lips were
+slightly parted, and her breast rose and fell with the regularity of a
+pendulum. There was a smile on her face, and it was evident that no bad
+dreams had come to disturb her peace of mind.
+
+In the early morning her maid came, and I left her in her care and took
+myself back home, for I was anxious about many things. I sent a short
+wire to Van Helsing and to Arthur, telling them of the excellent result
+of the operation. My own work, with its manifold arrears, took me all
+day to clear off; it was dark when I was able to inquire about my
+zoöphagous 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 to-night, as
+it might be well to be at hand, and stating that he was leaving by the
+night mail and would join me early in the morning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_9 September_.--I was pretty tired and worn out when I got to
+Hillingham. For two nights I had hardly had a wink of sleep, and my
+brain was beginning to feel that numbness which marks cerebral
+exhaustion. Lucy was up and in cheerful spirits. When she shook hands
+with me she looked sharply in my face and said:--
+
+“No sitting up to-night for you. You are worn out. I am quite well
+again; indeed, I am; and if there is to be any sitting up, it is I who
+will sit up with you.” I would not argue the point, but went and had my
+supper. Lucy came with me, and, enlivened by her charming presence, I
+made an excellent meal, and had a couple of glasses of the more than
+excellent port. Then Lucy took me upstairs, and showed me a room next
+her own, where a cozy fire was burning. “Now,” she said, “you must stay
+here. I shall leave this door open and my door too. You can lie on the
+sofa for I know that nothing would induce any of you doctors to go to
+bed whilst there is a patient above the horizon. If I want anything I
+shall call out, and you can come to me at once.” I could not but
+acquiesce, for I was “dog-tired,” and could not have sat up had I tried.
+So, on her renewing her promise to call me if she should want anything,
+I lay on the sofa, and forgot all about everything.
+
+
+_Lucy Westenra’s Diary._
+
+_9 September._--I feel so happy to-night. 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 Arthur only 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 to-night 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!
+Good-night, Arthur.
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_10 September._--I was conscious of the Professor’s hand on my head, and
+started awake all in a second. That is one of the things that we learn
+in an asylum, at any rate.
+
+“And how is our patient?”
+
+“Well, when I left her, or rather when she left me,” I answered.
+
+“Come, let us see,” he said. And together we went into the room.
+
+The blind was down, and I went over to raise it gently, whilst Van
+Helsing stepped, with his soft, cat-like tread, over to the bed.
+
+As I raised the blind, and the morning sunlight flooded the room, I
+heard the Professor’s low hiss of inspiration, and knowing its rarity, a
+deadly fear shot through my heart. As I passed over he moved back, and
+his exclamation of horror, “Gott in Himmel!” needed no enforcement from
+his agonised face. He raised his hand and pointed to the bed, and his
+iron face was drawn and ashen white. I felt my knees begin to tremble.
+
+There on the bed, seemingly in a swoon, lay poor Lucy, more horribly
+white and wan-looking than ever. Even the lips were white, and the gums
+seemed to have shrunken back from the teeth, as we sometimes see in a
+corpse after a prolonged illness. Van Helsing raised his foot to stamp
+in anger, but the instinct of his life and all the long years of habit
+stood to him, and he put it down again softly. “Quick!” he said. “Bring
+the brandy.” I flew to the dining-room, and returned with the decanter.
+He wetted the poor white lips with it, and together we rubbed palm and
+wrist and heart. He felt her heart, and after a few moments of agonising
+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 for 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 life-blood 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 _fiancé_. 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, whilst 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 anywhere 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 such 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 to-night, 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 them; think what you will. Do not fear to think
+even the most not-probable. Good-night.”
+
+In the hall two of the maids came to me, and asked if they or either of
+them might not sit up with Miss Lucy. They implored me to let them; and
+when I said it was Dr. Van Helsing’s wish that either he or I should sit
+up, they asked me quite piteously to intercede with the “foreign
+gentleman.” I was much touched by their kindness. Perhaps it is because
+I am weak at present, and perhaps because it was on Lucy’s account, that
+their devotion was manifested; for over and over again have I seen
+similar instances of woman’s kindness. I got back here in time for a
+late dinner; went my rounds--all well; and set this down whilst waiting
+for sleep. It is coming.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_11 September._--This afternoon I went over to Hillingham. Found Van
+Helsing in excellent spirits, and Lucy much better. Shortly after I had
+arrived, a big parcel from abroad came for the Professor. He opened it
+with much impressment--assumed, of course--and showed a great bundle of
+white flowers.
+
+“These are for you, Miss Lucy,” he said.
+
+“For me? Oh, Dr. Van Helsing!”
+
+“Yes, my dear, but not for you to play with. These are medicines.” Here
+Lucy made a wry face. “Nay, but they are not to take in a decoction or
+in nauseous form, so you need not snub that so charming nose, or I shall
+point out to my friend Arthur what woes he may have to endure in seeing
+so much beauty that he so loves so much distort. Aha, my pretty miss,
+that bring the so nice nose all straight again. This is medicinal, but
+you do not know how. I put him in your window, I make pretty wreath, and
+hang him round your neck, so that 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 all 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 awhile. 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 pharmacopoeia
+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 to-night 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:--
+
+“To-night 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. To-morrow 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 XI
+
+_Lucy Westenra’s Diary._
+
+
+_12 September._--How good they all are to me. I quite love that dear Dr.
+Van Helsing. I wonder why he was so anxious about these flowers. He
+positively frightened me, he was so fierce. And yet he must have been
+right, for I feel comfort from them already. Somehow, I do not dread
+being alone to-night, 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 the sleeplessness,
+or the pain of the fear of sleep, 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 to-night, hoping for sleep,
+and lying like Ophelia in the play, with “virgin crants and maiden
+strewments.” I never liked garlic before, but to-night it is delightful!
+There is peace in its smell; I feel sleep coming already. Good-night,
+everybody.
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_13 September._--Called at the Berkeley and found Van Helsing, as usual,
+up to time. The carriage ordered from the hotel was waiting. The
+Professor took his bag, which he always brings with him now.
+
+Let all be put down exactly. Van Helsing and I arrived at Hillingham at
+eight o’clock. It was a lovely morning; the bright sunshine and all the
+fresh feeling of early autumn seemed like the completion of nature’s
+annual work. The leaves were turning to all kinds of beautiful colours,
+but had not yet begun to drop from the trees. When we entered we met
+Mrs. Westenra coming out of the morning room. She is always an early
+riser. She greeted us warmly and said:--
+
+“You will be glad to know that Lucy is better. The dear child is still
+asleep. I looked into her room and saw her, but did not go in, lest I
+should disturb her.” The Professor smiled, and looked quite jubilant. He
+rubbed his hands together, and said:--
+
+“Aha! I thought I had diagnosed the case. My treatment is working,” to
+which she answered:--
+
+“You must not take all the credit to yourself, doctor. Lucy’s state this
+morning is due in part to me.”
+
+“How you do mean, ma’am?” asked the Professor.
+
+“Well, I was anxious about the dear child in the night, and went into
+her room. She was sleeping soundly--so soundly that even my coming did
+not wake her. But the room was awfully stuffy. There were a lot of those
+horrible, strong-smelling flowers about everywhere, and she had actually
+a bunch of them round her neck. I feared that the heavy odour would be
+too much for the dear child in her weak state, so I took them all away
+and opened a bit of the window to let in a little fresh air. You will be
+pleased with her, I am sure.”
+
+She moved off into her boudoir, where she usually breakfasted early. As
+she had spoken, I watched the Professor’s face, and saw it turn ashen
+grey. He had been able to retain his self-command whilst the poor lady
+was present, for he knew her state and how mischievous a shock would be;
+he actually smiled on her as he held open the door for her to pass into
+her room. But the instant she had disappeared he pulled me, suddenly and
+forcibly, into the dining-room and closed the door.
+
+Then, for the first time in my life, I saw Van Helsing break down. He
+raised his hands over his head in a sort of mute despair, and then beat
+his palms together in a helpless way; finally he sat down on a chair,
+and putting his hands before his face, began to sob, with loud, dry sobs
+that seemed to come from the very racking of his heart. Then he raised
+his arms again, as though appealing to the whole universe. “God! God!
+God!” he said. “What have we done, what has this poor thing done, that
+we are so sore beset? Is there fate amongst us still, sent 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, and 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 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 recognised the
+necessity, and begun to take off my coat, but he stopped me with a
+warning hand. “No!” he said. “To-day you must operate. I shall provide.
+You are weakened already.” As he spoke he took off his coat and rolled
+up his shirt-sleeve.
+
+Again the operation; again the narcotic; again some return of colour to
+the ashy cheeks, and the regular breathing of healthy sleep. This time I
+watched whilst Van Helsing recruited himself and rested.
+
+Presently he took an opportunity of telling Mrs. Westenra that she must
+not remove anything from Lucy’s room without consulting him; that the
+flowers were of medicinal value, and that the breathing of their odour
+was a part of the system of cure. Then he took over the care of the case
+himself, saying that he would watch this night and the next and would
+send me word when to come.
+
+After another hour Lucy waked from her sleep, fresh and bright and
+seemingly not much the worse for her terrible ordeal.
+
+What does it all mean? I am beginning to wonder if my long habit of life
+amongst the insane is beginning to tell upon my own brain.
+
+
+_Lucy Westenra’s Diary._
+
+_17 September._--Four days and nights of peace. I am getting so strong
+again that I hardly know myself. It is as if I had passed through some
+long nightmare, and had just awakened to see the beautiful sunshine and
+feel the fresh air of the morning around me. I have a dim
+half-remembrance of long, anxious times of waiting and fearing; darkness
+in which there was not even the pain of hope to make present distress
+more poignant: and then long spells of oblivion, and the rising back to
+life as a diver coming up through a great press of water. Since,
+however, Dr. Van Helsing has been with me, all this bad dreaming seems
+to have passed away; the noises that used to frighten me out of my
+wits--the flapping against the windows, the distant voices which seemed
+so close to me, the harsh sounds that came from I know not where and
+commanded me to do I know not what--have all ceased. I go to bed now
+without any fear of sleep. I do not even try to keep awake. I have grown
+quite fond of the garlic, and a boxful arrives for me every day from
+Haarlem. To-night 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 napped almost angrily against
+the window-panes.
+
+
+_“The Pall Mall Gazette,” 18 September._
+
+                           THE ESCAPED WOLF.
+
+         PERILOUS ADVENTURE OF OUR INTERVIEWER.
+
+         _Interview with the Keeper in the Zoölogical 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 Zoölogical 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 subjects 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 humour.
+
+“’Ittin’ of them over the ’ead with a pole is one way; scratchin’ of
+their hears is 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’ with a pole
+afore I chucks in their dinner; but I waits till they’ve ’ad their
+sherry and kawffee, so to speak, afore I tries on with the
+ear-scratchin’. Mind you,” he added philosophically, “there’s a deal of
+the same nature in us as in them theer animiles. Here’s you a-comin’ and
+arskin’ of me questions about my business, and I that grumpy-like that
+only for your bloomin’ ’arf-quid I’d ’a’ seen you blowed fust ’fore I’d
+answer. Not even when you arsked me sarcastic-like if I’d like you to
+arsk the Superintendent if you might arsk me questions. Without offence
+did I tell yer to go to ’ell?”
+
+“You did.”
+
+“An’ when you said you’d report me for usin’ of obscene language that
+was ’ittin’ me over the ’ead; but the ’arf-quid made that all right. I
+weren’t a-goin’ to fight, so I waited for the food, and did with my ’owl
+as the wolves, and lions, and tigers does. But, Lor’ love yer ’art, now
+that the old ’ooman has stuck a chunk of her tea-cake in me, an’ rinsed
+me out with her bloomin’ old teapot, and I’ve lit hup, you may scratch
+my ears for all you’re worth, and won’t git even a growl out of me.
+Drive along with your questions. I know what yer a-comin’ at, that ’ere
+escaped wolf.”
+
+“Exactly. I want you to give me your view of it. Just tell me how it
+happened; and when I know the facts I’ll get you to say what you
+consider was the cause of it, and how you think the whole affair will
+end.”
+
+“All right, guv’nor. This ’ere is about the ’ole story. That ’ere wolf
+what we called Bersicker was one of three grey ones that came from
+Norway to Jamrach’s, which we bought off him four years ago. He was a
+nice well-behaved wolf, that never gave no trouble to talk of. I’m more
+surprised at ’im for wantin’ to get out nor any other animile in the
+place. But, there, you can’t trust wolves no more nor women.”
+
+“Don’t you mind him, sir!” broke in Mrs. Tom, with a cheery laugh. “’E’s
+got mindin’ the animiles so long that blest if he ain’t like a old wolf
+’isself! But there ain’t no ’arm in ’im.”
+
+“Well, sir, it was about two hours after feedin’ yesterday when I first
+hear my disturbance. I was makin’ up a litter in the monkey-house for a
+young puma which is ill; but when I heard the yelpin’ and ’owlin’ I kem
+away straight. There was Bersicker a-tearin’ like a mad thing at the
+bars as if he wanted to get out. There wasn’t much people about that
+day, and close at hand was only one man, a tall, thin chap, with a ’ook
+nose and a pointed beard, with a few white hairs runnin’ through it. He
+had a ’ard, cold look and red eyes, and I took a sort of mislike to him,
+for it seemed as if it was ’im as they was hirritated at. He ’ad white
+kid gloves on ’is ’ands, and he pointed out the animiles to me and says:
+‘Keeper, these wolves seem upset at something.’
+
+“‘Maybe it’s you,’ says I, for I did not like the airs as he give
+’isself. He didn’t git angry, as I ’oped he would, but he smiled a kind
+of insolent smile, with a mouth full of white, sharp teeth. ‘Oh no, they
+wouldn’t like me,’ ’e says.
+
+“‘Ow yes, they would,’ says I, a-imitatin’ of him. ‘They always likes a
+bone or two to clean their teeth on about tea-time, which you ’as a
+bagful.’
+
+“Well, it was a odd thing, but when the animiles see us a-talkin’ they
+lay down, and when I went over to Bersicker he let me stroke his ears
+same as ever. That there man kem over, and blessed but if he didn’t put
+in his hand and stroke the old wolf’s ears too!
+
+“‘Tyke care,’ says I. ‘Bersicker is quick.’
+
+“‘Never mind,’ he says. ‘I’m used to ’em!’
+
+“‘Are you in the business yourself?’ I says, tyking off my ’at, for a
+man what trades in wolves, anceterer, is a good friend to keepers.
+
+“‘No,’ says he, ‘not exactly in the business, but I ’ave made pets of
+several.’ And with that he lifts his ’at as perlite as a lord, and walks
+away. Old Bersicker kep’ a-lookin’ arter ’im till ’e was out of sight,
+and then went and lay down in a corner and wouldn’t come hout the ’ole
+hevening. Well, larst night, so soon as the moon was hup, the wolves
+here all began a-’owling. There warn’t nothing for them to ’owl at.
+There warn’t no one near, except some one that was evidently a-callin’ a
+dog somewheres out back of the gardings in the Park road. Once or twice
+I went out to see that all was right, and it was, and then the ’owling
+stopped. Just before twelve o’clock I just took a look round afore
+turnin’ in, an’, bust me, but when I kem opposite to old Bersicker’s
+cage I see the rails broken and twisted about and the cage empty. And
+that’s all I know for certing.”
+
+“Did any one else see anything?”
+
+“One of our gard’ners was a-comin’ ’ome about that time from a ’armony,
+when he sees a big grey dog comin’ out through the garding ’edges. At
+least, so he says, but I don’t give much for it myself, for if he did ’e
+never said a word about it to his missis when ’e got ’ome, and it was
+only after the escape of the wolf was made known, and we had been up all
+night-a-huntin’ of the Park for Bersicker, that he remembered seein’
+anything. My own belief was that the ’armony ’ad got into his ’ead.”
+
+“Now, Mr. Bilder, can you account in any way for the escape of the
+wolf?”
+
+“Well, sir,” he said, with a suspicious sort of modesty, “I think I can;
+but I don’t know as ’ow you’d be satisfied with the theory.”
+
+“Certainly I shall. If a man like you, who knows the animals from
+experience, can’t hazard a good guess at any rate, who is even to try?”
+
+“Well then, sir, I accounts for it this way; it seems to me that ’ere
+wolf escaped--simply because he wanted to get out.”
+
+From the hearty way that both Thomas and his wife laughed at the joke I
+could see that it had done service before, and that the whole
+explanation was simply an elaborate sell. I couldn’t cope in badinage
+with the worthy Thomas, but I thought I knew a surer way to his heart,
+so I said:--
+
+“Now, Mr. Bilder, we’ll consider that first half-sovereign worked off,
+and this brother of his is waiting to be claimed when you’ve told me
+what you think will happen.”
+
+“Right y’are, sir,” he said briskly. “Ye’ll excoose me, I know, for
+a-chaffin’ of ye, but the old woman 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 a-gallopin’ northward faster
+than a horse could go; but I don’t believe him, for, yer see, sir,
+wolves don’t gallop no more nor dogs does, they not bein’ built that
+way. Wolves is fine things in a storybook, and I dessay when they gets
+in packs and does be chivyin’ somethin’ that’s more afeared than they is
+they can make a devil of a noise and chop it up, whatever it is. But,
+Lor’ bless you, in real life a wolf is only a low creature, not half so
+clever or bold as a good dog; and not half a quarter so much fight in
+’im. This one ain’t been used to fightin’ or even to providin’ for
+hisself, and more like he’s somewhere round the Park a-’idin’ an’
+a-shiverin’ of, and, if he thinks at all, wonderin’ where he is to get
+his breakfast from; or maybe he’s got down some area and is in a
+coal-cellar. My eye, won’t some cook get a rum start when she sees his
+green eyes a-shining 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 a-walkin’ orf with
+a soldier, leavin’ of the hinfant in the perambulator--well, then I
+shouldn’t be surprised if the census is one babby the less. That’s
+all.”
+
+I was handing him the half-sovereign, when something came bobbing up
+against the window, and Mr. Bilder’s face doubled its natural length
+with surprise.
+
+“God bless me!” he said. “If there ain’t old Bersicker come back by
+’isself!”
+
+He went to the door and opened it; a most unnecessary proceeding it
+seemed to me. I have always thought that a wild animal never looks so
+well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between us; a
+personal experience has intensified rather than diminished that idea.
+
+After all, however, there is nothing like custom, for neither Bilder nor
+his wife thought any more of the wolf than I should of a dog. The animal
+itself was as peaceful and well-behaved as that father of all
+picture-wolves--Red Riding Hood’s quondam friend, whilst moving her
+confidence in masquerade.
+
+The whole scene was an unutterable mixture of comedy and pathos. The
+wicked wolf that for half a day had paralysed London and set all the
+children in the town shivering in their shoes, was there in a sort of
+penitent mood, and was received and petted like a sort of vulpine
+prodigal son. Old Bilder examined him all over with most tender
+solicitude, and when he had finished with his penitent said:--
+
+“There, I knew the poor old chap would get into some kind of trouble;
+didn’t I say it all along? Here’s his head all cut and full of broken
+glass. ’E’s been a-gettin’ over some bloomin’ wall or other. It’s a
+shyme that people are allowed to top their walls with broken bottles.
+This ’ere’s what comes of it. Come along, Bersicker.”
+
+He took the wolf and locked him up in a cage, with a piece of meat that
+satisfied, in quantity at any rate, the elementary conditions of the
+fatted calf, and went off to report.
+
+I came off, too, to report the only exclusive information that is given
+to-day regarding the strange escapade at the Zoo.
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_17 September._--I was engaged after dinner in my study posting up my
+books, which, through press of other work and the many visits to Lucy,
+had fallen sadly into arrear. Suddenly the door was burst open, and in
+rushed my patient, with his face distorted with passion. I was
+thunderstruck, for such a thing as a patient getting of his own accord
+into the Superintendent’s study is almost unknown. Without an instant’s
+pause 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 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; to-night 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
+twenty-two hours.)
+
+“_17 September._--Do not fail to be at Hillingham to-night. If not
+watching all the time frequently, visit and see that flowers are as
+placed; very important; do not fail. Shall be with you as soon as
+possible after arrival.”
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_18 September._--Just off for train to London. The arrival of Van
+Helsing’s telegram filled me with dismay. A whole night lost, and I know
+by bitter experience what may happen in a night. Of course it is
+possible that all may be well, but what _may_ have happened? Surely
+there is some horrible doom hanging over us that every possible accident
+should thwart us in all we try to do. I shall take this cylinder with
+me, and then I can complete my entry on Lucy’s phonograph.
+
+
+_Memorandum left by Lucy Westenra._
+
+_17 September. Night._--I write this and leave it to be seen, so that no
+one may by any chance get into trouble through me. This is an exact
+record of what took place to-night. I feel I am dying of weakness, and
+have barely strength to write, but it must be done if I die in the
+doing.
+
+I went to bed as usual, taking care that the flowers were placed as Dr.
+Van Helsing directed, and soon fell asleep.
+
+I was waked by the flapping at the window, which had begun after that
+sleep-walking on the cliff at Whitby when Mina saved me, and which now I
+know so well. I was not afraid, but I did wish that Dr. Seward was in
+the next room--as Dr. Van Helsing said he would be--so that I might have
+called him. I tried to go to sleep, but 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, 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 low 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 grey
+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 seemed 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 have each a glass of wine. The door flew
+open for an instant and closed again. The maids shrieked, and then went
+in a body to the dining-room; and I laid what flowers I had on my dear
+mother’s breast. When they were there I remembered what Dr. Van Helsing
+had told me, but I didn’t like to remove them, and, besides, I would
+have some of the servants to sit up with me now. I was surprised that
+the maids did not come back. I called them, but got no answer, so I went
+to the dining-room to look for them.
+
+My heart sank when I saw what had happened. They all four lay helpless
+on the floor, breathing heavily. The decanter of sherry was on the table
+half full, but there was a queer, acrid smell about. I was suspicious,
+and examined the decanter. It smelt of laudanum, and looking on the
+sideboard, I found that the bottle which mother’s doctor uses for
+her--oh! did use--was empty. What am I to do? what am I to do? I am back
+in the room with mother. I cannot leave her, and I am alone, save for
+the sleeping servants, whom some one has drugged. Alone with the dead! I
+dare not go out, for I can hear the low howl of the wolf through the
+broken window.
+
+The air seems full of specks, floating and circling in the draught from
+the window, and the lights burn blue and dim. What am I to do? God
+shield me from harm this night! I shall hide this paper in my breast,
+where they shall find it when they come to lay me out. My dear mother
+gone! It is time that I go too. Good-bye, dear Arthur, if I should not
+survive this night. God keep you, dear, and God help me!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+DR. SEWARD’S DIARY
+
+
+_18 September._--I drove at once to Hillingham and arrived early.
+Keeping my cab at the gate, I went up the avenue alone. I knocked gently
+and rang as quietly as possible, for I feared to disturb Lucy or her
+mother, and hoped to only bring a servant to the door. After a while,
+finding no response, I knocked and rang again; still no answer. I cursed
+the laziness of the servants that they should lie abed at such an
+hour--for it was now ten o’clock--and so rang and knocked again, but
+more impatiently, but still without response. Hitherto I had blamed only
+the servants, but now a terrible fear began to assail me. Was this
+desolation but another link in the chain of doom which seemed drawing
+tight around us? Was it indeed a house of death to which I had come, too
+late? I knew that minutes, even seconds of delay, might mean hours of
+danger to Lucy, if she had had again one of those frightful relapses;
+and I went round the house to try if I could find by chance an entry
+anywhere.
+
+I could find no means of ingress. Every window and door was fastened and
+locked, and I returned baffled to the porch. As I did so, I heard the
+rapid pit-pat of a swiftly driven horse’s feet. They stopped at the
+gate, and a few seconds later I met Van Helsing running up the avenue.
+When he saw me, he gasped out:--
+
+“Then it was you, and just arrived. How is she? Are we too late? Did you
+not get my telegram?”
+
+I answered as quickly and coherently as I could that I had only got his
+telegram early in the morning, and had not lost 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 draught 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 that if they delayed they would sacrifice
+Miss Lucy. So, sobbing and crying, they went about their way, half clad
+as they were, and prepared fire and water. Fortunately, the kitchen and
+boiler fires were still alive, and there was no lack of hot water. We
+got a bath and carried Lucy out as she was and placed her in it. Whilst
+we were busy chafing her limbs there was a knock at the hall door. One
+of the maids ran off, hurried on some more clothes, and opened it. Then
+she returned and whispered to us that there was a gentleman who had come
+with a message from Mr. Holmwood. I bade her simply tell him that he
+must wait, for we could see no one now. She went away with the message,
+and, engrossed with our work, I clean forgot all about him.
+
+I never saw in all my experience the Professor work in such deadly
+earnest. I knew--as he knew--that it was a stand-up fight with death,
+and in a pause told him so. He answered me in a way that I did not
+understand, but with the sternest look that his face could wear:--
+
+“If that were all, I would stop here where we are now, and let her fade
+away into peace, for I see no light in life over her horizon.” He went
+on with his work with, if possible, renewed and more frenzied vigour.
+
+Presently we both began to be conscious that the heat was beginning to
+be of some effect. Lucy’s heart beat a trifle more audibly to the
+stethoscope, and her lungs had a perceptible movement. Van Helsing’s
+face almost beamed, and as we lifted her from the bath and rolled her in
+a hot sheet to dry her he said to me:--
+
+“The first gain is ours! Check to the King!”
+
+We took Lucy into another room, which had by now been prepared, and laid
+her in bed and forced a few drops of brandy down her throat. I noticed
+that Van Helsing tied a soft silk handkerchief round her throat. She was
+still unconscious, and was quite as bad as, if not worse than, we had
+ever seen her.
+
+Van Helsing called in one of the women, and told her to stay with her
+and not to take her eyes off her till we returned, and then beckoned me
+out of the room.
+
+“We must consult as to what is to be done,” he said as we descended the
+stairs. In the hall he opened the dining-room door, and we passed in, he
+closing the door carefully behind him. The shutters had been opened, but
+the blinds were already down, with that obedience to the etiquette of
+death which the British woman of the lower classes always rigidly
+observes. The room was, therefore, dimly dark. It was, however, light
+enough for our purposes. Van Helsing’s sternness was somewhat relieved
+by a look of perplexity. He was evidently torturing his mind about
+something, so I waited for an instant, and he spoke:--
+
+“What are we to do now? Where are we to turn for help? We must have
+another transfusion of blood, and that soon, or that poor girl’s life
+won’t be worth an hour’s purchase. You are exhausted already; I am
+exhausted too. I fear to trust those women, even if they would have
+courage to submit. What are we to do for some one who will open his
+veins for her?”
+
+“What’s the matter with me, anyhow?”
+
+The voice came from the sofa across the room, and its tones brought
+relief and joy to my heart, for they were those of Quincey Morris. Van
+Helsing started angrily at the first sound, but his face softened and a
+glad look came into his eyes as I cried out: “Quincey Morris!” and
+rushed towards him with outstretched hands.
+
+“What brought you here?” I cried as our hands met.
+
+“I guess Art is the cause.”
+
+He handed me a telegram:--
+
+“Have not heard from Seward for three days, and am terribly anxious.
+Cannot leave. Father still in same condition. Send me word how Lucy is.
+Do not delay.--HOLMWOOD.”
+
+“I think I came just in the nick of time. You know you have only to tell
+me what to do.”
+
+Van Helsing strode forward, and took his hand, looking him straight in
+the eyes as he said:--
+
+“A brave man’s blood is the best thing on this earth when a woman is in
+trouble. You’re a man and no mistake. Well, the devil may work against
+us for all he’s worth, but God sends us men when we want them.”
+
+Once again we went through that ghastly operation. I have not the heart
+to go through with the details. Lucy had got a terrible shock and it
+told on her more than before, for though plenty of blood went into her
+veins, her body did not respond to the treatment as well as on the other
+occasions. Her struggle back into life was something frightful to see
+and hear. However, the action of both heart and lungs improved, and Van
+Helsing made a 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
+to-day. Is not that so?”
+
+“That’s so.”
+
+“And I guess Art was in it too. When I saw him four days ago down at his
+own place he looked queer. I have not seen anything pulled down so quick
+since I was on the Pampas and had a mare that I was fond of go to grass
+all in a night. One of those big bats that they call vampires had got at
+her in the night, and what with his gorge and the vein left open, there
+wasn’t enough blood in her to let her stand up, and I had to put a
+bullet through her as she lay. Jack, if you may tell me without
+betraying confidence, Arthur was the first, is not that so?” As he spoke
+the poor fellow looked terribly anxious. He was in a torture of suspense
+regarding the woman he loved, and his utter ignorance of the terrible
+mystery which seemed to surround her intensified his pain. His very
+heart was bleeding, and it took all the manhood of him--and there was a
+royal lot of it, too--to keep him from breaking down. I paused before
+answering, for I felt that I must not betray anything which the
+Professor wished kept secret; but already he knew so much, and guessed
+so much, that there could be no reason for not answering, so I answered
+in the same phrase: “That’s so.”
+
+“And how long has this been going on?”
+
+“About ten days.”
+
+“Ten days! Then I guess, Jack Seward, that that poor pretty creature
+that we all love has had put into her veins within that time the blood
+of four strong men. Man alive, her whole body wouldn’t hold it.” Then,
+coming close to me, he spoke in a fierce half-whisper: “What took it
+out?”
+
+I shook my head. “That,” I said, “is the crux. Van Helsing is simply
+frantic about it, and I am at my wits’ end. I can’t even hazard a guess.
+There has been a series of little circumstances which have thrown out
+all our calculations as to Lucy being properly watched. But these shall
+not occur again. Here we stay until all be well--or ill.” Quincey held
+out his hand. “Count me in,” he said. “You and the Dutchman will tell me
+what to do, and I’ll do it.”
+
+When she woke late in the afternoon, Lucy’s first movement was to feel
+in her breast, and, to my surprise, produced the paper which Van Helsing
+had given me to read. The careful Professor had replaced it where it had
+come from, lest on waking she should be alarmed. Her eye then lit on Van
+Helsing and on me too, and gladdened. Then she looked around 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 that
+meant--that she had realised to the full her mother’s death; so we tried
+what we could to comfort her. Doubtless sympathy eased her somewhat, but
+she was very low in thought and spirit, and wept silently and weakly for
+a long time. We told her that either or both of us would now remain with
+her all the time, and that seemed to comfort her. Towards dusk she fell
+into a doze. Here a very odd thing occurred. Whilst still asleep she
+took the paper from her breast and tore it in two. Van Helsing stepped
+over and took the pieces from her. All the same, however, she went on
+with the action of tearing, as though the material were still in her
+hands; finally she lifted her hands and opened them as though scattering
+the fragments. Van Helsing seemed surprised, and his brows gathered as
+if in thought, but he said nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_19 September._--All last night she slept fitfully, being always afraid
+to sleep, and something weaker when she woke from it. The Professor and
+I took it 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 thus 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 was 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 to-morrow 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.)
+
+“_17 September._
+
+“My dearest Lucy,--
+
+“It seems _an age_ since I heard from you, or indeed since I wrote. You
+will pardon me, I know, for all my faults when you have read all my
+budget of news. Well, I got my husband back all right; when we arrived
+at Exeter there was a carriage waiting for us, and in it, though he had
+an attack of gout, Mr. Hawkins. He took us to his house, where there
+were rooms for us all nice and comfortable, and we dined together. After
+dinner Mr. Hawkins said:--
+
+“‘My dears, I want to drink your health and prosperity; and may every
+blessing attend you both. I know you both from children, and have, with
+love and pride, seen you grow up. Now I want you to make your home here
+with me. I have left to me neither chick nor child; all are gone, and in
+my will I have left you everything.’ I cried, Lucy dear, as Jonathan and
+the old man clasped hands. Our evening was a very, very happy one.
+
+“So here we are, installed in this beautiful old house, and from both my
+bedroom and the drawing-room I can see the great elms of the cathedral
+close, with their great black stems standing out against the old yellow
+stone of the cathedral and I can hear the rooks overhead cawing and
+cawing and chattering and gossiping all day, after the manner of
+rooks--and humans. I am busy, I need not tell you, arranging things and
+housekeeping. Jonathan and Mr. Hawkins are busy all day; for, now that
+Jonathan is a partner, Mr. Hawkins wants to tell him all about the
+clients.
+
+“How is your dear mother getting on? I wish I could run up to town for a
+day or two to see you, dear, but I dare not go yet, with so much on my
+shoulders; and Jonathan wants looking after still. He is beginning to
+put some flesh on his bones again, but he was terribly weakened by the
+long illness; even now he sometimes starts out of his sleep in a sudden
+way and awakes all trembling until I can coax him back to his usual
+placidity. However, thank God, these occasions grow less frequent as the
+days go on, and they will in time pass away altogether, I trust. And now
+I have told you my news, let me ask yours. When are you to be married,
+and where, and who is to perform the ceremony, and what are you to wear,
+and is it to be a public or a 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. Good-bye, my dearest
+Lucy, and all blessings on you.
+
+“Yours,
+
+“MINA HARKER.”
+
+
+_Report from Patrick Hennessey, M. D., M. R. C. S. L. K. Q. C. P. I.,
+etc., etc., to John Seward, M. D._
+
+“_20 September._
+
+“My dear Sir,--
+
+“In accordance with your wishes, I enclose report of the conditions of
+everything left in my charge.... With regard to patient, Renfield, there
+is more to say. He has had another outbreak, which might have had a
+dreadful ending, but which, as it fortunately happened, was unattended
+with any unhappy results. This afternoon a carrier’s cart with two men
+made a call at the empty house whose grounds abut on ours--the house to
+which, you will remember, the patient twice ran away. The men stopped at
+our gate to ask the porter their way, as they were strangers. I was
+myself looking out of the study window, having a smoke after dinner, and
+saw one of them come up to the house. As he passed the window of
+Renfield’s room, the patient began to rate him from within, and called
+him all the foul names he could lay his tongue to. The man, who seemed a
+decent fellow enough, contented himself by telling him to “shut up for a
+foul-mouthed beggar,” whereon our man accused him of robbing him and
+wanting to murder him and said that he would hinder him if he were to
+swing for it. I opened the window and signed to the man not to notice,
+so he contented himself after looking the place over and making up his
+mind as to what kind of a place he had got to by saying: ‘Lor’ bless
+yer, sir, I wouldn’t mind what was said to me in a bloomin’ madhouse. I
+pity ye and the guv’nor for havin’ to live in the house with a wild
+beast like that.’ Then he asked his way civilly enough, and I told him
+where the gate of the empty house was; he went away, followed by threats
+and curses and revilings from our man. I went down to see if I could
+make out any cause for his anger, since he is usually such a
+well-behaved man, and except his violent fits nothing of the kind had
+ever occurred. I found him, to my astonishment, quite composed and most
+genial in his manner. I tried to get him to talk of the incident, but he
+blandly asked me questions as to what I meant, and led me to believe
+that he was completely oblivious of the affair. It was, I am sorry to
+say, however, only another instance of his cunning, for within half an
+hour I heard of him again. This time he had broken out through the
+window of his room, and was running down the avenue. I called to the
+attendants to follow me, and ran after him, for I feared he was intent
+on some mischief. My fear was justified when I saw the same cart which
+had passed before coming down the road, having on it some great wooden
+boxes. The men were wiping their foreheads, and were flushed in the
+face, as if with violent exercise. Before I could get up to him the
+patient rushed at them, and pulling one of them off the cart, began to
+knock his head against the ground. If I had not seized him just at the
+moment I believe he would have killed the man there and then. The other
+fellow jumped down and struck him over the head with the butt-end of his
+heavy whip. It was a terrible 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 light weight, 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
+labours of any place of public entertainment. I quite understood their
+drift, and after a stiff glass of 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.)
+
+“_18 September._
+
+“My dearest Lucy,--
+
+“Such a sad blow has befallen us. Mr. Hawkins has died very suddenly.
+Some may not think it so sad for us, but we had both come to so love him
+that it really seems as though we had lost a father. I never knew either
+father or mother, so that the dear old man’s death is a real blow to me.
+Jonathan is greatly distressed. It is not only that he feels sorrow,
+deep sorrow, for the dear, good man who has befriended him all his life,
+and now at the end has treated him like his own son and left him a
+fortune which to people of our modest bringing up is wealth beyond the
+dream of avarice, but Jonathan feels it on another account. He says the
+amount of responsibility which it puts upon him makes him nervous. He
+begins to doubt himself. I try to cheer him up, and _my_ belief in _him_
+helps him to have a belief in himself. But it is here that the grave
+shock that he experienced tells upon him the most. Oh, it is too hard
+that a sweet, simple, noble, strong nature such as his--a nature which
+enabled him by our dear, good friend’s aid to rise from clerk to master
+in a few years--should be so injured that the very essence of its
+strength is gone. Forgive me, dear, if I worry you with my troubles in
+the midst of your own happiness; but, Lucy dear, I must tell some one,
+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 the day after to-morrow; for poor Mr.
+Hawkins left in his will that he was to be buried in the grave with his
+father. As there are no relations at all, Jonathan will have to be chief
+mourner. I shall try to run over to see you, dearest, if only for a few
+minutes. Forgive me for troubling you. With all blessings,
+
+“Your loving
+
+“MINA HARKER.”
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_20 September._--Only resolution and habit can let me make an entry
+to-night. 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 round 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 by 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
+round--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 sissing indraw of his breath, and he said to me in a
+sharp whisper: “Draw up the blind; I want light!” Then he bent down,
+and, with his face almost touching Lucy’s, examined her carefully. He
+removed the flowers and lifted the silk handkerchief from her throat. As
+he did so he started back, and I could hear his ejaculation, “Mein
+Gott!” as it was smothered in his throat. I bent over and looked, too,
+and as I noticed some queer chill came over me.
+
+The wounds on the throat had absolutely disappeared.
+
+For fully five minutes Van Helsing stood looking at her, with his face
+at its sternest. Then he turned to me and said calmly:--
+
+“She is dying. It will not be long now. It will be much difference, mark
+me, whether she dies conscious or in her sleep. Wake that poor boy, and
+let him come and see the last; he trusts us, and we have promised him.”
+
+I went to the dining-room and waked him. He was dazed for a moment, but
+when he saw the sunlight streaming in through the edges of the shutters
+he thought he was late, and expressed his fear. I assured him that Lucy
+was still asleep, but told him as gently as I could that both Van
+Helsing and I feared that the end was near. He covered his face with his
+hands, and slid down on his knees by the sofa, where he remained,
+perhaps a minute, with his head buried, praying, whilst his shoulders
+shook with grief. I took him by the hand and raised him up. “Come,” I
+said, “my dear old fellow, summon all your fortitude: it will be best
+and easiest for her.”
+
+When we came into Lucy’s room I could see that Van Helsing had, with
+his usual forethought, been putting matters straight and making
+everything look as pleasing as possible. He had even brushed Lucy’s
+hair, so that it lay on the pillow in its usual sunny ripples. When we
+came into the room she opened her eyes, and seeing him, whispered
+softly:--
+
+“Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come!” He was stooping to
+kiss her, when Van Helsing motioned him back. “No,” he whispered, “not
+yet! Hold her hand; it will comfort her more.”
+
+So Arthur took her hand and knelt beside her, and she looked her best,
+with all the soft lines matching the angelic beauty of her eyes. Then
+gradually her eyes closed, and she sank to sleep. For a little bit her
+breast heaved softly, and her breath came and went like a tired child’s.
+
+And then insensibly there came the strange change which I had noticed in
+the night. Her breathing grew stertorous, the mouth opened, and the pale
+gums, drawn back, made the teeth look longer and sharper than ever. In a
+sort of sleep-waking, vague, unconscious way she opened her eyes, which
+were now dull and hard at once, and said in a soft, voluptuous voice,
+such as I had never heard from her lips:--
+
+“Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!” Arthur bent
+eagerly over to kiss her; but at that instant Van Helsing, who, like me,
+had been startled by her voice, swooped upon him, and catching him by
+the neck with both hands, dragged him back with a fury of strength which
+I never thought he could have possessed, and actually hurled him almost
+across the room.
+
+“Not for 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 realised
+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 champed
+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 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 XIII
+
+DR. SEWARD’S DIARY--_continued_.
+
+
+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 were
+afflicted--or blessed--with something of his own obsequious suavity.
+Even the woman who performed the last offices for the dead remarked to
+me, in a confidential, brother-professional way, when she had come out
+from the death-chamber:--
+
+“She makes a very beautiful corpse, sir. It’s quite a privilege to
+attend on her. It’s not too much to say that she will do credit to our
+establishment!”
+
+I noticed that Van Helsing never kept far away. This was possible from
+the disordered state of things in the household. There were no relatives
+at hand; and as Arthur had to be back the next day to attend at his
+father’s funeral, we were unable to notify any one who should have been
+bidden. Under the circumstances, Van Helsing and I took it upon
+ourselves to examine papers, etc. He insisted upon looking over Lucy’s
+papers himself. I asked him why, for I feared that he, being a
+foreigner, might not be quite aware of English legal requirements, and
+so might in ignorance make some unnecessary trouble. He answered me:--
+
+“I know; I know. You forget that I am a lawyer as well as a doctor. But
+this is not altogether for the law. You knew that, when you avoided the
+coroner. I have more than him to avoid. There may be papers more--such
+as this.”
+
+As he spoke he took from his pocket-book the memorandum which had been
+in Lucy’s breast, and which she had torn in her sleep.
+
+“When you find anything of the solicitor who is for the late Mrs.
+Westenra, seal all her papers, and write him to-night. 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 to-morrow 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. To-morrow we shall have much to do, but
+for the to-night 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:--
+
+“To-morrow I want you to bring me, before night, a set of post-mortem
+knives.”
+
+“Must we make an autopsy?” I asked.
+
+“Yes and no. I want to operate, but not as 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 it is I that shall
+operate, and you must only help. I would like to do it to-night, but for
+Arthur I must not; he will be free after his father’s funeral to-morrow,
+and he will want to see her--to see _it_. Then, when she is coffined
+ready for the next day, you and I shall come when all sleep. We shall
+unscrew the coffin-lid, and shall do our operation: and then replace
+all, so that none know, save we alone.”
+
+“But why do it at all? The girl is dead. Why mutilate her poor body
+without need? And if there is no necessity for a post-mortem and nothing
+to gain by it--no good to her, to us, to science, to human
+knowledge--why do it? Without such it is monstrous.”
+
+For answer he put his hand on my shoulder, and said, with infinite
+tenderness:--
+
+“Friend John, I pity your poor bleeding heart; and I love you the more
+because it does so bleed. If I could, I would take on myself the burden
+that you do bear. But there are things that you know not, but that you
+shall know, and bless me for knowing, though they are not pleasant
+things. John, my child, you have been my friend now many years, and yet
+did you ever know me to do any without good cause? I may err--I am but
+man; but I believe in all I do. Was it not for these causes that you
+send for me when the great trouble came? Yes! Were you not amazed, nay
+horrified, when I would not let Arthur kiss his love--though she was
+dying--and snatched him away by all my strength? Yes! And yet you saw
+how she thanked me, with her so beautiful dying eyes, her voice, too, so
+weak, and she kiss my rough old hand and bless me? Yes! And did you not
+hear me swear promise to her, that so she closed her eyes grateful? Yes!
+
+“Well, I have good reason now for all I want to do. You have for many
+years trust me; you have believe me weeks past, when there be things so
+strange that you might have well doubt. Believe me yet a little, friend
+John. If you trust me not, then I must tell what I think; and that is
+not perhaps well. And if I work--as work I shall, no matter trust or no
+trust--without my friend trust in me, I work with heavy heart and feel,
+oh! so lonely when I want all help and courage that may be!” He paused a
+moment and went on solemnly: “Friend John, there are strange and
+terrible days before us. Let us not be two, but one, that so we work to
+a good end. Will you not have faith in me?”
+
+I took his hand, and promised him. I held my door open as he went away,
+and watched him go into 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 towards 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’s which now, in default of direct
+issue, went back to a distant branch of the family, the whole estate,
+real and personal, was left absolutely to Arthur Holmwood. When he had
+told us so much he went on:--
+
+“Frankly we did our best to prevent such a testamentary disposition, and
+pointed out certain contingencies that might leave her daughter either
+penniless or not so free as she should be to act regarding a matrimonial
+alliance. Indeed, we pressed the matter so far that we almost came into
+collision, for she asked us if we were or were not prepared to carry out
+her wishes. Of course, we had then no alternative but to accept. We were
+right in principle, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred we should
+have proved, by the logic of events, the accuracy of our judgment.
+Frankly, however, I must admit that in this case any other form of
+disposition would have rendered impossible the carrying out of her
+wishes. For by her predeceasing her daughter the latter would have come
+into possession of the property, and, even had she only survived her
+mother by five minutes, her property would, in case there were no
+will--and a will was a practical impossibility in such a case--have been
+treated at her decease as under intestacy. In which case Lord Godalming,
+though so dear a friend, would have had no claim in the world; and the
+inheritors, being remote, would not be likely to abandon their just
+rights, for sentimental reasons regarding an entire stranger. I assure
+you, my dear sirs, I am rejoiced at the result, perfectly rejoiced.”
+
+He was a good fellow, but his rejoicing at the one little part--in which
+he was officially interested--of so great a tragedy, was an
+object-lesson in the limitations of sympathetic understanding.
+
+He did not remain long, but said he would look in later in the day and
+see Lord Godalming. His coming, however, had been a certain comfort to
+us, since it assured us that we should not have to dread hostile
+criticism as to any of our acts. Arthur was expected at five o’clock, so
+a little before that time we visited the death-chamber. It was so in
+very truth, for now both mother and daughter lay in it. The undertaker,
+true to his craft, had made the best display he could of his goods, and
+there was a mortuary air about the place that lowered our spirits at
+once. Van Helsing ordered the former arrangement to be adhered to,
+explaining that, as Lord Godalming was coming very soon, it would be
+less harrowing to his feelings to see all that was left of his _fiancée_
+quite alone. The undertaker seemed shocked at his own stupidity and
+exerted himself to restore things to the condition in which we left them
+the night before, so that when Arthur came such shocks to his feelings
+as we could avoid were saved.
+
+Poor fellow! He looked desperately sad and broken; even his stalwart
+manhood seemed to have shrunk somewhat under the strain of his
+much-tried emotions. He had, I knew, been very genuinely and devotedly
+attached to his father; and to lose him, and at such a time, was a
+bitter blow to him. With me he was warm as ever, and to Van Helsing he
+was sweetly courteous; but I could not help seeing that there was some
+constraint with him. The Professor noticed it, too, and motioned me to
+bring him upstairs. I did so, and left him at the door of the room, as I
+felt he would like to be quite alone with her, but he took my arm and
+led me in, saying huskily:--
+
+“You loved her too, old fellow; she told me all about it, and there was
+no friend had a closer place in her heart than you. I don’t know how to
+thank you for all you have done for her. I can’t think yet....”
+
+Here he suddenly broke down, and threw his arms round my shoulders and
+laid his head on my breast, crying:--
+
+“Oh, Jack! Jack! What shall I do! The whole of life seems gone from me
+all at once, and there is nothing in the wide world for me to live for.”
+
+I comforted him as well as I could. In such cases men do not need much
+expression. A grip of the hand, the tightening of an arm over the
+shoulder, a sob in unison, are expressions of sympathy dear to a man’s
+heart. I stood still and silent till his sobs died away, and then I said
+softly to him:--
+
+“Come and look at her.”
+
+Together we moved over to the bed, and I lifted the lawn from her face.
+God! how beautiful she was. Every hour seemed to be enhancing her
+loveliness. It frightened and amazed me somewhat; and as for Arthur, he
+fell a-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 became
+softened and even resolved into their youthful beauty; that this was
+especially so when death had been preceded by any acute or prolonged
+suffering. It 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 good-bye, 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
+good-bye; 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’s a hard thing 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, my 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 patrolling the house, and was
+never out of sight of the room where Lucy lay in her coffin, strewn with
+the wild garlic flowers, which sent, through the odour of lily and rose,
+a heavy, overpowering smell into the night.
+
+
+_Mina Harker’s Journal._
+
+_22 September._--In the train to Exeter. Jonathan sleeping.
+
+It seems only yesterday that the last entry was made, and yet how much
+between then, in Whitby and all the world before me, Jonathan away and
+no news of him; and now, married to Jonathan, Jonathan a solicitor, a
+partner, rich, master of his business, Mr. Hawkins dead and buried, and
+Jonathan with another attack that may harm him. Some day he may ask me
+about it. Down it all goes. I am rusty in my shorthand--see what
+unexpected prosperity does for us--so it may be as well to freshen it up
+again with an exercise anyhow....
+
+The service was very simple and very solemn. There were only ourselves
+and the servants there, one or two old friends of his from Exeter, his
+London agent, and a gentleman representing Sir John Paxton, the
+President of the Incorporated Law Society. Jonathan and I stood hand in
+hand, and we felt that our best and dearest friend was gone from us....
+
+We came back to town quietly, taking a ’bus to Hyde Park Corner.
+Jonathan thought it would interest me to go into the Row for a while, so
+we sat down; but there were very few people there, and it was
+sad-looking and desolate to see so many empty chairs. It made us think
+of the empty chair at home; so we got up and walked down Piccadilly.
+Jonathan was holding me by the arm, the way he used to in old days
+before I went to school. I felt it very improper, for you can’t go on
+for some years teaching etiquette and decorum to other girls without the
+pedantry of it biting into yourself a bit; but it was Jonathan, and he
+was my husband, and we didn’t know anybody who saw us--and we didn’t
+care if they did--so on we walked. I was looking at a very beautiful
+girl, in a big cart-wheel hat, sitting in a victoria outside Guiliano’s,
+when I felt Jonathan clutch my arm so tight that he hurt me, and he said
+under his breath: “My God!” I am always anxious about Jonathan, for I
+fear that some nervous fit may upset him again; so I turned to him
+quickly, and asked him what it was that disturbed him.
+
+He was very pale, and his eyes seemed bulging out as, half in terror and
+half in amazement, he gazed at a tall, thin man, with a beaky nose and
+black moustache and pointed beard, who was also observing the pretty
+girl. He was looking at her so hard that he did not see either of us,
+and so I had a good view of him. His face was not a good face; it was
+hard, and cruel, and sensual, and his 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
+to 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 I only knew! if I only 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 him
+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 quietly 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 that 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 home-coming 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 to-day.”
+
+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 sweetness out of his life! God help us all to bear our
+troubles.
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_22 September._--It is all over. Arthur has gone back to Ring, and has
+taken Quincey Morris with him. What a fine fellow is Quincey! I believe
+in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy’s death as any
+of us; but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking. If America
+can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world
+indeed. Van Helsing is lying down, having a rest preparatory to his
+journey. He goes over to Amsterdam to-night, but says he returns
+to-morrow 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 humour 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 the 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 so she may have all. And yet I can laugh at her very
+grave--laugh when the clay from the spade of the sexton drop upon her
+coffin and say ‘Thud! thud!’ to my heart, till it send back the blood
+from my cheek. My heart bleed for that poor boy--that dear boy, so of
+the age of mine own boy had I been so blessed that he live, and with his
+hair and eyes the same. There, you know now why I love him so. And yet
+when he say things that touch my husband-heart to the quick, and make my
+father-heart yearn to him as to no other man--not even to you, friend
+John, for we are more level in experiences than father and son--yet even
+at such 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 labour, 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 explanation makes it a harder puzzle
+than before. But even if the burial service was comic, what about poor
+Art and his trouble? Why, his heart was simply breaking.”
+
+“Just so. Said he not that the transfusion of his blood to her veins had
+made her truly his bride?”
+
+“Yes, and it was a sweet and comforting idea for him.”
+
+“Quite so. But there was a difficulty, friend John. If so that, then
+what about the others? Ho, ho! Then this so sweet maid is a polyandrist,
+and me, with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by Church’s law, though
+no wits, all gone--even I, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife,
+am bigamist.”
+
+“I don’t see where the joke comes in there either!” I said; and I did
+not feel particularly pleased with him for saying such things. He laid
+his hand on my arm, and said:--
+
+“Friend John, forgive me if I pain. I showed not my feeling to others
+when it would wound, but only to you, my old friend, whom I can trust.
+If you could have looked into my very heart then when I want to laugh;
+if you could have done so when the laugh arrived; if you could do so
+now, when King Laugh have pack up his crown, and all that is to him--for
+he go far, far away from me, and for a long, long time--maybe you would
+perhaps pity me the most of all.”
+
+I was touched by the tenderness of his tone, and asked why.
+
+“Because I know!”
+
+And now we are all scattered; and for many a long day loneliness will
+sit over our roofs with brooding wings. Lucy lies in the tomb of her
+kin, a lordly death-house in a lonely churchyard, away from teeming
+London; where the air is fresh, and the sun rises over Hampstead Hill,
+and where wild flowers grow of their own accord.
+
+So I can finish this diary; and God only knows if I shall ever begin
+another. If I do, or if I even open this again, it will be to deal with
+different people and different themes; for here at the end, where the
+romance of my life is told, ere I go back to take up the thread of my
+life-work, I say sadly and without hope,
+
+                        “FINIS.”
+
+
+_“The Westminster Gazette,” 25 September._
+
+                          A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY.
+
+
+The neighbourhood 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 neighbourhood 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
+rôle at these _al fresco_ performances. Our correspondent naïvely says
+that even Ellen Terry could not be so winningly attractive as some of
+these grubby-faced little children pretend--and even imagine
+themselves--to be.
+
+There is, however, possibly a serious side to the question, for some of
+the children, indeed all who have been missed at night, have been
+slightly torn or wounded in the throat. The wounds seem such as might be
+made by a rat or a small dog, and although of not much importance
+individually, would tend to show that whatever animal inflicts them has
+a system or method of its own. The police of the division have been
+instructed to keep a sharp look-out for straying children, especially
+when very young, in and around Hampstead Heath, and for any stray dog
+which may be about.
+
+
+               _“The Westminster Gazette,” 25 September._
+
+                            _Extra Special._
+
+                         THE HAMPSTEAD HORROR.
+
+                         ANOTHER CHILD INJURED.
+
+                         _The “Bloofer Lady.”_
+
+We have just received intelligence that another child, missed last
+night, was only discovered late in the morning under a furze bush at the
+Shooter’s Hill side of Hampstead Heath, which is, perhaps, less
+frequented than the other parts. It has the same tiny wound in the
+throat as has been noticed in other cases. It was terribly weak, and
+looked quite emaciated. It too, when partially restored, had the common
+story to tell of being lured away by the “bloofer lady.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL
+
+
+_23 September_.--Jonathan is better after a bad night. I am so glad that
+he has plenty of work to do, for that keeps his mind off the terrible
+things; and oh, I am rejoiced that he is not now weighed down with the
+responsibility of his new position. I knew he would be true to himself,
+and now how proud I am to see my Jonathan rising to the height of his
+advancement and keeping pace in all ways with the duties that come upon
+him. He will be away all day till late, for he said he could not lunch
+at home. My household work is done, so I shall take his foreign journal,
+and lock myself up in my room and read it....
+
+
+_24 September_.--I hadn’t the heart to write last night; that terrible
+record of Jonathan’s upset me so. Poor dear! How he must have suffered,
+whether it be true or only imagination. I wonder if there is any truth
+in it at all. Did he get his brain fever, and then write all those
+terrible things, or had he some cause for it all? I suppose I shall
+never know, for I dare not open the subject to him.... And yet that man
+we saw yesterday! He seemed quite certain of him.... Poor fellow! I
+suppose it was the funeral upset him and sent his mind back on some
+train of thought.... He believes it all himself. I remember how on our
+wedding-day he said: “Unless some solemn duty come upon me to go back to
+the bitter hours, asleep or awake, mad or sane.” There seems to be
+through it all some thread of continuity.... That fearful Count was
+coming to London.... If it should be, and he came to London, with his
+teeming millions.... There may be a solemn duty; and if it come we must
+not shrink from it.... I shall be prepared. I shall get my typewriter
+this very hour and begin transcribing. Then we shall be ready for other
+eyes if required. And if it be wanted; then, perhaps, if I am ready,
+poor Jonathan may not be upset, for I can speak for him and never let
+him be troubled or worried with it at all. If ever Jonathan quite gets
+over the nervousness he may want to tell me of it all, and I can ask him
+questions and find out things, and see how I may comfort him.
+
+
+_Letter, Van Helsing to Mrs. Harker._
+
+“_24 September._
+
+(_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, lest it may harm. Again your pardon, and forgive me.
+
+“VAN HELSING.”
+
+
+_Telegram, Mrs. Harker to Van Helsing._
+
+“_25 September._--Come to-day by quarter-past ten train if you can catch
+it. Can see you any time you call.
+
+“WILHELMINA HARKER.”
+
+MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL.
+
+_25 September._--I cannot help feeling terribly excited as the time
+draws near for the visit of Dr. Van Helsing, for somehow I expect that
+it will throw some light upon Jonathan’s sad experience; and as he
+attended poor dear Lucy in her last illness, he can tell me all about
+her. That is the reason of his coming; it is concerning Lucy and her
+sleep-walking, and not about Jonathan. Then I shall never know the real
+truth now! How silly I am. That awful journal gets hold of my
+imagination and tinges everything with something of its own colour. Of
+course it is about Lucy. That habit came back to the poor dear, and that
+awful night on the cliff must have made her ill. I had almost forgotten
+in my own affairs how ill she was afterwards. She must have told him
+of her sleep-walking adventure on the cliff, and that I knew all about
+it; and now he wants me to tell him what she knows, 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 type-written 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 to-morrow 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 practise interviewing; Jonathan’s
+friend on “The Exeter News” told him that memory was everything in such
+work--that you must be able to put down exactly almost every word
+spoken, even if you had to refine some of it afterwards. Here was a rare
+interview; I shall try to record it _verbatim_.
+
+It was half-past two o’clock when the knock came. I took my courage _à
+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 one at once as indicative of thought and power; the
+head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the ears. The face,
+clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large, resolute, mobile
+mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensitive
+nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big, bushy brows come down and the
+mouth tightens. The forehead is broad and fine, rising at first almost
+straight and then sloping back above two bumps or ridges wide apart;
+such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possibly tumble over it,
+but falls naturally back and to the sides. Big, dark blue eyes are set
+widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man’s moods. He
+said to me:--
+
+“Mrs. Harker, is it not?” I bowed assent.
+
+“That was Miss Mina Murray?” Again I assented.
+
+“It is Mina Murray that I came to see that was friend of that poor dear
+child Lucy Westenra. Madam Mina, it is on account of the dead 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 knew that the friend of that poor lily 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 in
+imitation of you--and in that diary she traces by inference certain
+things to a sleep-walking in which she puts down that you saved her. In
+great perplexity then I come to you, and ask you out of your so much
+kindness to tell me all of it that you can remember.”
+
+“I can tell you, I think, Dr. Van Helsing, all about it.”
+
+“Ah, then you have good memory for facts, for details? It is not always
+so with young ladies.”
+
+“No, doctor, but I wrote it all down at the time. I can show it to you
+if you like.”
+
+“Oh, Madam Mina, I will be grateful; you will do me much favour.” I
+could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit--I suppose it is
+some of the 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
+workbasket 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 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 daze, I am dazzle, 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. Madam”--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 happy life and good life, and
+your husband will be blessed in you.”
+
+“But, doctor, you praise me too much, and--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’s
+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 was not good. What kind of
+a shock was it?”
+
+“He thought he saw some one who recalled something terrible, something
+which led to his brain fever.” And here the whole thing seemed to
+overwhelm me in a rush. The pity for Jonathan, the horror which he
+experienced, the whole fearful mystery of his diary, and the fear that
+has been brooding over me ever since, all came in a tumult. I suppose I
+was hysterical, for I threw myself on my knees and held up my hands to
+him, and implored him to make my husband well again. He took my hands
+and raised me up, and made me sit on the sofa, and sat by me; he held my
+hand in his, and said to me with, oh, such infinite sweetness:--
+
+“My life is a barren and lonely one, and so full of work that I have not
+had much time for friendships; but since I have been summoned to here by
+my friend John Seward I have known so many good people and seen such
+nobility that I feel more than ever--and it has grown with my advancing
+years--the loneliness of my life. Believe, me, then, that I come here
+full of respect for you, and you have given me hope--hope, not in what I
+am seeking of, but that there are good women still left to make life
+happy--good women, whose lives and whose truths may make good lesson for
+the children that are to be. I am glad, glad, that I may here be of some
+use to you; for if your husband suffer, he suffer within the range of my
+study and experience. I promise you that I will gladly do _all_ for him
+that I can--all to make his life strong and manly, and your life a happy
+one. Now you must eat. You are overwrought and perhaps over-anxious.
+Husband Jonathan would not like to see you so pale; and what he like not
+where he love, is not to his good. Therefore for his sake you must eat
+and smile. You have told me all about Lucy, and so now we shall not
+speak of it, lest it distress. I shall stay in Exeter to-night, 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 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,
+so soon as I can, come to see you and your husband, if I may.”
+
+“Jonathan will be here at half-past eleven, and you must come to lunch
+with us and see him then; you could catch the quick 3:34 train, which
+will leave you at Paddington before eight.” He was surprised at my
+knowledge of the trains off-hand, 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._
+
+“_25 September, 6 o’clock._
+
+“Dear Madam Mina,--
+
+“I have read your husband’s so wonderful diary. You may sleep without
+doubt. Strange and terrible as it is, it is _true_! I will pledge my
+life on it. It may be worse for others; but for him and you there is no
+dread. He is a noble fellow; and let me tell you from experience of men,
+that one who would do as he did in going down that wall and to that
+room--ay, 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 to-day I come to see you, for
+I have learn all at once so much that again I am dazzle--dazzle more
+than ever, and I must think.
+
+“Yours the most faithful,
+
+“ABRAHAM VAN HELSING.”
+
+
+_Letter, Mrs. Harker to Van Helsing._
+
+“_25 September, 6:30 p. m._
+
+“My dear Dr. Van Helsing,--
+
+“A thousand thanks for your kind letter, which has taken a great weight
+off my mind. And yet, if it be true, what terrible things there are in
+the world, and what an awful thing if that man, that monster, be really
+in London! I fear to think. I have this moment, whilst writing, had a
+wire from Jonathan, saying that he leaves by the 6:25 to-night from
+Launceston and will be here at 10:18, so that I shall have no fear
+to-night. Will you, therefore, instead of lunching with us, please come
+to breakfast at eight o’clock, if this be not too early for you? You can
+get away, if you are in a hurry, by the 10:30 train, which will bring
+you to Paddington by 2:35. Do not answer this, as I shall take it that,
+if I do not hear, you will come to breakfast.
+
+“Believe me,
+
+“Your faithful and grateful friend,
+
+“MINA HARKER.”
+
+
+_Jonathan Harker’s Journal._
+
+_26 September._--I thought never to write in this diary again, but the
+time has come. When I got home last night Mina had supper ready, and
+when we had supped she told me of Van Helsing’s visit, and of her having
+given him the two diaries copied out, and of how anxious she has been
+about me. She showed me in the doctor’s letter that all I wrote down was
+true. It seems to have made a new man of me. It was the doubt as to the
+reality of the whole thing that knocked me over. I felt impotent, and in
+the dark, and distrustful. But, now that I _know_, I am not afraid, even
+of the Count. He has succeeded after all, then, in his design in getting
+to London, and it was he I saw. He has got younger, and how? Van Helsing
+is the man to unmask him and hunt him out, if he is anything like what
+Mina says. We sat late, and talked it all over. Mina is dressing, and I
+shall call at the hotel in a few minutes and bring him over....
+
+He was, I think, surprised to see me. When I came into the room where he
+was, and introduced myself, he took me by the shoulder, and turned my
+face round to the light, and said, after a sharp scrutiny:--
+
+“But Madam Mina told me you were ill, that you had had a shock.” It was
+so funny to hear my wife called “Madam Mina” by this kindly,
+strong-faced old man. I smiled, and said:--
+
+“I _was_ ill, I _have_ had a shock; but you have cured me already.”
+
+“And how?”
+
+“By your letter to Mina last night. I was in doubt, and then everything
+took a hue of unreality, and I did not know what to trust, even the
+evidence of my own senses. Not knowing what to trust, I did not know
+what to do; and so had only to keep on working in what had hitherto been
+the groove of my life. The groove ceased to avail me, and I mistrusted
+myself. Doctor, you don’t know what it is to doubt everything, even
+yourself. No, you don’t; you couldn’t with eyebrows like yours.” He
+seemed pleased, and laughed as he said:--
+
+“So! You are physiognomist. I learn more here with each hour. I am with
+so much pleasure coming to you to breakfast; and, oh, sir, you will
+pardon praise from an old man, but you are blessed in your wife.” I
+would listen to him go on praising Mina for a day, so I simply nodded
+and stood silent.
+
+“She is one of God’s women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and
+other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its
+light can be here on earth. So true, so sweet, so noble, so little an
+egoist--and that, let me tell you, is much in this age, so sceptical and
+selfish. And you, sir--I have read all the letters to poor Miss Lucy,
+and some of them speak of you, so I know you since some days from the
+knowing of others; but I have seen your true self since last night. You
+will give me your hand, will you not? And let us be friends for all our
+lives.”
+
+We shook hands, and he was so earnest and so kind that it made me quite
+choky.
+
+“And now,” he said, “may I ask you for some more help? I have a great
+task to do, and at the beginning it is to know. You can help me here.
+Can you tell me what went before your going to Transylvania? Later on I
+may ask more help, and of a different kind; but at first this will do.”
+
+“Look here, sir,” I said, “does what you have to do concern the Count?”
+
+“It does,” he said solemnly.
+
+“Then I am with you heart and soul. As you go by the 10:30 train, you
+will not have time to read them; but I shall get the bundle of papers.
+You can take them with you and read them in the train.”
+
+After breakfast I saw him to the station. When we were parting he
+said:--
+
+“Perhaps you will come to town if I send to you, and take Madam Mina
+too.”
+
+“We shall both come when you will,” I said.
+
+I had got him the morning papers and the London papers of the previous
+night, and while we were talking at the carriage window, waiting for the
+train to start, he was turning them over. His eyes suddenly seemed to
+catch something in one of them, “The Westminster Gazette”--I knew it by
+the colour--and he grew quite white. He read something intently,
+groaning to himself: “Mein Gott! Mein Gott! So soon! so soon!” I do not
+think he remembered me at the moment. Just then the whistle blew, and
+the train moved off. This recalled him to himself, and he leaned out of
+the window and waved his hand, calling out: “Love to Madam Mina; I shall
+write so soon as ever I can.”
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_26 September._--Truly there is no such thing as finality. Not a week
+since I said “Finis,” and yet here I am starting fresh again, or rather
+going on with the same 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. To-day he came
+back, and almost bounded into the room at about half-past five o’clock,
+and thrust last night’s “Westminster Gazette” into my hand.
+
+“What do you think of that?” he asked as he stood back and folded his
+arms.
+
+I looked over the paper, for I really did not know what he meant; but he
+took it from me and pointed out a paragraph about children being decoyed
+away at Hampstead. It did not convey much to me, until I reached a
+passage where it described small punctured 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 on great loss or waste of blood.”
+
+“And how the blood lost or waste?” I shook my head. He stepped over and
+sat down beside me, and went on:--
+
+“You are 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 contemplate 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 materialisation. 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 student of the brain--how you
+accept the hypnotism and reject the thought reading. Let me tell you, my
+friend, that there are things done to-day in electrical science which
+would have been deemed unholy by the very men who discovered
+electricity--who would themselves not so long before have been burned
+as wizards. There are always mysteries in life. Why was it that
+Methuselah lived nine hundred years, and ‘Old Parr’ one hundred and
+sixty-nine, and yet that poor Lucy, with four men’s blood in her poor
+veins, could not live even one day? For, had she live one more day, we
+could have 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 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 seen dynasties; and
+why the parrot never die only of bite of cat or dog or other complaint?
+Can you tell me why men believe in all ages and places that there are
+some few who live on always if they be permit; 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 then to tell me the thing, so that I could have the object of
+thought in mind all the time. But now I was without this 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 mad man, and not a sane one, follows an
+idea. I feel like a novice lumbering through a bog in a mist, jumping
+from one tussock to another in the mere blind effort to move on without
+knowing where I am going.”
+
+“That is 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 a 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 injure 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 hole 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 XV
+
+DR. SEWARD’S DIARY--_continued_.
+
+
+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
+you 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. To-night 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 be not true, then proof will be relief;
+at worst it will not harm. If it be true! Ah, there is the dread; yet
+very 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 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
+that 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 Zoölogical 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 when it has been quite a gala-time with them. Even
+this poor little mite, when he woke up to-day, 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 no 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 day-time, 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 time-discoloured
+stone, and dust-encrusted mortar, and rusty, dank iron, and tarnished
+brass, and clouded silver-plating gave back the feeble glimmer of a
+candle, the effect was more miserable and sordid than could have been
+imagined. It conveyed irresistibly the idea that life--animal life--was
+not the only thing which could pass away.
+
+Van Helsing went about his work systematically. Holding his candle so
+that he could read the coffin plates, and so holding it that the sperm
+dropped in white patches which congealed as they touched the metal, he
+made assurance of Lucy’s coffin. Another search in his bag, and he took
+out a turnscrew.
+
+“What are you going to do?” I asked.
+
+“To open the coffin. You shall yet be convinced.” Straightway he began
+taking out the screws, and finally lifted off the lid, showing the
+casing of lead beneath. The sight was almost too much for me. It seemed
+to be as much an affront to the dead as it would have been to have
+stripped off her clothing in her sleep whilst living; I actually took
+hold of his hand to stop him. He only said: “You shall see,” and again
+fumbling in his bag, took out a tiny fret-saw. Striking the turnscrew
+through the lead with a swift downward stab, which made me wince, he
+made a small hole, which was, however, big enough to admit the point of
+the saw. I had expected a rush of gas from the week-old corpse. We
+doctors, who have had to study our dangers, have to become accustomed to
+such things, and I drew back towards the door. But the Professor never
+stopped for a moment; he sawed down a couple of feet along one side of
+the lead coffin, and then across, and down the other side. Taking the
+edge of the loose flange, he bent it back towards the foot of the
+coffin, and holding up the candle into the aperture, motioned to me to
+look.
+
+I drew near and looked. The coffin was empty.
+
+It was certainly a surprise to me, and gave me a considerable shock, but
+Van Helsing was unmoved. He was now more sure than ever of his ground,
+and so emboldened to proceed in his task. “Are you satisfied now, friend
+John?” he asked.
+
+I felt all the dogged argumentativeness of my nature awake within me as
+I answered him:--
+
+“I am satisfied that Lucy’s body is not in that coffin; but that only
+proves one thing.”
+
+“And what is that, friend John?”
+
+“That it is not there.”
+
+“That is good logic,” he said, “so far as it goes. But how do you--how
+can you--account for it not being there?”
+
+“Perhaps a body-snatcher,” I suggested. “Some of the undertaker’s people
+may have stolen it.” I felt that I was speaking folly, and yet it was
+the only real cause which I could suggest. The Professor sighed. “Ah
+well!” he said, “we must have more proof. Come with me.”
+
+He put on the coffin-lid again, gathered up all his things and placed
+them in the bag, blew out the light, and placed the candle also in the
+bag. We opened the door, and went out. Behind us he closed the door and
+locked it. He handed me the key, saying: “Will you keep it? You had
+better be assured.” I laughed--it was not a very cheerful laugh, I am
+bound to say--as I motioned him to keep it. “A key is nothing,” I said;
+“there may be duplicates; and anyhow it is not difficult to pick a lock
+of that kind.” He said nothing, but put the key in his pocket. Then he
+told me to watch at one side of the churchyard whilst he would watch at
+the other. I took up my place behind a yew-tree, and I saw his dark
+figure move until the intervening headstones and trees hid it from my
+sight.
+
+It was a lonely vigil. Just after I had taken my place I heard a distant
+clock strike twelve, and in time came one and two. I was chilled and
+unnerved, and angry with the Professor for taking me on such an errand
+and with myself for coming. I was too cold and too sleepy to be keenly
+observant, and not sleepy enough to betray my trust so altogether I had
+a dreary, miserable time.
+
+Suddenly, as I turned round, I thought I saw something like a white
+streak, moving between two dark yew-trees at the side of the churchyard
+farthest from the tomb; at the same time a dark mass moved from the
+Professor’s side of the ground, and hurriedly went towards it. Then I
+too moved; but I had to go round headstones and railed-off tombs, and I
+stumbled over graves. The sky was overcast, and somewhere far off an
+early cock crew. A little way 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 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?” I
+asked.
+
+“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 “Spaniards,” 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 shall
+go with him on another expedition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_27 September._--It was two o’clock before we found a suitable
+opportunity for our attempt. The funeral held at noon was all completed,
+and the last stragglers of the mourners had taken themselves lazily
+away, when, looking carefully from behind a clump of alder-trees, we saw
+the sexton lock the gate after him. We knew then 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 realised 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 then 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, “see, 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. Some one has done it.”
+
+“And yet she has been dead one week. Most peoples in that time would not
+look so.” I had no answer for this, so was silent. Van Helsing did not
+seem to notice my silence; at any rate, he showed neither chagrin nor
+triumph. He was looking intently at the face of the dead woman, raising
+the eyelids and looking at the eyes, and once more opening the lips and
+examining the teeth. Then he turned to me and said:--
+
+“Here, there is one thing which is different from all recorded; here is
+some dual life that is not as the common. She was bitten by the vampire
+when she was in a trance, sleep-walking--oh, you start; you do not know
+that, friend John, but you shall know it all later--and in trance could
+he best come to take more blood. In trance she died, and in trance she
+is Un-Dead, too. So it is that she differ from all other. Usually when
+the Un-Dead 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 Un-Dead 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 Un-Dead, 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 for ever. 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
+to-day 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
+good-bye 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 Un-Dead. 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 to-night 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. To-morrow 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.)
+
+“_27 September._
+
+“Friend John,--
+
+“I write this in case anything should happen. I go alone to watch in
+that churchyard. It pleases me that the Un-Dead, Miss Lucy, shall not
+leave to-night, 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 Un-Dead,
+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 Un-Dead 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 the 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 Un-Dead, he have now 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 Un-Dead 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 come 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
+Un-Dead woman sleep, 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 Un-Dead, and cut off his head and burn his heart or drive a stake
+through it, so that the world may rest from him.
+
+“If it be so, farewell.
+
+“VAN HELSING.”
+
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_28 September._--It is wonderful what a good night’s sleep will do for
+one. Yesterday I was almost willing to accept Van Helsing’s monstrous
+ideas; but now they seem to start out lurid before me as outrages on
+common sense. I have no doubt that he believes it all. I wonder if his
+mind can have become in any way unhinged. Surely there must be _some_
+rational explanation of all these mysterious things. Is it possible that
+the Professor can have done it himself? He is so abnormally clever that
+if he went off his head he would carry out his intent with regard to
+some fixed idea in a wonderful way. I am loath to think it, and indeed
+it would be almost as great a marvel as the other to find that Van
+Helsing was mad; but anyhow I shall watch him carefully. I may get some
+light on the mystery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_29 September, morning._.... Last night, at a little before ten o’clock,
+Arthur and Quincey came into Van Helsing’s room; he told us all that 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 recognised 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 it is 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 Un-Dead.”
+
+“Un-Dead! 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 to speak such things, or
+am I mad to listen to them? Don’t dare to 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
+fulfilment even than I am, then--then I shall do my duty, whatever it
+may seem to me. And then, to follow of 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 of labour 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 came 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 to her my nights
+and days--before death, after death; and if my death can do her good
+even now, when she is the dead Un-Dead, 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 XVI
+
+DR. SEWARD’S DIARY--_continued_
+
+
+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 rents 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 that 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 the 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 nor
+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
+day-time, 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 Un-Dead can move. I waited here
+all the 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 Un-Dead cannot bear, and other things which they shun. Last
+night there was no exodus, so to-night 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
+humanising 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 to
+stake. Not being able to smoke, he cut himself a good-sized plug of
+tobacco and began to chew. As to Van Helsing, he was employed in a
+definite way. First he took from his bag a mass of what looked like
+thin, wafer-like biscuit, which was carefully rolled up in a white
+napkin; next he took out a double-handful of some whitish stuff, like
+dough or putty. He crumbled the wafer up fine and worked it into the
+mass between his hands. This he then took, and rolling it into thin
+strips, began to lay them into the crevices between the door and its
+setting in the tomb. I was somewhat puzzled at this, and being close,
+asked him what it was that he was doing. Arthur and Quincey drew near
+also, as they too were curious. He answered:--
+
+“I am closing the tomb, so that the Un-Dead may not enter.”
+
+“And is that stuff you have put there going to do it?” asked Quincey.
+“Great Scott! Is this a game?”
+
+“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 funereal gloom; never did tree
+or grass wave or rustle so ominously; never did bough creak so
+mysteriously; and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a
+woeful presage through the night.
+
+There was a long spell of silence, a big, aching void, and then from the
+Professor a keen “S-s-s-s!” He pointed; and far down the avenue of yews
+we saw a white figure advance--a dim white figure, which held something
+dark at its breast. The figure stopped, and at the moment a ray of
+moonlight fell upon the masses of driving clouds and showed in startling
+prominence a dark-haired woman, dressed in the cerements of the grave.
+We could not see the face, for it was bent down over what we saw to be a
+fair-haired child. There was a pause and a sharp little cry, such as a
+child gives in sleep, or a dog as it lies before the fire and dreams. We
+were starting forward, but the Professor’s warning hand, seen by us as
+he stood behind a yew-tree, kept us back; and then as we looked the
+white figure moved forwards again. It was now near enough for us to see
+clearly, and the moonlight still held. My own heart grew cold as ice,
+and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as we recognised the features of
+Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was
+turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous
+wantonness. Van Helsing stepped out, and, obedient to his gesture, we
+all advanced too; the four of us ranged in a line before the door of the
+tomb. Van Helsing raised his lantern and drew the slide; by the
+concentrated light that fell on Lucy’s face we could see that the lips
+were crimson with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over her
+chin and stained the purity of her lawn death-robe.
+
+We shuddered with horror. I could see by the tremulous light that even
+Van Helsing’s iron nerve had failed. Arthur was next to me, and if I had
+not seized his arm and held him up, he would have fallen.
+
+When Lucy--I call the thing that was before us Lucy because it bore her
+shape--saw us she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat gives
+when taken unawares; then her eyes ranged over us. Lucy’s eyes in form
+and colour; but Lucy’s eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of
+the pure, gentle orbs we knew. At that moment the remnant of my love
+passed into hate and loathing; had she then to be killed, I could have
+done it with savage delight. As she looked, her eyes blazed with unholy
+light, and the face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile. Oh, God,
+how it made me shudder to see it! With a careless motion, she flung to
+the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had
+clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls
+over a bone. The child gave a sharp cry, and lay there moaning. There
+was a cold-bloodedness in the act which wrung a groan from Arthur; when
+she advanced to him with outstretched arms and a wanton smile he fell
+back and hid his face in his hands.
+
+She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace,
+said:--
+
+“Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are
+hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!”
+
+There was something diabolically sweet in her tones--something of the
+tingling 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 iron 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
+the flesh were the coils of Medusa’s snakes, and the lovely,
+blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of
+the Greeks and Japanese. If ever a face meant death--if looks could
+kill--we saw it at that moment.
+
+And so for full half a minute, which seemed an eternity, she remained
+between the lifted crucifix and the sacred closing of her means of
+entry. Van Helsing broke the silence by asking Arthur:--
+
+“Answer me, oh my friend! Am I to proceed in my work?”
+
+Arthur threw himself on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, as he
+answered:--
+
+“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 in horrified
+amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman, with a corporeal
+body as real at that moment as our own, pass in 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 to-morrow. 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 lock
+the gate we shall remain. Then there is more to do; but not like this of
+to-night. As for this little one, he is not much harm, and by to-morrow
+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 to-morrow 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 the child in safety, and were tired; so we all
+slept with more or less reality of sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_29 September, night._--A little before twelve o’clock we three--Arthur,
+Quincey Morris, and myself--called for the Professor. It was odd to
+notice that by common consent we had all put on black clothes. Of
+course, Arthur wore black, for he was in deep mourning, but the rest of
+us wore it by instinct. We got to the churchyard by half-past one, and
+strolled about, keeping out of official observation, so that when the
+gravediggers had completed their task and the sexton under the belief
+that every one had gone, had locked the gate, we had the place all to
+ourselves. Van Helsing, instead of his little black bag, had with him a
+long leather one, something like a cricketing bag; it was manifestly of
+fair weight.
+
+When we were alone and had heard the last of the footsteps die out up
+the road, we silently, and as if by ordered intention, followed the
+Professor to the tomb. He unlocked the door, and we entered, closing it
+behind us. Then he took from his bag the lantern, which he lit, and also
+two wax candles, which, when lighted, he stuck, by melting their own
+ends, on other coffins, so that they might give light sufficient to work
+by. When he again lifted the lid off Lucy’s coffin we all looked--Arthur
+trembling like an aspen--and saw that the body 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 all see her
+as she was, and is.”
+
+She seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay there; the pointed teeth,
+the bloodstained, voluptuous mouth--which it made one shudder to
+see--the whole carnal and unspiritual 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 a small oil-lamp, which gave out, when lit in
+a corner of the tomb, gas which burned at 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 Un-Dead. 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 Un-Dead becomes themselves Un-Dead, 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
+all time make more of those Un-Deads that so have fill us with horror.
+The career of this so unhappy dear lady is but just begun. Those
+children whose blood she suck are not as yet so much the worse; but if
+she live on, Un-Dead, 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 plays
+unknowing ever of what has been. But of the most blessed of all, when
+this now Un-Dead 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 will 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 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 Un-Dead pass away.”
+
+Arthur took the stake and the hammer, and when once his mind was set on
+action his hands never trembled nor even quivered. Van Helsing opened
+his missal and began to read, and Quincey and I followed as well as we
+could. Arthur placed the point over the heart, and as I looked I could
+see its dint in the white flesh. Then he struck with all his might.
+
+The Thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, blood-curdling screech
+came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted
+in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the
+lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur
+never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm
+rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst
+the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. His
+face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through it; the sight of it
+gave us courage so that our voices seemed to ring through the little
+vault.
+
+And then the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and the
+teeth seemed to champ, and the face to quiver. Finally it lay still. The
+terrible task was over.
+
+The hammer fell from Arthur’s hand. He reeled and would have fallen had
+we not caught him. The great drops of sweat sprang from his forehead,
+and his breath came in broken gasps. It had indeed been an awful strain
+on him; and had he not been forced to his task by more than human
+considerations he could never have gone through with it. For a few
+minutes we were so taken up with him that we did not look towards the
+coffin. When we did, however, a murmur of startled surprise ran from one
+to the other of us. We gazed so eagerly that Arthur rose, for he had
+been seated on the ground, and came and looked too; and then a glad,
+strange light broke over his face and dispelled altogether the gloom of
+horror that lay upon it.
+
+There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded
+and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as a
+privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen her in
+her 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 Un-Dead. 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, 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
+about, and you can help me. To-night I leave for Amsterdam, but shall
+return to-morrow night. And then begins our great quest. But first I
+shall have much to say, so that you may know what is 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 XVII
+
+DR. SEWARD’S DIARY--_continued_
+
+
+When we arrived at the Berkeley 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 despatched 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 to-day. 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 Un-Dead 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 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 after drove off to Liverpool Street. I
+took my way to Paddington, where I arrived about fifteen minutes before
+the train came in.
+
+The crowd melted away, after the bustling fashion common to arrival
+platforms; and I was beginning to feel uneasy, lest I might miss my
+guest, when a sweet-faced, dainty-looking girl stepped up to me, and,
+after a quick glance, said: “Dr. Seward, is it not?”
+
+“And you are Mrs. Harker!” I answered at once; whereupon she held out
+her hand.
+
+“I knew you from the description of poor dear Lucy; but----” She stopped
+suddenly, and a quick blush overspread her face.
+
+The blush that rose to my own cheeks somehow set us both at ease, for it
+was a tacit answer to her own. I got her luggage, which included a
+typewriter, and we took the Underground to Fenchurch Street, after I had
+sent a wire to my housekeeper to have a sitting-room and bedroom
+prepared at once for Mrs. Harker.
+
+In due time we arrived. She knew, of course, that the place was a
+lunatic asylum, but I could see that she was unable to repress a shudder
+when we entered.
+
+She told me that, if she might, she would come presently to my study, as
+she had much to say. So here I am finishing my entry in my phonograph
+diary whilst I await her. As yet I have not had the chance of looking at
+the papers which Van Helsing left with me, though they lie open before
+me. I must get her interested in something, so that I may have an
+opportunity of reading them. She does not know how precious time is, or
+what a task we have in hand. I must be careful not to frighten her. Here
+she is!
+
+
+_Mina Harker’s Journal._
+
+_29 September._--After I had tidied myself, I went down to Dr. Seward’s
+study. At the door I paused a moment, for I thought I heard him talking
+with some one. As, however, he had pressed me to be quick, I knocked at
+the door, and on his calling out, “Come in,” I entered.
+
+To my intense surprise, there was no one with him. He was quite alone,
+and on the table opposite him was what I knew at once from the
+description to be a phonograph. I had never seen one, and was much
+interested.
+
+“I hope I did not keep you waiting,” I said; “but I stayed at the door
+as I heard you talking, and thought there was some one 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 naïveté
+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 realised my meaning.
+
+“You do not know me,” I said. “When you have read those papers--my own
+diary and my husband’s also, which I have typed--you will know me
+better. I have not faltered in giving every thought of my own heart in
+this cause; but, of course, you do not know me--yet; and I must not
+expect you to trust me so far.”
+
+He is certainly a man of noble nature; poor dear Lucy was right about
+him. He stood up and opened a large drawer, in which were arranged in
+order a number of hollow cylinders of metal covered with dark wax, and
+said:--
+
+“You are quite right. I did not trust you because I did not know you.
+But I know you now; and let me say that I should have known you long
+ago. I know that Lucy told you of me; she told me of you too. May I make
+the only atonement in my power? Take the cylinders and hear them--the
+first half-dozen of them are personal to me, and they will not horrify
+you; then you will know me better. Dinner will by then be ready. In the
+meantime I shall read over some of these documents, and shall be better
+able to understand certain things.” He carried the phonograph himself up
+to my sitting-room and adjusted it for me. Now I shall learn something
+pleasant, I am sure; for it will tell me the other side of a true love
+episode of which I know one side already....
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_29 September._--I was so absorbed in that wonderful diary of Jonathan
+Harker and that other of his wife that I let the time run on without
+thinking. Mrs. Harker was not down when the maid came to announce
+dinner, so I said: “She is possibly tired; let dinner wait an hour,” and
+I went on with my work. I had just finished Mrs. Harker’s diary, when
+she came in. She looked sweetly pretty, but very sad, and her eyes were
+flushed with crying. This somehow moved me much. Of late I have had
+cause for tears, God knows! but the relief of them was denied me; and
+now the sight of those sweet eyes, brightened with 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 dear Lucy’s
+death and all that led to it; because in the struggle which we have
+before us to rid the earth of this terrible monster we must have all
+the knowledge and all the help which we can get. I think that the
+cylinders which you gave me contained more than you intended me to know;
+but I can see that there are in your record many lights to this dark
+mystery. You will let me help, will you not? I know all up to a certain
+point; and I see already, though your diary only took me to 7 September,
+how poor Lucy was beset, and how her terrible doom was being wrought
+out. Jonathan and I have been working day and night since Professor Van
+Helsing saw us. He is gone to Whitby to get more information, and he
+will be here to-morrow 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 travelled on the road to
+poor Lucy’s death, you will not be content, I know, to remain in the
+dark. Nay, the end--the very end--may give you a gleam of peace. Come,
+there is dinner. We must keep one another strong for what is before us;
+we have a cruel and dreadful task. When you have eaten you shall learn
+the rest, and I shall answer any questions you ask--if there be anything
+which you do not understand, though it was apparent to us who were
+present.”
+
+
+_Mina Harker’s Journal._
+
+_29 September._--After dinner I came with Dr. Seward to his study. He
+brought back the phonograph from my room, and I took my typewriter. He
+placed me in a comfortable 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--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 a
+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, 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 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 him
+when they come.” He accordingly set the phonograph at a slow pace, and I
+began to typewrite from the beginning of the seventh cylinder. I used
+manifold, and so took three copies of the diary, just as I had done with
+all 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, helped us to understand the
+terrible events at Whitby when Count Dracula landed, so I shall look
+through the evening papers since then, and perhaps I shall get some new
+light. I am not sleepy, and the work will help to keep me quiet.
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_30 September._--Mr. Harker arrived at nine o’clock. He had 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,
+business-like gentleman who came here to-day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_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
+typescript 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 typescript. 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
+     collating his 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 zoöphagous, 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 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.
+
+
+_Jonathan Harker’s Journal._
+
+_29 September, in train to London._--When I received Mr. Billington’s
+courteous message that he would give me any information in his power I
+thought it best to go down to Whitby and make, on the spot, such
+inquiries as I wanted. It was now my object to trace that horrid cargo
+of the Count’s to its place in London. Later, we may be able to deal
+with it. Billington junior, a nice lad, met me at the station, and
+brought me to his father’s house, where they had decided that I must
+stay the night. They are hospitable, with true Yorkshire hospitality:
+give a guest everything, and leave him free 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 letter to Carter Paterson, and their reply; of both of
+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. They had all something to say of the
+strange entry of the ship, which is already taking its place in local
+tradition; but no one could add to the simple description “Fifty cases
+of common earth.” I then saw the station-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 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 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, for ever and adequately, this source of
+reproach.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_30 September._--The station-master was good enough to give me a line to
+his old companion the station-master at King’s Cross, so that when I
+arrived there in the morning I was able to ask him about the arrival of
+the boxes. He, too, put me at once in communication with the proper
+officials, and I saw that their tally was correct with the original
+invoice. The opportunities of acquiring an abnormal thirst had been here
+limited; a noble use of them had, however, been made, and again I was
+compelled to deal with the result in an _ex post facto_ manner.
+
+From thence I went on to Carter Paterson’s central office, where I met
+with the utmost courtesy. They looked up the transaction in their
+day-book and letter-book, and at once telephoned to their King’s Cross
+office for more details. By good fortune, the men who did the teaming
+were waiting for work, and the official at once sent them over, sending
+also by one of them the way-bill and all the papers connected with the
+delivery of the boxes at Carfax. Here again I found the tally agreeing
+exactly; the carriers’ men were able to supplement the paucity of the
+written words with a few details. These were, I shortly found, connected
+almost solely with the dusty nature of the job, and of 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 ole 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_ the 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.
+
+I shall try to see the carter who took away the boxes from Carfax when
+Renfield attacked them. By following up this clue we may learn a good
+deal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Later._--Mina and I have worked all day, and we have put all the papers
+into order.
+
+
+_Mina Harker’s Journal_
+
+_30 September._--I am so glad that I hardly know how to contain myself.
+It is, I suppose, the reaction from the haunting fear which I have had:
+that this terrible affair and the reopening of his old wound might act
+detrimentally on Jonathan. I saw him leave for Whitby with as brave a
+face as I 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 to-night. I
+feel myself quite wild with excitement. I suppose one ought to pity any
+thing so hunted as is the Count. That is just it: this Thing is not
+human--not even 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, has 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 in 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 poor 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 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 the 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 to-day. 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 to-day. 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 realise
+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 on, 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 regret 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 XVIII
+
+DR. SEWARD’S DIARY
+
+
+_30 September._--I got home at five o’clock, and found that Godalming
+and Morris had not only arrived, but had already studied the transcript
+of the various diaries and letters which Harker and his wonderful wife
+had made and arranged. 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 any one?” 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 elenchi_.” 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
+vulgarised 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: “Good-bye, and I hope I may see you often,
+under auspices pleasanter to yourself,” to which, to my astonishment, he
+replied:--
+
+“Good-bye, 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 to-night 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 to-morrow she say good-bye 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 to-day. I too have seen the need of putting down at
+present everything, however trivial; but there is little in this except
+what is personal. Must it go in?” The Professor read it over gravely,
+and handed it back, saying:--
+
+“It need not go in if you do not wish it; but I pray that it may. It can
+but make your husband love you the more, and all us, your friends, more
+honour you--as well as more esteem and love.” She took it back with
+another blush and a bright smile.
+
+And so now, up to this very hour, all the records we have are complete
+and in order. The Professor took away one copy to study after dinner,
+and before our meeting, which is fixed for nine o’clock. The rest of us
+have already read everything; so when we meet in the study we shall all
+be informed as to facts, and can arrange our plan of battle with this
+terrible and mysterious enemy.
+
+
+_Mina Harker’s Journal._
+
+_30 September._--When we met in Dr. Seward’s study two hours after
+dinner, which had been at six o’clock, we unconsciously formed a sort of
+board or committee. Professor Van Helsing took the head of the table, to
+which Dr. Seward motioned him as he came into the room. He made me sit
+next to him on his right, and asked me to act as secretary; Jonathan sat
+next to me. Opposite us were Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, and Mr.
+Morris--Lord Godalming being next the Professor, and Dr. Seward in the
+centre. The Professor said:--
+
+“I may, I suppose, take it that we are all acquainted with the facts
+that are in these papers.” We all expressed assent, and he went on:--
+
+“Then it were, I think good that I tell you something of the kind of
+enemy with which we have to deal. I shall then make known to you
+something of the history of this man, which has been ascertained for me.
+So we then can discuss how we shall act, and can take our measure
+according.
+
+“There are such beings as vampires; some of us have evidence that they
+exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the
+teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane
+peoples. I admit that at the first I was sceptic. Were it not that
+through long years I have train myself to keep an open mind, I could not
+have believe until such time as that fact thunder on my ear. ‘See! see!
+I prove; I prove.’ Alas! Had I known at the 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 limitations, appear
+at will when, and where, and in any of the forms that are to him; 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 for
+ever are the gates of heaven shut; for who shall open them to us again?
+We go on for all time abhorred by all; a blot on the face of God’s
+sunshine; an arrow in the side of Him who died for man. But we are face
+to face with duty; and in such case must we shrink? For me, I say, no;
+but then I am old, and life, with his sunshine, his fair places, his
+song of birds, his music and his love, lie far behind. You others are
+young. Some have seen sorrow; but there are fair days yet in store. What
+say you?”
+
+Whilst he was speaking, Jonathan had taken my hand. I feared, oh so
+much, that the appalling nature of our danger was overcoming him when I
+saw his hand stretch out; but it was life to me to feel its touch--so
+strong, so self-reliant, so resolute. A brave man’s hand can speak for
+itself; it does not even need a woman’s love to hear its music.
+
+When the Professor had done speaking my husband looked in my eyes, and I
+in his; there was no need for speaking between us.
+
+“I answer for Mina and myself,” he said.
+
+“Count me in, Professor,” said Mr. Quincey Morris, laconically as usual.
+
+“I am with you,” said Lord Godalming, “for Lucy’s sake, if for no other
+reason.”
+
+Dr. Seward simply nodded. The Professor stood up and, after laying his
+golden crucifix on the table, held out his hand on either side. I took
+his right hand, and Lord Godalming his left; Jonathan held my right with
+his left and stretched across to Mr. Morris. So as we all took hands our
+solemn compact was made. I felt my heart icy cold, but it did not even
+occur to me to draw back. We resumed our places, and Dr. Van Helsing
+went on with a sort of cheerfulness which showed that the serious work
+had begun. It was to be taken as gravely, and in as businesslike a way,
+as any other transaction of life:--
+
+“Well, you know what we have to contend against; but we, too, are not
+without strength. We have on our side power of combination--a power
+denied to the vampire kind; we have sources of science; we are free to
+act and think; and the hours of the day and the night are ours equally.
+In fact, so far as our powers extend, they are unfettered, and we are
+free to use them. We have self-devotion in a cause, and an end to
+achieve which is not a selfish one. These things are much.
+
+“Now let us see how far the general powers arrayed against us are
+restrict, and how the individual cannot. In fine, let us consider the
+limitations of the vampire in general, and of this one in particular.
+
+“All we have to go upon are traditions and superstitions. These do not
+at the first appear much, when the matter is one of life and death--nay
+of more than either life or death. Yet must we be satisfied; in the
+first place because we have to be--no other means is at our control--and
+secondly, because, after all, these things--tradition and
+superstition--are everything. Does not the belief in vampires rest for
+others--though not, alas! for us--on them? A year ago which of us would
+have received such a possibility, in the midst of our scientific,
+sceptical, matter-of-fact nineteenth century? We even scouted a belief
+that we saw justified under our very eyes. Take it, then, that the
+vampire, and the belief in his limitations and his cure, rest for the
+moment on the same base. For, let me tell you, he is known everywhere
+that men have been. In old Greece, in old Rome; he flourish in Germany
+all over, in France, in India, even in the Chernosese; and in China, so
+far from us in all ways, there even is he, and the peoples fear him at
+this day. He have follow the wake of the berserker Icelander, the
+devil-begotten Hun, the Slav, the Saxon, the Magyar. So far, then, we
+have all we may act upon; and let me tell you that very much of the
+beliefs are justified by what we have seen in our own so unhappy
+experience. The vampire live on, and cannot die by mere passing of the
+time; he can flourish when that he can fatten on the blood of the
+living. Even more, we have seen amongst us that he can even grow
+younger; that his vital faculties grow strenuous, and seem as though
+they refresh themselves when his special pabulum is plenty. But he
+cannot flourish without this diet; he eat not as others. Even friend
+Jonathan, who lived with him for weeks, did never see him to 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 wolfs, 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 are we told, and in this record of ours we have proof by
+inference. Thus, whereas he can do as he will within his limit, when he
+have his earth-home, his coffin-home, his hell-home, the place
+unhallowed, as we saw when he went to the grave of the suicide at
+Whitby; still at other time he can only change when the time come. It is
+said, too, that he can only pass running water at the slack or the flood
+of the tide. Then there are things which so afflict him that he has no
+power, as the garlic that we know of; and as for things sacred, as this
+symbol, my crucifix, that was amongst us even now when we resolve, to
+them he is nothing, but in their presence he take his place far off and
+silent with respect. There are others, too, which I shall tell you of,
+lest in our seeking we may need them. The branch of wild rose on his
+coffin keep him that he move not from it; a sacred bullet fired into the
+coffin kill him so that he be true dead; and as for the stake through
+him, we know already of its peace; or the cut-off head that giveth rest.
+We have seen it with our eyes.
+
+“Thus when we find the habitation of this man-that-was, we can confine
+him to his coffin and destroy him, if we obey what we know. But he is
+clever. I have asked my friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth University, to
+make his record; and, from all the means that are, he tell me of what he
+has been. He must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his
+name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of
+Turkey-land. 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 to-day; 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’s 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, sterilise 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 to-night, you
+no more must question. We shall tell you all in good time. We are men
+and are able to bear; but you must be our star and our hope, and we
+shall act all the more free that you are not in the danger, such as we
+are.”
+
+All the men, even Jonathan, seemed relieved; but it did not seem to me
+good that they should brave danger and, perhaps, lessen their
+safety--strength being the best safety--through care of me; but their
+minds were made up, and, though it was a bitter pill for me to swallow,
+I could say nothing, save to accept their chivalrous care of me.
+
+Mr. Morris resumed the discussion:--
+
+“As there is no time to lose, I vote we have a look at his house right
+now. Time is everything with him; and swift action on our part may save
+another victim.”
+
+I own that my heart began to fail me when the time for action came so
+close, but I did not say anything, for I had a greater fear that if I
+appeared as a drag or a hindrance to their work, they might even leave
+me out of their counsels altogether. They have now gone off to Carfax,
+with means to get into the house.
+
+Manlike, they had told me to go to bed and sleep; as if a woman can
+sleep when those she loves are in danger! I shall lie down and pretend
+to sleep, lest Jonathan have added anxiety about me when he returns.
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_1 October, 4 a. m._--Just as we were about to leave the house, an
+urgent message was brought to me from Renfield to know if I would see
+him at once, as he had something of the utmost importance to say to me.
+I told the messenger to say that I would attend to his wishes in the
+morning; I was busy just at the moment. The attendant added:--
+
+“He seems very importunate, sir. I have never seen him so eager. I don’t
+know but what, if you don’t see him soon, he will have one of his
+violent fits.” I knew the man would not have said this without some
+cause, so I said: “All right; I’ll go now”; and I asked the others to
+wait a few minutes for me, as I had to go and see my “patient.”
+
+“Take me with you, friend John,” said the Professor. “His case in your
+diary interest me much, and it had bearing, too, now and again on _our_
+case. I should much like to see him, and especial when his mind is
+disturbed.”
+
+“May I come also?” asked Lord Godalming.
+
+“Me too?” said Quincey Morris. “May I come?” said Harker. I nodded, and
+we all went down the passage together.
+
+We found him in a state of considerable excitement, but far more
+rational in his speech and manner than I had ever seen him. There was an
+unusual understanding of himself, which was unlike anything I had ever
+met with in a lunatic; and he took it for granted that his reasons would
+prevail with others entirely sane. We all four 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 judgment 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.
+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
+patronised on Derby night. Mr. Morris, you should be proud of your great
+state. Its reception into the Union was a precedent which may have
+far-reaching effects hereafter, when the Pole and the Tropics may hold
+alliance to the Stars and Stripes. The power of Treaty may yet prove a
+vast engine of enlargement, when the Monroe doctrine takes its true
+place as a political fable. What shall any man say of his pleasure at
+meeting Van Helsing? Sir, I make no apology for dropping all forms of
+conventional prefix. When an individual has revolutionised therapeutics
+by his discovery of the continuous evolution of brain-matter,
+conventional forms are unfitting, since they would seem to limit him to
+one of a class. You, gentlemen, who by nationality, by heredity, or by
+the possession of natural gifts, are fitted to hold your respective
+places in the moving world, I take to witness that I am as sane as at
+least the majority of men who are in full possession of their liberties.
+And I am sure that you, Dr. Seward, humanitarian and medico-jurist as
+well as scientist, will deem it a moral duty to deal with me as one to
+be considered as under exceptional circumstances.” He made this last
+appeal with a courtly air of conviction which was not without its own
+charm.
+
+I think we were all staggered. For my own part, I was under the
+conviction, despite my knowledge of the man’s character and history,
+that his reason had been restored; and I felt under a strong impulse to
+tell him that I was satisfied as to his sanity, and would see about the
+necessary formalities for his release in the morning. I thought it
+better to wait, however, before making so grave a statement, for of old
+I knew the sudden changes to which this particular patient was liable.
+So I contented myself with making a general statement that he appeared
+to be improving very rapidly; that I would have a longer chat with him
+in the morning, and would then see what I could do in the direction of
+meeting his wishes. This did not at all satisfy him, for he said
+quickly:--
+
+“But I fear, Dr. Seward, that you hardly apprehend my wish. I desire to
+go at once--here--now--this very hour--this very moment, if I may. Time
+presses, and in our implied agreement with the old scytheman it is of
+the essence of the contract. I am sure it is only necessary to put
+before so admirable a practitioner as Dr. Seward so simple, yet so
+momentous a wish, to ensure its fulfilment.” He looked at me keenly, and
+seeing the negative in my face, turned to the others, and scrutinised
+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 form or 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
+to-night? 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. Good-night.”
+
+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 realised,
+for, when he found that his appeal would not be successful, he got into
+quite a frantic condition. He threw himself on his knees, and held up
+his hands, wringing them in plaintive supplication, and poured forth a
+torrent of entreaty, with the tears rolling down his cheeks, and his
+whole face and form expressive of the deepest emotion:--
+
+“Let me entreat you, Dr. Seward, oh, let me implore you, to let me out
+of this house at once. Send me away how you will and where you will;
+send keepers with me with whips and chains; let them take me in a
+strait-waistcoat, manacled and leg-ironed, even to a 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 occasion, just as I had
+expected.
+
+When I was leaving the room, last of our party, he said to me in a
+quiet, well-bred voice:--
+
+“You will, I trust, Dr. Seward, do me the justice to bear in mind, later
+on, that I did what I could to convince you to-night.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL
+
+
+_1 October, 5 a. m._--I went with the party to the search with an easy
+mind, for I think I never saw Mina so absolutely strong and well. I am
+so glad that she consented to hold back and let us men do the work.
+Somehow, it was a dread to me that she was in this fearful business at
+all; but now that her work is done, and that it is due to her energy and
+brains and foresight that the whole story is put together in such a way
+that every point tells, she may well feel that her part is finished, and
+that she can henceforth leave the rest to us. We were, I think, all a
+little upset by the scene with Mr. Renfield. When we came away from his
+room we were silent till we got back to the study. Then Mr. Morris said
+to Dr. Seward:--
+
+“Say, Jack, if that man wasn’t attempting a bluff, he is about the
+sanest lunatic I ever saw. I’m not sure, but I believe that he had some
+serious purpose, and if he had, it was pretty rough on him not to get a
+chance.” Lord Godalming and I were silent, but Dr. Van Helsing added:--
+
+“Friend John, you know more of 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 fervour 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 some one else amongst us. I suppose it was the recollection, so
+powerfully brought home to me by the grim surroundings, of that terrible
+experience in Transylvania. I think the feeling was common to us all,
+for I noticed that the others kept looking over their shoulders at every
+sound and every new shadow, just as I felt myself doing.
+
+The whole place was thick with dust. The floor was seemingly inches
+deep, except where there were recent footsteps, in which on holding down
+my lamp I could see marks of hobnails where the dust was cracked. The
+walls were fluffy and heavy with dust, and in the corners were masses of
+spider’s webs, whereon the dust had gathered till they looked like old
+tattered rags as the weight had torn them partly down. On a table in the
+hall was a great bunch of keys, with a time-yellowed label on each. They
+had been used several times, for on the table were several similar rents
+in the blanket of dust, similar to that exposed when the Professor
+lifted them. He turned to me and said:--
+
+“You know this place, Jonathan. You have copied maps of it, and you know
+it at least more than we do. Which is the way to the chapel?” I had an
+idea of its direction, though on my former visit I had not been able to
+get admission to it; so I led the way, and after a few wrong turnings
+found myself opposite a low, arched oaken door, ribbed with iron bands.
+“This is the spot,” said the Professor as he turned his lamp on a small
+map of the house, copied from the file of my original correspondence
+regarding the purchase. With a little trouble we found the key on the
+bunch and opened the door. We were prepared for some unpleasantness, for
+as we were opening the door a faint, malodorous air seemed to exhale
+through the gaps, but none of us ever expected such an odour as we
+encountered. None of the others had met the Count at all at close
+quarters, and when I had seen him he was either in the fasting stage of
+his existence in his rooms or, when he was gloated with fresh blood, in
+a ruined building open to the air; but here the place was small and
+close, and the long disuse had made the air stagnant and foul. There was
+an earthy smell, as of some dry miasma, which came through the fouler
+air. But as to the odour itself, how shall I describe it? It was not
+alone that it was composed of all the ills of mortality and with the
+pungent, acrid smell of blood, but it seemed as though corruption had
+become itself corrupt. Faugh! it sickens me to think of it. Every breath
+exhaled by that monster seemed to have clung to the place and
+intensified its loathsomeness.
+
+Under ordinary circumstances such a stench would have brought our
+enterprise to an end; but this was no ordinary case, and the high and
+terrible purpose in which we were involved gave us a strength which rose
+above merely physical considerations. After the involuntary shrinking
+consequent on the first nauseous whiff, we one and all set about our
+work as though that loathsome place were a garden of roses.
+
+We made an accurate examination of the place, the Professor saying as we
+began:--
+
+“The first thing is to see how many of the boxes are left; we must then
+examine every hole and corner and cranny and see if we cannot get some
+clue as to what has become of the rest.” A glance was sufficient to show
+how many remained, for the great earth chests were bulky, and there was
+no mistaking them.
+
+There were only twenty-nine left out of the fifty! Once I got a fright,
+for, seeing Lord Godalming suddenly turn and look out of the vaulted
+door into the dark passage beyond, I looked too, and for an instant my
+heart stood still. Somewhere, looking out from the shadow, I seemed to
+see the high lights of the Count’s evil face, the ridge of the nose, the
+red eyes, the red lips, the awful pallor. It was only for a moment, for,
+as Lord Godalming said, “I thought I saw a face, but it was only the
+shadows,” and resumed his inquiry, I turned my lamp in the direction,
+and stepped into the passage. There was no sign of any one; and as there
+were no corners, no doors, no aperture of any kind, but only the solid
+walls of the passage, there could be no hiding-place even for _him_. I
+took it that fear had helped imagination, and said nothing.
+
+A few minutes later I saw Morris step suddenly back from a corner, which
+he was examining. We all followed his movements with our eyes, for
+undoubtedly some nervousness was growing on us, and we saw a whole mass
+of phosphorescence, which twinkled like stars. We all instinctively drew
+back. The whole place was becoming alive with rats.
+
+For a moment or two we stood appalled, all save Lord Godalming, who was
+seemingly prepared for such an emergency. Rushing over to the great
+iron-bound oaken door, which Dr. Seward had described from the outside,
+and which I had seen myself, he turned the key in the lock, drew the
+huge bolts, and swung the door open. Then, taking his little silver
+whistle from his pocket, he blew a low, shrill call. It was answered
+from behind Dr. Seward’s house by the yelping of dogs, and after about a
+minute three terriers came dashing round the corner of the house.
+Unconsciously we had all moved towards the door, and as we moved I
+noticed that the dust had been much disturbed: the boxes which had been
+taken out had been brought this way. But even in the minute that had
+elapsed the number of the rats had vastly increased. They seemed to
+swarm over the place all at once, till the lamplight, shining on their
+moving dark bodies and glittering, baleful eyes, made the place look
+like a bank of earth set with fireflies. The dogs dashed on, but at the
+threshold suddenly stopped and snarled, and then, simultaneously lifting
+their noses, began to howl in most lugubrious fashion. The rats were
+multiplying in thousands, and we moved out.
+
+Lord Godalming lifted one of the dogs, and carrying him in, placed him
+on the floor. The instant his feet touched the ground he seemed to
+recover his courage, and rushed at his natural enemies. They fled before
+him so fast that before he had shaken the life out of a score, the other
+dogs, who had by now been lifted in the same manner, had but small prey
+ere the whole mass had vanished.
+
+With their going it seemed as if some evil presence had departed, for
+the dogs frisked about and barked merrily as they made sudden darts at
+their prostrate foes, and turned them over and over and tossed them in
+the air with vicious shakes. We all seemed to find our spirits rise.
+Whether it was the purifying of the deadly atmosphere by the opening of
+the chapel door, or the relief which we experienced by finding ourselves
+in the open I know not; but most certainly the shadow of dread seemed to
+slip from us like a robe, and the occasion of our coming lost something
+of its grim significance, though we did not slacken a whit in our
+resolution. We closed the outer door and barred and locked it, and
+bringing the dogs with us, began our search of the house. We found
+nothing throughout except dust in extraordinary proportions, and all
+untouched save for my own footsteps when I had made my first visit.
+Never once did the dogs exhibit any symptom of uneasiness, and even when
+we returned to the chapel they frisked about as though they had been
+rabbit-hunting in a summer wood.
+
+The morning was quickening in the east when we emerged from the front.
+Dr. Van Helsing had taken the key of the hall-door from the bunch, and
+locked the door in orthodox fashion, putting the key into his pocket
+when he had done.
+
+“So far,” he said, “our night has been eminently successful. No harm has
+come to us such as I feared might be and yet we have ascertained how
+many boxes are missing. More than all do I rejoice that this, our
+first--and perhaps our most difficult and dangerous--step has been
+accomplished without the bringing thereinto our most sweet Madam Mina or
+troubling her waking or sleeping thoughts with sights and sounds and
+smells of horror which she might never forget. One lesson, too, we have
+learned, if it be allowable to argue _a particulari_: that the brute
+beasts which are to the Count’s command are yet themselves not amenable
+to his spiritual power; for look, these rats that would come to his
+call, just as from his castle top he summon the wolves to your going and
+to that poor mother’s cry, though they come to him, they run pell-mell
+from the so little dogs of my friend Arthur. We have other matters
+before us, other dangers, other fears; and that monster--he has not used
+his power over the brute world for the only or the last time to-night.
+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 to-night 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 to-morrow I shall keep
+dark over to-night’s doings, and shall refuse to speak of anything that
+has happened. I rest on the sofa, so as not to disturb her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_1 October, later._--I suppose it was natural that we should have all
+overslept ourselves, for the day was a busy one, and the night had no
+rest at all. Even Mina must have felt its exhaustion, for though I slept
+till the sun was high, I was awake before her, and had to call two or
+three times before she awoke. Indeed, she was so sound asleep that for a
+few seconds she did not recognize me, but looked at me with a sort of
+blank terror, as one looks who has been waked out of a bad dream. She
+complained a little of being tired, and I let her rest till later in the
+day. We now know of twenty-one boxes having been removed, and if it be
+that several were taken in any of these removals we may be able to trace
+them all. Such will, of course, immensely simplify our labour, and the
+sooner the matter is attended to the better. I shall look up Thomas
+Snelling to-day.
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_1 October._--It was towards noon when I was awakened by the Professor
+walking into my room. He was more jolly and cheerful than usual, and it
+is quite evident that last night’s work has helped to take some of the
+brooding weight off his mind. After going over the adventure of the
+night he suddenly said:--
+
+“Your patient interests me much. May it be that with you I visit him
+this morning? Or if that you are too occupy, I can go alone if it may
+be. It is a new experience to me to find a lunatic who talk philosophy,
+and reason so sound.” I had some work to do which pressed, so I told him
+that if he would go alone I would be glad, as then I should not have to
+keep him waiting; so I called an attendant and gave him the necessary
+instructions. Before the Professor left the room I cautioned him against
+getting any false impression from my patient. “But,” he answered, “I
+want him to talk of himself and of his delusion as to consuming live
+things. He said to Madam Mina, as I see in your diary of yesterday, that
+he had once had such a belief. Why do you smile, friend John?”
+
+“Excuse me,” I said, “but the answer is here.” I laid my hand on the
+type-written matter. “When our sane and learned lunatic made that very
+statement of how he _used_ to consume life, his mouth was actually
+nauseous with the flies and spiders which he had eaten just before Mrs.
+Harker entered the room.” Van Helsing smiled in turn. “Good!” he said.
+“Your memory is true, friend John. I should have remembered. And yet it
+is this very obliquity of thought and memory which makes mental disease
+such a fascinating study. Perhaps I may gain more knowledge out of the
+folly of this madman than I shall from the teaching of the most wise.
+Who knows?” I went on with my work, and before long was through that in
+hand. It seemed that the time had been very short indeed, but there was
+Van Helsing back in the study. “Do I interrupt?” he asked politely as he
+stood at the door.
+
+“Not at all,” I answered. “Come in. My work is finished, and I am free.
+I can go with you now, if you like.
+
+“It is needless; I have seen him!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“I fear that he does not appraise me at much. Our interview was short.
+When I entered his room he was sitting on a stool in the centre, with
+his elbows on his knees, and his face was the picture of sullen
+discontent. I spoke to him as cheerfully as I could, and with such a
+measure of respect as I could assume. He made no reply whatever. “Don’t
+you know me?” I asked. His answer was not reassuring: “I know you well
+enough; you are the old fool Van Helsing. I wish you would take yourself
+and your idiotic brain theories somewhere else. Damn all thick-headed
+Dutchmen!” Not a word more would he say, but sat in his implacable
+sullenness as indifferent to me as though I had not been in the room at
+all. Thus departed for this time my chance of much learning from this so
+clever lunatic; so I shall go, if I may, and cheer myself with a few
+happy words with that sweet soul Madam Mina. Friend John, it does
+rejoice me unspeakable that she is no more to be pained, no more to be
+worried with our terrible things. Though we shall much miss her help, it
+is better so.”
+
+“I agree with you with all my heart,” I answered earnestly, for I did
+not want him to weaken in this matter. “Mrs. Harker is better out of it.
+Things are quite bad enough for us, all men of the world, and who have
+been in many tight places in our time; but it is no place for a woman,
+and if she had remained in touch with the affair, it would in time
+infallibly have wrecked her.”
+
+So Van Helsing has gone to confer with Mrs. Harker and Harker; Quincey
+and Art are all out following up the clues as to the earth-boxes. I
+shall finish my round of work and we shall meet to-night.
+
+
+_Mina Harker’s Journal._
+
+_1 October._--It is strange to me to be kept in the dark as I am to-day;
+after Jonathan’s full confidence for so many years, to see him
+manifestly avoid certain matters, and those the most vital of all. This
+morning I slept late after the fatigues of yesterday, and though
+Jonathan was late too, he was the earlier. He spoke to me before he went
+out, never more sweetly or tenderly, but he never mentioned a word of
+what had happened in the visit to the Count’s house. And yet he must
+have known how terribly anxious I was. Poor dear fellow! I suppose it
+must have distressed him even more than it did me. They all agreed that
+it was best that I should not be drawn further into this awful work, and
+I acquiesced. But to think that he keeps anything from me! And now I am
+crying like a silly fool, when I _know_ it comes from my husband’s great
+love and from the good, good wishes of those other strong men.
+
+That has done me good. Well, some day Jonathan will tell me all; and
+lest it should ever be that he should think for a moment that I kept
+anything from him, I still keep my journal as usual. Then if he has
+feared of my trust I shall show it to him, with every thought of my
+heart put down for his dear eyes to read. I feel strangely sad and
+low-spirited to-day. 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 there 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 to-day. 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 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 recognise 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 realise 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 some 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. To-night I shall strive hard to sleep naturally. If I do
+not, I shall to-morrow night get them to give me a dose of chloral; that
+cannot hurt me for once, and it will give me a good night’s sleep. Last
+night tired me more than if I had not slept at all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_2 October 10 p. m._--Last night I slept, but did not dream. I must have
+slept soundly, for I was not waked by Jonathan coming to bed; but the
+sleep has not refreshed me, for to-day 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. Good-night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL
+
+
+_1 October, evening._--I found Thomas Snelling in his house at Bethnal
+Green, but unhappily he was not in a condition to remember anything. The
+very prospect of beer which my expected coming had opened to him had
+proved too much, and he had begun too early on his expected debauch. I
+learned, however, from his wife, who seemed a decent, poor soul, that he
+was only the assistant to Smollet, who of the two mates was the
+responsible person. So off I drove to Walworth, and found Mr. Joseph
+Smollet at home and in his shirtsleeves, taking a late tea out of a
+saucer. He is a decent, intelligent fellow, distinctly a good, reliable
+type of workman, and with a headpiece of his own. He remembered all
+about the incident of the boxes, and from a wonderful dog’s-eared
+notebook, which he produced from some mysterious receptacle about the
+seat of his trousers, and which had hieroglyphical entries in thick,
+half-obliterated pencil, he gave me the destinations of the boxes. There
+were, he said, six in the cartload which he took from Carfax and left at
+197, Chicksand Street, Mile End New Town, and another six which he
+deposited at Jamaica Lane, Bermondsey. If then the Count meant to
+scatter these ghastly refuges of his over London, these places were
+chosen as the first of delivery, so that later he might distribute more
+fully. The systematic manner in which this was done made me think that
+he could not mean to confine himself to two sides of London. He was now
+fixed on the far east of the northern shore, on the east of the southern
+shore, and on the south. The north and west were surely never meant to
+be left out of his diabolical scheme--let alone the City itself and the
+very heart of fashionable London in the south-west and west. I went back
+to Smollet, and asked him if he could tell us if any other boxes had
+been taken from Carfax.
+
+He replied:--
+
+“Well, guv’nor, you’ve treated me wery ’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
+Purfect. 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 to-night. 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 to-night. But
+ye’d better be up arter ’im soon in the mornin’, or maybe ye won’t ketch
+’im; for Sam gets off main early, 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 to-night, and want sleep.
+Mina is fast asleep, and looks a little too pale; her eyes look as
+though she had been crying. Poor dear, I’ve no doubt it frets her to be
+kept in the dark, and it may make her doubly anxious about me and the
+others. But it is best as it is. It is better to be disappointed and
+worried in such a way now than to have her nerve broken. The doctors
+were quite right to insist on her being kept out of this dreadful
+business. I must be firm, for on me this particular burden of silence
+must rest. I shall not ever enter on the subject with her under any
+circumstances. Indeed, it may not be a hard task, after all, for she
+herself has become reticent on the subject, and has not spoken of the
+Count or his doings ever since we told her of our decision.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_2 October, evening._--A long and trying and exciting day. By the first
+post I got my directed envelope with a dirty scrap of paper enclosed, on
+which was written with a carpenter’s pencil in a sprawling hand:--
+
+“Sam Bloxam, Korkrans, 4, Poters Cort, Bartel Street, Walworth. Arsk for
+the depite.”
+
+I got the letter in bed, and rose without waking Mina. She looked heavy
+and sleepy and pale, and far from well. I determined not to wake her,
+but that, when I should return from this new search, I would arrange for
+her going back to Exeter. I think she would be happier in our own home,
+with her daily tasks to interest her, than in being here amongst us and
+in ignorance. I only saw Dr. Seward for a moment, and told him where I
+was off to, promising to come back and tell the rest so soon as I should
+have found out anything. I drove to Walworth and found, with some
+difficulty, Potter’s Court. Mr. Smollet’s spelling misled me, as I asked
+for Poter’s Court instead of Potter’s Court. However, when I had found
+the court, I had no difficulty in discovering Corcoran’s lodging-house.
+When I asked the man who came to the door for the “depite,” he shook his
+head, and said: “I dunno ’im. There ain’t no such a person ’ere; I never
+’eard of ’im in all my bloomin’ days. Don’t believe there ain’t nobody
+of that kind livin’ ere or anywheres.” I took out Smollet’s letter, and
+as I read it it seemed to me that the lesson of the spelling of the name
+of the court might guide me. “What are you?” I asked.
+
+“I’m the depity,” he answered. I saw at once that I was on the right
+track; phonetic spelling had again misled me. A half-crown tip put the
+deputy’s knowledge at my disposal, and I learned that Mr. Bloxam, who
+had slept off the remains of his beer on the previous night at
+Corcoran’s, had left for his work at Poplar at five o’clock that
+morning. He could not tell me where the place of work was situated, but
+he had a vague idea that it was some kind of a “new-fangled ware’us”;
+and with this slender clue I had to start for Poplar. It was twelve
+o’clock before I got any satisfactory hint of such a building, and this
+I got at a coffee-shop, where some workmen were having their dinner. One
+of these suggested that there was being erected at Cross Angel Street a
+new “cold storage” building; and as this suited the condition of a
+“new-fangled ware’us,” I at once drove to it. An interview with a surly
+gatekeeper and a surlier foreman, both of whom were appeased with the
+coin of the realm, put me on the track of Bloxam; he was sent for on my
+suggesting that I was willing to pay his day’s 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 doors 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 into the houses if they were both 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 up-end 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
+to 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 round 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 to-night’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 Aërated 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; perhaps we shall know when you get his letter in the
+morning.” Lord Godalming’s brows contracted, and he stood up and walked
+about the room. By-and-by he stopped and said, turning from one to
+another of us:--
+
+“Quincey’s head is level. This burglary business is getting serious; we
+got off once all right; but we have now a rare job on hand--unless we
+can find the Count’s key basket.”
+
+As nothing could well be done before morning, and as it would be at
+least advisable to wait till Lord Godalming should hear from Mitchell’s,
+we decided not to take any active step before breakfast time. For a good
+while we sat and smoked, discussing the matter in its various lights and
+bearings; I took the opportunity of bringing this diary right up to the
+moment. I am very sleepy and shall go to bed....
+
+Just a line. Mina sleeps soundly and her breathing is regular. Her
+forehead is puckered up into little wrinkles, as though she thinks even
+in her sleep. She is still too pale, but does not look so haggard as she
+did this morning. To-morrow will, I hope, mend all this; she will be
+herself at home in Exeter. Oh, but I am sleepy!
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_1 October._--I am puzzled afresh about Renfield. His moods change so
+rapidly that I find it difficult to keep touch of them, and as they
+always mean something more than his own well-being, they form a more
+than interesting study. This morning, when I went to see him after his
+repulse of Van Helsing, his manner was that of a man commanding destiny.
+He was, in fact, commanding destiny--subjectively. He did not really
+care for any of the things of mere earth; he was in the clouds and
+looked down on all the weaknesses and wants of us poor mortals. I
+thought I would improve the occasion and learn something, so I asked
+him:--
+
+“What about the flies these times?” He smiled on me in quite a superior
+sort of way--such a smile as would have become the face of Malvolio--as
+he answered me:--
+
+“The fly, my dear sir, has one striking feature; its wings are typical
+of the aërial 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 zoöphagy!”
+
+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 to 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 upon 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 out 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 round
+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 there, with
+the souls of thousands of flies and spiders and birds and cats buzzing
+and twittering and miauing all round 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 round 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 chop-sticks, as to try to
+interest me about the lesser 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 elephant?”
+
+“What ridiculous nonsense you are talking!” He was getting too wide
+awake, so I thought I would press him hard. “I wonder,” I said
+reflectively, “what an elephant’s soul is like!”
+
+The effect I desired was obtained, for he at once fell from his
+high-horse and became a child again.
+
+“I don’t want an elephant’s soul, or any soul at all!” he said. For a
+few moments he sat despondently. Suddenly he jumped to his feet, with
+his eyes blazing and all the signs of intense cerebral excitement. “To
+hell with you and your souls!” he shouted. “Why do you plague me about
+souls? Haven’t I got enough to worry, and pain, and distract me already,
+without thinking of souls!” He looked so hostile that I thought he was
+in for another homicidal fit, so I blew my whistle. The instant,
+however, that I did so he became calm, and said apologetically:--
+
+“Forgive me, Doctor; I forgot myself. You do not need any help. I am so
+worried in my mind that I am apt to be irritable. If you only knew the
+problem I have to face, and that I am working out, you would pity, and
+tolerate, and pardon me. Pray do not put me in a strait-waistcoat. I
+want to think and I cannot think freely when my body is confined. I am
+sure you will understand!” He had evidently self-control; so when the
+attendants came I told them not to mind, and they withdrew. Renfield
+watched them go; when the door was closed he said, with considerable
+dignity and sweetness:--
+
+“Dr. Seward, you have been very considerate towards me. Believe me that
+I am very, very grateful to you!” I thought it well to leave him in this
+mood, and so I came away. There is certainly something to ponder over in
+this man’s state. Several points seem to make what the American
+interviewer calls “a story,” if one could only get them in proper order.
+Here they are:--
+
+Will not mention “drinking.”
+
+Fears the thought of being burdened with the “soul” of anything.
+
+Has no dread of wanting “life” in the future.
+
+Despises the meaner forms of life altogether, though he dreads being
+haunted by their souls.
+
+Logically all these things point one way! he has assurance of some kind
+that he will acquire some higher life. He dreads the consequence--the
+burden of a soul. Then it is a human life he looks to!
+
+And the assurance--?
+
+Merciful God! the Count has been to him, and there is some new scheme of
+terror afoot!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Later._--I went after my round to Van Helsing and told him my
+suspicion. He grew very grave; and, after thinking the matter over for a
+while asked me to take him to Renfield. I did so. As we came to the door
+we heard the lunatic within singing gaily, as he used to do in the time
+which now seems so long ago. When we entered we saw with amazement that
+he had spread out his sugar as of old; the flies, lethargic with the
+autumn, were beginning to buzz into the room. We tried to make him talk
+of the subject of our previous conversation, but he would not attend. He
+went on with his singing, just as though we had not been present. He had
+got a scrap of paper and was folding it into a note-book. We had to come
+away as ignorant as we went in.
+
+His is a curious case indeed; we must watch him to-night.
+
+
+_Letter, Mitchell, Sons and Candy to Lord Godalming._
+
+_“1 October._
+
+“My Lord,
+
+“We are at all times only too happy to meet your wishes. We beg, with
+regard to the desire of your Lordship, expressed by Mr. Harker on your
+behalf, to supply the following information concerning the sale and
+purchase of No. 347, Piccadilly. The original vendors are the executors
+of the late Mr. Archibald Winter-Suffield. The purchaser is a foreign
+nobleman, Count de Ville, who effected the purchase himself paying the
+purchase money in notes ‘over the counter,’ if your Lordship will pardon
+us using so vulgar an expression. Beyond this we know nothing whatever
+of him.
+
+“We are, my Lord,
+
+“Your Lordship’s humble servants,
+
+“MITCHELL, SONS & CANDY.”
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_2 October._--I placed a man in the corridor last night, and told him to
+make an accurate note of any sound he might hear from Renfield’s room,
+and gave him instructions that if there should be anything strange he
+was to call me. After dinner, when we had all gathered round the fire
+in the study--Mrs. Harker having gone to bed--we discussed the attempts
+and discoveries of the day. Harker was the only one who had any result,
+and we are in great hopes that his clue may be an important one.
+
+Before going to bed I went round to the patient’s room and looked in
+through the observation trap. He was sleeping soundly, and 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.
+
+To-day 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 sterilise 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 to-morrow 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 in 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 to-day and his resumption of fly-catching, it might afford us a
+valuable clue. He is now seemingly quiet for a spell.... Is he?---- That
+wild yell seemed to come from his room....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The attendant came bursting into my room and told me that Renfield had
+somehow met with some accident. He had heard him yell; and when he went
+to him found him lying on his face on the floor, all covered with blood.
+I must go at once....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+DR. SEWARD’S DIARY
+
+
+_3 October._--Let me put down with exactness all that happened, as well
+as I can remember it, 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 that 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 broke 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 recognised 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.” So 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 was 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 to-morrow 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 hæmorrhage 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 that 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
+agonising. 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 softened into a glad
+surprise, and from the 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 agonised 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 realised where I was. I heard the
+dogs bark behind our house, but not where He was!” As he spoke, Van
+Helsing’s eyes never blinked, but his hand came out and met mine and
+gripped it hard. He did not, however, betray himself; he nodded slightly
+and said: “Go on,” in a low voice. Renfield proceeded:--
+
+“He came up to the window in the mist, as I had seen him often before;
+but he was solid then--not a ghost, and his eyes were fierce like a
+man’s when angry. He was laughing with his red mouth; the sharp white
+teeth glinted in the moonlight when he turned to look back over the belt
+of trees, to where the dogs were barking. I wouldn’t ask him to come in
+at first, though I knew he wanted to--just as he had wanted all along.
+Then he began promising me things--not in words but by doing them.” He
+was interrupted by a word from the Professor:--
+
+“How?”
+
+“By making them happen; just as he used to send in the flies when the
+sun was shining. Great big fat ones with steel and sapphire on their
+wings; and big moths, in the night, with skull and cross-bones on their
+backs.” Van Helsing nodded to him as he whispered to me unconsciously:--
+
+“The _Acherontia Aitetropos of the Sphinges_--what you call the
+‘Death’s-head Moth’?” The patient went on without stopping.
+
+“Then he began to whisper: ‘Rats, rats, rats! Hundreds, thousands,
+millions of them, and every one a life; and dogs to eat them, and cats
+too. All lives! all red blood, with years of life in it; and not merely
+buzzing flies!’ I laughed at him, for I wanted to see what he could do.
+Then the dogs howled, away beyond the dark trees in His house. He
+beckoned me to the window. I got up and looked out, and He raised his
+hands, and seemed to call out without using any words. A dark mass
+spread over the grass, coming on like the shape of a flame of fire; and
+then He moved the mist to the right and left, and I could see that there
+were thousands of rats with their eyes blazing red--like His, only
+smaller. He held up his hand, and they all stopped; and I thought he
+seemed to be saying: ‘All these lives will I give you, ay, and many more
+and greater, through countless ages, if you will fall down and worship
+me!’ And then a red cloud, like the colour of blood, seemed to close
+over my eyes; and before I knew what I was doing, I found myself opening
+the sash and saying to Him: ‘Come in, Lord and Master!’ The rats were
+all gone, but He slid into the room through the sash, though it was only
+open an inch wide--just as the Moon herself has often come in through
+the tiniest crack and has stood before me in all her size and
+splendour.”
+
+His voice was weaker, so I moistened his lips with the brandy again, and
+he continued; but it seemed as though his memory had gone on working in
+the interval for his story was further advanced. I was about to call him
+back to the point, but Van Helsing whispered to me: “Let him go on. Do
+not interrupt him; he cannot go back, and maybe could not proceed at all
+if once he lost the thread of his thought.” He proceeded:--
+
+“All day I waited to hear from him, but he did not send me anything, not
+even a blow-fly, and when the moon got up I was pretty angry with him.
+When he slid 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 had 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 had 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 to-night 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 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 to-night. Friend John, when I turn the handle, if
+the door does not open, do you put your shoulder down and shove; and you
+too, my friends. Now!”
+
+He turned the handle as he spoke, but the door did not yield. We threw
+ourselves against it; with a crash it burst open, and we almost fell
+headlong into the room. The Professor did actually fall, and I saw
+across him as he gathered himself up from hands and knees. What I saw
+appalled me. I felt my hair rise like bristles on the back of my neck,
+and my heart seemed to stand still.
+
+The moonlight was so bright that through the thick yellow blind the room
+was light enough to see. On the bed beside the window lay Jonathan
+Harker, his face flushed and breathing heavily as though in a stupor.
+Kneeling on the near edge of the bed facing outwards was the white-clad
+figure of his wife. By her side stood a tall, thin man, clad in black.
+His face was turned from us, but the instant we saw we all recognised
+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 breast which
+was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible
+resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to
+compel it to drink. As we burst into the room, the Count turned his
+face, and the hellish look that I had heard described seemed to leap
+into it. His eyes flamed red with devilish passion; the great nostrils
+of the white aquiline nose opened wide and quivered at the edge; and the
+white sharp teeth, behind the full lips of the blood-dripping mouth,
+champed together like those of a wild beast. With a wrench, which threw
+his victim back upon the bed as though hurled from a height, he turned
+and sprang at us. But by this time the Professor had gained his feet,
+and was holding towards him the envelope which contained the Sacred
+Wafer. The Count suddenly stopped, just as poor Lucy had done outside
+the tomb, and cowered back. Further and further back he cowered, as we,
+lifting our crucifixes, advanced. The moonlight suddenly failed, as a
+great black cloud sailed across the sky; and when the gaslight sprang up
+under Quincey’s match, we saw nothing but a faint vapour. This, as we
+looked, trailed under the door, which with the recoil from its bursting
+open, had swung back to its old position. Van Helsing, Art, and I moved
+forward to Mrs. Harker, who by this time had drawn her breath and with
+it had given a scream so wild, so ear-piercing, so despairing that it
+seems to me now that it will ring in my ears till my dying day. For a
+few seconds she lay in her helpless attitude and disarray. Her face was
+ghastly, with a pallor which was accentuated by the blood which smeared
+her lips and cheeks and chin; from her throat trickled a thin stream of
+blood; her eyes were mad with terror. Then she put before her face her
+poor crushed hands, which bore on their whiteness the red mark of the
+Count’s terrible grip, and from behind them came a low desolate wail
+which made the terrible scream seem only the quick expression of an
+endless grief. Van Helsing stepped forward and drew the coverlet gently
+over her body, whilst Art, after looking at her face for an instant
+despairingly, ran out of the room. Van Helsing whispered to me:--
+
+“Jonathan is in a stupor such as we know the Vampire can produce. We can
+do nothing with poor Madam Mina for a few moments till she recovers
+herself; I must wake him!” He dipped the end of a towel in cold water
+and with it began to flick him on the face, his wife all the while
+holding her face between her hands and sobbing in a way that was
+heart-breaking to hear. I raised the blind, and looked out of the
+window. There was much moonshine; and as I looked I could see Quincey
+Morris run across the lawn and hide himself in the shadow of a great
+yew-tree. It puzzled me to think why he was doing this; but at the
+instant I heard Harker’s quick exclamation as he woke to partial
+consciousness, and turned to the bed. On his face, as there might well
+be, was a look of wild amazement. He seemed dazed for a few seconds, and
+then full consciousness seemed to burst upon him all at once, and he
+started up. His wife was aroused by the quick movement, and turned to
+him with her arms stretched out, as though to embrace him; instantly,
+however, she drew them in again, and putting her elbows together, held
+her hands before her face, and shuddered till the bed beneath her shook.
+
+“In God’s name what does this mean?” Harker cried out. “Dr. Seward, Dr.
+Van Helsing, what is it? What has happened? What is wrong? Mina, dear,
+what is it? What does that blood mean? My God, my God! has it come to
+this!” and, raising himself to his knees, he beat his hands wildly
+together. “Good God help us! help her! oh, help her!” With a quick
+movement he jumped from bed, and began to pull on his clothes,--all the
+man in him awake at the need for instant exertion. “What has happened?
+Tell me all about it!” he cried without pausing. “Dr. Van Helsing, you
+love Mina, I know. Oh, do something to save her. It cannot have gone too
+far yet. Guard her while I look for _him_!” His wife, through her terror
+and horror and distress, saw some sure danger to him: instantly
+forgetting her own grief, she seized hold of him and cried out:--
+
+“No! no! Jonathan, you must not leave me. I have suffered enough
+to-night, 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 bed side, and clung to him fiercely.
+
+Van Helsing and I tried to calm them both. The Professor held up his
+little 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 to-night; 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
+night-robe was stained with blood where her lips had touched, and where
+the thin open wound in her 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 to-night; for the sky is reddening in the east, and the
+dawn is close. We must work to-morrow!”
+
+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 very 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
+paralysed. 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 designs! You know now, and they know in part already,
+and will know in full before long, what it is to cross my path. They
+should have kept their energies for use closer to home. Whilst they
+played wits against me--against me who commanded nations, and intrigued
+for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before they were
+born--I was countermining them. And you, their best beloved one, are now
+to me, flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful
+wine-press for a while; and shall be later on my companion and my
+helper. You shall be avenged in turn; for not one of them but shall
+minister to your needs. But as yet you are to be punished for what you
+have done. You have aided in thwarting me; now you shall come to my
+call. When my brain says “Come!” to you, you shall cross land or sea to
+do my bidding; and to that end this!’ With that he pulled open his
+shirt, and with his long sharp nails opened a vein in his breast. When
+the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding
+them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to
+the wound, so that I must either suffocate or swallow some of 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 to-day on no more miserable house in
+all the great round of its daily course.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL
+
+
+_3 October._--As I must do something or go mad, I write this diary. It
+is now six o’clock, and we are to meet in the study in half an hour and
+take something to eat; for Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward are agreed
+that if we do not eat we cannot work our best. Our best will be, God
+knows, required to-day. 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 to-day. 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 were 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 by 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 Un-Dead, 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 shock 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 sterilise 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. To-day, 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 to-night, 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 sterilise 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 hour, 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 no 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 house 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 came 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 règle_; and in our work we shall be _en règle_ 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 a 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 horsebacking; 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 purposes?
+It seems to me that we ought to take cabs when we go south or east; and
+even leave them somewhere near the neighbourhood we are going to.”
+
+“Friend Quincey is right!” said the Professor. “His head is what you
+call in plane with the horizon. It is a difficult thing that we go to
+do, and we do not want no peoples to watch us if so it may.”
+
+Mina took a growing interest in everything and I was rejoiced to see
+that the exigency of affairs was helping her to forget for a time the
+terrible experience of the night. She was very, very pale--almost
+ghastly, and so thin that her lips were drawn away, showing her teeth in
+somewhat of prominence. I did not mention this last, lest it should give
+her needless pain; but it made my blood run cold in my veins to think of
+what had occurred with poor Lucy when the Count had sucked her blood. As
+yet there was no sign of the teeth growing sharper; but the time as yet
+was short, and there was time for fear.
+
+When we came to the discussion of the sequence of our efforts and of the
+disposition of our forces, there were new sources of doubt. It was
+finally agreed that before starting for Piccadilly we should destroy the
+Count’s lair close at hand. In case he should find it out too soon, we
+should thus be still ahead of him in our work of destruction; and his
+presence in his purely material shape, and at his weakest, might give us
+some new clue.
+
+As to the disposal of forces, it was suggested by the Professor that,
+after our visit to Carfax, we should all enter the house in Piccadilly;
+that the two doctors and I should remain there, whilst Lord Godalming
+and Quincey found the lairs at Walworth and Mile End and destroyed them.
+It was possible, if not likely, the Professor urged, that the Count
+might appear in Piccadilly during the day, and that if so we might be
+able to cope with him then and there. At any rate, we might be able to
+follow him in force. To this plan I strenuously objected, and so far as
+my going was concerned, for I said that I intended to stay and protect
+Mina, I thought that my mind was made up on the subject; but Mina would
+not listen to my objection. She said that there might be some law matter
+in which I could be useful; that amongst the Count’s papers might be
+some clue which I could understand out of my experience in Transylvania;
+and that, as it was, all the strength we could muster was required to
+cope with the Count’s extraordinary power. I had to give in, for Mina’s
+resolution was fixed; she said that it was the last hope for _her_ that
+we should all work together. “As for me,” she said, “I have no fear.
+Things have been as bad as they can be; and whatever may happen must
+have in it some element of hope or comfort. Go, my husband! God can, if
+He wishes it, guard me as well alone as with any one present.” So I
+started up crying out: “Then in God’s name let us come at once, for we
+are losing time. The Count may come to Piccadilly earlier than we
+think.”
+
+“Not so!” said Van Helsing, holding up his hand.
+
+“But why?” I asked.
+
+“Do you forget,” he said, with actually a smile, “that last night he
+banqueted heavily, and will sleep late?”
+
+Did I forget! shall I ever--can I ever! Can any of us ever forget that
+terrible scene! Mina struggled hard to keep her brave countenance; but
+the pain overmastered her and she put her hands before her face, and
+shuddered whilst she moaned. Van Helsing had not intended to recall her
+frightful experience. He had simply lost sight of her and her part in
+the affair in his intellectual effort. When it struck him what he said,
+he was horrified at his thoughtlessness and tried to comfort her. “Oh,
+Madam Mina,” he said, “dear, dear Madam Mina, alas! that I of all who so
+reverence you should have said anything so forgetful. These stupid old
+lips of mine and this stupid old head do not deserve so; but you will
+forget it, will you not?” He bent low beside her as he spoke; she took
+his hand, and looking at him through her tears, said hoarsely:--
+
+“No, I shall not forget, for it is well that I remember; and with it I
+have so much in memory of you that is sweet, that I take it all
+together. Now, you must all be going soon. Breakfast is ready, and we
+must all eat that we may be strong.”
+
+Breakfast was a strange meal to us all. We tried to be cheerful and
+encourage each other, and Mina was the brightest and most cheerful of
+us. When it was over, Van Helsing stood up and said:--
+
+“Now, my dear friends, we go forth to our terrible enterprise. Are we
+all armed, as we were on that night when first we visited our enemy’s
+lair; armed against ghostly as well as carnal attack?” We all assured
+him. “Then it is well. Now, Madam Mina, you are in any case _quite_ safe
+here until the sunset; and before then we shall return--if---- We shall
+return! But before we go let me see you armed against personal attack. I
+have myself, since you came down, prepared your chamber by the placing
+of things of which we know, so that He may not enter. Now let me guard
+yourself. On your forehead I touch this piece of Sacred Wafer in the
+name of the Father, the Son, and----”
+
+There was a fearful scream which almost froze our hearts to hear. As he
+had placed the Wafer on Mina’s forehead, it had seared it--had burned
+into the flesh as though it had been a piece of white-hot metal. My poor
+darling’s brain had told her the significance of the fact as quickly as
+her nerves received the pain of it; and the two so overwhelmed her that
+her overwrought nature had its voice in that dreadful scream. But the
+words to her thought came quickly; the echo of the scream had not ceased
+to ring on the air when there came the reaction, and she sank on her
+knees on the floor in an agony of abasement. Pulling her beautiful hair
+over her face, as the leper of old his mantle, she wailed out:--
+
+“Unclean! Unclean! Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh! I must
+bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the Judgment 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 Judgment 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
+fears, 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 them:--
+
+“And now, my friends, we have a duty here to do. We must sterilise 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. If it may be that with all the others we can
+be so successful, then the sunset of this evening may shine on Madam
+Mina’s forehead all white as ivory and with no stain!”
+
+As we passed across the lawn on our way to the station to catch our
+train we could see the front of the asylum. I looked eagerly, and in the
+window of my own room saw Mina. I waved my hand to her, and nodded to
+tell that our work there was successfully accomplished. She nodded in
+reply to show that she understood. The last I saw, she was waving her
+hand in farewell. It was with a heavy heart that we sought the station
+and just caught the train, which was steaming in as we reached the
+platform.
+
+I have written this in the train.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Piccadilly, 12:30 o’clock._--Just before we reached Fenchurch Street
+Lord Godalming said to me:--
+
+“Quincey and I will find a locksmith. You had better not come with us in
+case there should be any difficulty; for under the circumstances it
+wouldn’t seem so bad for us to break into an empty house. But you are a
+solicitor and the Incorporated Law Society might tell you that you
+should have known better.” I demurred as to my not sharing any danger
+even of odium, but he went on: “Besides, it will attract less attention
+if there are not too many of us. My title will make it all right with
+the locksmith, and with any policeman that may come along. You had
+better go with Jack and the Professor and stay in the Green Park,
+somewhere in sight of the house; and when you see the door opened and
+the smith has gone away, do you all come across. We shall be on the
+lookout for you, and shall let you in.”
+
+“The advice is good!” said Van Helsing, so we said no more. Godalming
+and Morris hurried off in a cab, we following in another. At the corner
+of Arlington Street our contingent got out and strolled into the Green
+Park. My heart beat as I saw the house on which so much of our hope was
+centred, looming up grim and silent in its deserted condition amongst
+its more lively and spruce-looking neighbours. We sat down on a bench
+within good view, and began to smoke cigars so as to attract as little
+attention as possible. The minutes seemed to pass with leaden feet as we
+waited for the coming of the others.
+
+At length we saw a four-wheeler drive up. Out of it, in leisurely
+fashion, got Lord Godalming and Morris; and down from the box descended
+a thick-set working man with his rush-woven basket of tools. Morris paid
+the cabman, who touched his hat and drove away. Together the two
+ascended the steps, and Lord Godalming pointed out what he wanted done.
+The workman took off his coat leisurely and hung it on one of the spikes
+of the rail, saying something to a policeman who just then sauntered
+along. The policeman nodded acquiescence, and the man kneeling down
+placed his bag beside him. After searching through it, he took out a
+selection of tools which he produced to lay beside him in orderly
+fashion. Then he stood up, looked into 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 in 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 over-looked. 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;
+note-paper, 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 XXIII
+
+DR. SEWARD’S DIARY
+
+
+_3 October._--The time seemed terribly long whilst we were waiting for
+the coming of Godalming and Quincey Morris. The Professor tried to keep
+our minds active by using them all the time. I could see his beneficent
+purpose, by the side glances which he threw from time to time at Harker.
+The poor fellow is overwhelmed in a misery that is appalling to see.
+Last night he was a frank, happy-looking man, with strong, youthful
+face, full of energy, and with dark brown hair. To-day he is a drawn,
+haggard old man, whose white hair matches well with the hollow burning
+eyes and grief-written lines of his face. His energy is still intact; in
+fact, he is like a living flame. This may yet be his salvation, for, if
+all go well, it will tide him over the despairing period; he will then,
+in a kind of way, wake again to the realities of life. Poor fellow, I
+thought my own trouble was bad enough, but his----! The Professor knows
+this well enough, and is doing his best to keep his mind active. What he
+has been saying was, under the circumstances, of absorbing interest. So
+well as I can remember, here it is:--
+
+“I have studied, over and over again since they came into my hands, all
+the papers relating to this monster; and the more I have studied, the
+greater seems the necessity to utterly stamp him out. All through there
+are signs of his advance; not only of his power, but of his knowledge of
+it. As I learned from the researches of my friend Arminus of Buda-Pesth,
+he was in life a most wonderful man. Soldier, statesman, and
+alchemist--which latter was the highest development of the
+science-knowledge of his time. He had a mighty brain, a learning beyond
+compare, and a heart that knew no fear and no remorse. He dared even to
+attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time
+that he did not essay. Well, in him the brain powers survived the
+physical death; though it would seem that memory was not all complete.
+In some faculties of mind he has been, and is, only a child; but he is
+growing, and some things that were childish at the first are now of
+man’s stature. He is experimenting, and doing it well; and if it had not
+been that we have crossed his path he would be yet--he may be yet if we
+fail--the father or furtherer of a new order of beings, whose road must
+lead through Death, not Life.”
+
+Harker groaned and said, “And this is all arrayed against my darling!
+But how is he experimenting? The knowledge may help us to defeat him!”
+
+“He has all along, since his coming, been trying his power, slowly but
+surely; that big child-brain of his is working. Well for us, it is, as
+yet, a child-brain; for had he dared, at the first, to attempt certain
+things he would long ago have been beyond our power. However, he means
+to succeed, and a man who has centuries before him can afford to wait
+and to go slow. _Festina lente_ may well be his motto.”
+
+“I fail to understand,” said Harker wearily. “Oh, do be more plain to
+me! Perhaps grief and trouble are dulling my brain.”
+
+The Professor laid his hand tenderly on his shoulder as he spoke:--
+
+“Ah, my child, I will be plain. Do you not see how, of late, this
+monster has been creeping into knowledge experimentally. How he has been
+making use of the zoöphagous patient to effect his entry into friend
+John’s home; for your Vampire, though in all afterwards he can come when
+and how he will, must at the first make entry only when asked thereto by
+an inmate. But these are not his most important experiments. Do we not
+see how at the first all these so great boxes were moved by others. He
+knew not then but that must be so. But all the time that so great
+child-brain of his was growing, and he began to consider whether he
+might not himself move the box. So he began to help; and then, when he
+found that this be all-right, he try to move them all alone. And so he
+progress, and he scatter these graves of him; and none but he know where
+they are hidden. He may have intend to bury them deep in the ground. So
+that he only 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 come to him
+just too late! Already all of his lairs but one be sterilise 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 we not be even
+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. To-day 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 he was 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
+despatch. The Professor closed the door again, and, after looking at the
+direction, opened it and read aloud.
+
+“Look out for D. He has just now, 12:45, come from Carfax hurriedly and
+hastened towards the South. He seems to be going the round and may want
+to see you: Mina.”
+
+There was a pause, broken by Jonathan Harker’s voice:--
+
+“Now, God be thanked, we shall soon meet!” Van Helsing turned to him
+quickly and said:--
+
+“God will act in His own way and time. Do not fear, and do not rejoice
+as yet; for what we wish for at the moment may be our 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 to-day shall see the end. The time is
+coming for action; to-day 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 pocket-book. “_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 panther-like 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 eye-teeth long
+and pointed; but the evil smile as quickly passed into a cold stare of
+lion-like disdain. His expression again changed as, with a single
+impulse, we all advanced upon him. It was a pity that we had not some
+better organised 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 shorne
+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 greenish-yellow by the contrast
+of his burning eyes, and the red scar on the forehead showed on the
+pallid skin like a palpitating wound. The next instant, with a sinuous
+dive he swept under Harker’s arm, ere his blow could fall, and, grasping
+a handful of the money from the floor, dashed across the room, threw
+himself at the window. Amid the crash and glitter of the falling glass,
+he tumbled into the flagged area below. Through the sound of the
+shivering glass I could hear the “ting” of the gold, as some of the
+sovereigns fell on the flagging.
+
+We ran over and saw him spring unhurt from the ground. He, rushing up
+the steps, crossed the flagged yard, and pushed open the stable door.
+There he turned and spoke to us:--
+
+“You think to baffle me, you--with your pale faces all in a row, like
+sheep in a butcher’s. You shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think
+you have left me without a place to rest; but I have more. My revenge is
+just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side. Your
+girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and
+others shall yet be mine--my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my
+jackals when I want to feed. Bah!” With a contemptuous sneer, he passed
+quickly through the door, and we heard the rusty bolt creak as he
+fastened it behind him. A door beyond opened and shut. The first of us
+to speak was the Professor, as, realising 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 fear time, he fear 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 wild beast, and understand it so. For
+me, I make sure that nothing here may be of use to him, if so that he
+return.” As he spoke he put the money remaining into 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
+recognise 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 right 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 shrivelling 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 for ever and ever to burning hell I would do it!”
+
+“Oh, hush! oh, hush! in the name of the good God. Don’t say such things,
+Jonathan, my husband; or you will crush me with fear and horror. Just
+think, my dear--I have been thinking all this long, long day of it--that
+... perhaps ... some day ... I, too, may need such pity; and that some
+other like you--and with equal cause for anger--may deny it to me! Oh,
+my husband! my husband, indeed I would have spared you such a thought
+had there been another way; but I pray that God may not have treasured
+your wild words, except as the heart-broken wail of a very loving and
+sorely stricken man. Oh, God, let these poor white hairs go in evidence
+of what he has suffered, who all his life has done no wrong, and on whom
+so many sorrows have come.”
+
+We men were all in tears now. There was no resisting them, and we wept
+openly. She wept, too, to see that her sweeter counsels had prevailed.
+Her husband flung himself on his knees beside her, and putting his arms
+round her, hid his face in the folds of her dress. Van Helsing beckoned
+to us and we stole out of the room, leaving the two loving hearts alone
+with their God.
+
+Before they retired the Professor fixed up the room against any coming
+of the Vampire, and assured Mrs. Harker that she might rest in peace.
+She tried to school herself to the belief, and, manifestly for her
+husband’s sake, tried to seem content. It was a brave struggle; and was,
+I think and believe, not without its reward. Van Helsing had placed at
+hand a bell which either of them was to sound in case of any emergency.
+When they had retired, Quincey, Godalming, and I arranged that we should
+sit up, dividing the night between us, and watch over the safety of the
+poor stricken lady. The first watch falls to Quincey, so the rest of us
+shall be off to bed as soon as we can. Godalming has already turned in,
+for his is the second watch. Now that my work is done I, too, shall go
+to bed.
+
+
+_Jonathan Harker’s Journal._
+
+_3-4 October, close to midnight._--I thought yesterday would never end.
+There was over me a yearning for sleep, in some sort of blind belief
+that to wake would be to find things changed, and that any change must
+now be for the better. Before we parted, we discussed what our next step
+was to be, but we could arrive at no result. All we knew was that one
+earth-box remained, and that the Count alone knew where it was. If he
+chooses to lie hidden, he may baffle us for years; and in the
+meantime!--the thought is too horrible, I dare not think of it even now.
+This I know: that if ever there was a woman who was all perfection, that
+one is my poor wronged darling. I love 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 to-morrow to think of, and there is no rest for me
+until....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Later._--I must have fallen asleep, for I was awaked by Mina, who was
+sitting up in bed, with a startled look on her face. I could see easily,
+for we did not leave the room in darkness; she had placed a warning hand
+over my mouth, and now she whispered in my ear:--
+
+“Hush! there is someone in the corridor!” I got up softly, and crossing
+the room, gently opened the door.
+
+Just outside, stretched on a mattress, lay Mr. Morris, wide awake. He
+raised a warning hand for silence as he whispered to me:--
+
+“Hush! go back to bed; it is all right. One of us will be here all
+night. We don’t mean to take any chances!”
+
+His look and gesture forbade discussion, so I came back and told Mina.
+She sighed and positively a shadow of a smile stole over her poor, pale
+face as she put her arms round me and said softly:--
+
+“Oh, thank God for good brave men!” With a sigh she sank back again to
+sleep. I write this now as I am not sleepy, though I must try again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_4 October, morning._--Once again during the night I was wakened by
+Mina. This time we had all had a good sleep, for the grey of the coming
+dawn was making the windows into sharp oblongs, and the gas flame was
+like a speck rather than a disc of light. She said to me hurriedly:--
+
+“Go, call the Professor. I want to see him at once.”
+
+“Why?” I asked.
+
+“I have an idea. I suppose it must have come in the night, and matured
+without my knowing it. He must hypnotise 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.
+
+In 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 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 to-day!” Then
+turning to her, he said, cheerfully: “And what am I do for you? For at
+this hour you do not want me for nothings.”
+
+“I want you to hypnotise me!” she said. “Do it before the dawn, for I
+feel that then I can speak, and speak freely. Be quick, for the time is
+short!” Without a word he motioned her to sit up in bed.
+
+Looking fixedly at her, he commenced to make passes in front of her,
+from over the top of her head downward, with each hand in turn. Mina
+gazed at him fixedly for a few minutes, during which my own heart beat
+like a trip hammer, for I felt that some crisis was at hand. Gradually
+her eyes closed, and she sat, stock still; only by the gentle heaving of
+her bosom could one know that she was alive. The Professor made a few
+more passes and then stopped, and I could see that his forehead was
+covered with great beads of perspiration. Mina opened her eyes; but she
+did not seem the same woman. There was a far-away look in her eyes, and
+her voice had a sad dreaminess which was new to me. Raising his hand to
+impose silence, the Professor motioned to me to bring the others in.
+They came on tip-toe, 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 rachet.”
+
+“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
+whilst she spoke. There are many ships 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 when 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 waters
+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 to
+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 nothings 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 XXIV
+
+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 to-day.
+This is your best and most holiest office. This day nothing can find him
+here. Let me tell you that so you will know what we four know already,
+for I have tell them. He, our enemy, have gone away; he have gone back
+to his Castle in Transylvania. I know it so well, as if a great hand of
+fire wrote it on the wall. He have prepare for this in some way, and
+that last earth-box was ready to ship somewheres. For this he took the
+money; for this he hurry at the last, lest we catch him before the sun
+go down. It was his last hope, save that he might hide in the tomb that
+he think poor Miss Lucy, being as he thought like him, keep open to him.
+But there was not of time. When that fail he make straight for his last
+resource--his last earth-work I might say did I wish _double entente_.
+He is clever, oh, so clever! he know that his game here was finish; and
+so he decide he go back home. He find ship going by the route he came,
+and he go in it. We go off now to find what ship, and whither bound;
+when we have discover that, we come back and tell you all. Then we will
+comfort you and poor dear Madam Mina with new hope. For it will be hope
+when you think it over: that all is not lost. This very creature that we
+pursue, he take hundreds of years to get so far as London; and yet in
+one day, when we know of the disposal of him we drive him out. He is
+finite, though he is powerful to do much harm and suffers not as we do.
+But we are strong, each in our purpose; and we are all more strong
+together. Take heart afresh, dear husband of Madam Mina. This battle is
+but begun, and in the end we shall win--so sure as that God sits on high
+to watch over His children. Therefore be of much comfort till we return.
+
+VAN HELSING.
+
+
+_Jonathan Harker’s Journal._
+
+_4 October._--When I read to Mina, Van Helsing’s message in the
+phonograph, the poor girl brightened up considerably. Already the
+certainty that the Count is out of the country has given her comfort;
+and comfort is strength to her. For my own part, now that his horrible
+danger is not face to face with us, it seems almost impossible to
+believe in it. Even my own terrible experiences in Castle Dracula seem
+like a long-forgotten dream. Here in the crisp autumn air in the bright
+sunlight----
+
+Alas! how can I disbelieve! In the midst of my thought my eye fell on
+the red scar on my poor darling’s white forehead. Whilst that lasts,
+there can be no disbelief. And afterwards the very memory of it will
+keep faith crystal clear. Mina and I fear to be idle, so we have been
+over all the diaries again and again. Somehow, although the reality
+seems greater each time, the pain and the fear seem less. There is
+something of a guiding purpose manifest throughout, which is comforting.
+Mina says that perhaps we are the instruments of ultimate good. It may
+be! I shall try to think as she does. We have never spoken to each other
+yet of the future. It is better to wait till we see the Professor and
+the others after their investigations.
+
+The day is running by more quickly than I ever thought a day could run
+for me again. It is now three o’clock.
+
+
+_Mina Harker’s Journal._
+
+_5 October, 5 p. m._--Our meeting for report. Present: Professor Van
+Helsing, Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, Mr. Quincey Morris, Jonathan
+Harker, Mina Harker.
+
+Dr. Van Helsing described what steps were taken during the day to
+discover on what boat and whither bound Count Dracula made his escape:--
+
+“As I knew that he wanted to get back to Transylvania, I felt sure that
+he must go by the Danube mouth; or by somewhere in the Black Sea, since
+by that way he come. It was a dreary blank that was before us. _Omne
+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 on to other parts and up the
+Danube. ‘Soh!’ 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 of wood
+so small that the man look bigger than the 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
+gang-plank, 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 there might be close at hand a ship 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 gang-plank 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 on 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 by 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 we 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 Un-Dead, 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 wondrous way. The very place, where he have been alive, Un-Dead 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 man-eater, 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 man-eater, and he never cease to prowl. Nay, in himself he
+is not one to retire and stay afar. In his life, his living life, he go
+over the Turkey frontier and attack his enemy on his own ground; he be
+beaten back, but did he stay? No! He come again, and again, and again.
+Look at his persistence and endurance. With the child-brain that was to
+him he have long since conceive the idea of coming to a great city. What
+does he do? He find out the place of all the world most of promise for
+him. Then he deliberately set himself down to prepare for the task. He
+find in patience just how is his strength, and what are his powers. He
+study new tongues. He learn new social life; new environment of old
+ways, the politic, 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 armour, 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 to-night nothing
+be definitely settled; that we should all sleep on the facts, and try to
+think out the proper conclusions. To-morrow, 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 to-night. It is as if some haunting
+presence were removed from me. Perhaps ...
+
+My surmise was not finished, could not be; for I caught sight in the
+mirror of the red mark upon my forehead; and I knew that I was still
+unclean.
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_5 October._--We all rose 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 realise 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 distils
+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!
+
+Van Helsing is coming to my study a little before the others. I shall
+try to open the subject with him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_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 suddenly:--
+
+“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 to prejudge. Her teeth are some 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 hypnotise 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 heart-break me to think of; but it must be.
+When to-day 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 realised the danger herself, it was
+much pain as well as much danger averted. Under the circumstances we
+agreed, by a questioning look and answer, with finger on lip, to
+preserve silence in our suspicions, until we should have been able to
+confer alone again. We went at once into our Plan of Campaign. Van
+Helsing roughly put the facts before us first:--
+
+“The _Czarina Catherine_ left the Thames yesterday morning. It will take
+her at the quickest speed she has ever made at least three weeks to
+reach Varna; but we can travel overland to the same place in three days.
+Now, if we allow for two days less for the ship’s voyage, owing to such
+weather influences as we know that the Count can bring to bear; and if
+we allow a whole day and night for any delays which may occur to us,
+then we have a margin of nearly two weeks. Thus, in order to be quite
+safe, we must leave here on 17th at latest. Then we shall at any rate
+be in Varna a day before the ship arrives, and able to make such
+preparations as may be necessary. Of course we shall all go armed--armed
+against evil things, spiritual as well as physical.” Here Quincey Morris
+added:--
+
+“I understand that the Count comes from a wolf country, and it may be
+that he shall get there before us. I propose that we add Winchesters to
+our armament. I have a kind of belief in a Winchester when there is any
+trouble of that sort around. Do you remember, Art, when we had the pack
+after us at Tobolsk? What wouldn’t we have given then for a repeater
+apiece!”
+
+“Good!” said Van Helsing, “Winchesters it shall be. Quincey’s head is
+level at all 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.
+To-night and to-morrow 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 plans to her; but he took no notice. I looked at him
+significantly and coughed. For answer he put his finger on his lips and
+turned away.
+
+
+_Jonathan Harker’s Journal._
+
+_5 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
+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 a 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 to-night. I shall
+try it. Oh! for a dreamless sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_6 October, morning._--Another surprise. Mina woke me early, about the
+same time as yesterday, and asked me to bring Dr. Van Helsing. I thought
+that it was another occasion for hypnotism, and without question went
+for the Professor. He had evidently expected some such call, for I found
+him dressed in his room. His door was ajar, so that he could hear the
+opening of the door of our room. He came at once; as he passed into the
+room, he asked Mina if the others might come, too.
+
+“No,” she said quite simply, “it will not be necessary. You can tell
+them just as well. I must go with you on your journey.”
+
+Dr. Van Helsing was as startled as I was. After a moment’s pause he
+asked:--
+
+“But why?”
+
+“You must take me with you. I am safer with you, and you shall be safer,
+too.”
+
+“But why, dear Madam Mina? You know that your safety is our solemnest
+duty. We go into danger, to which you are, or may be, more liable than
+any of us from--from circumstances--things that have been.” He paused,
+embarrassed.
+
+As she replied, she raised her finger and pointed to her forehead:--
+
+“I know. That is why I must go. I can tell you now, whilst the sun is
+coming up; I may not be able again. I know that when the Count wills me
+I must go. I know that if he tells me to come in secret, I must come 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 hypnotise me
+and so learn that which even I myself do not know.” Dr. Van Helsing said
+very 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 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 shall 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 to-day 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 all 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 XXV
+
+DR. SEWARD’S DIARY
+
+
+_11 October, Evening._--Jonathan Harker has asked me to note this, as he
+says he is hardly equal to the task, and he wants an exact record kept.
+
+I think that none of us were surprised when we were asked to see Mrs.
+Harker a little before the time of sunset. We have of late come to
+understand that sunrise and sunset are to her times of peculiar freedom;
+when her old self can be manifest without any controlling force subduing
+or restraining her, or inciting her to action. This mood or condition
+begins some half hour or more before actual sunrise or sunset, and lasts
+till either the sun is high, or whilst the clouds are still aglow with
+the rays streaming above the horizon. At first there is a sort of
+negative condition, as if some tie were loosened, and then the absolute
+freedom quickly follows; when, however, the freedom ceases the
+change-back or relapse comes quickly, preceded only by a spell of
+warning silence.
+
+To-night, 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 began:--
+
+“We are all here together in freedom, for perhaps the last time! I know,
+dear; 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 hers. “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 as to take me
+with you. I know that all that brave earnest men can do for a poor weak
+woman, whose soul perhaps is lost--no, no, not yet, but is at any rate
+at stake--you will do. But you must remember that I am not as you are.
+There is a poison in my blood, in my soul, which may destroy me; which
+must destroy me, unless some relief comes to us. Oh, my friends, you
+know as well as I do, that my soul is at stake; and though I know there
+is one way out for me, you must not and I must not take it!” She looked
+appealingly to us all in turn, beginning and ending with her husband.
+
+“What is that way?” asked Van Helsing in a hoarse voice. “What is that
+way, which we must not--may not--take?”
+
+“That I may die now, either by my own hand or that of another, before
+the greater evil is entirely wrought. I know, and you know, that were I
+once dead you could and would set free my immortal spirit, even as you
+did my poor Lucy’s. Were death, or the fear of death, the only thing
+that stood in the way I would not shrink to die here, now, amidst the
+friends who love me. But death is not all. I cannot believe that to die
+in such a case, when there is hope before us and a bitter task to be
+done, is God’s will. Therefore, I, on my part, give up here the
+certainty of eternal rest, and go out into the dark where may be the
+blackest things that the world or the nether world holds!” We were all
+silent, for we knew instinctively that this was only a prelude. The
+faces of the others were set and Harker’s grew ashen grey; perhaps he
+guessed better than any of us what was coming. She continued:--
+
+“This is what I can give into the hotch-pot.” I could not but note the
+quaint legal phrase which she used in such a place, and with all
+seriousness. “What will each of you give? Your lives I know,” she went
+on quickly, “that is easy for brave men. Your lives are God’s, and you
+can give them back to Him; but what will you give to me?” She looked
+again questioningly, but this time avoided her husband’s face. Quincey
+seemed to understand; he nodded, and her face lit up. “Then I shall tell
+you plainly what I want, for there must be no doubtful matter in this
+connection between us now. You must promise me, one and all--even you,
+my beloved husband--that, should the time come, you will kill me.”
+
+“What is that time?” The voice was Quincey’s, but it was low and
+strained.
+
+“When you shall be convinced that I am so changed that it is better that
+I die than I may live. When I am thus dead in the flesh, then you will,
+without a moment’s delay, drive a stake through me and cut off my head;
+or do whatever else may be wanting to give me rest!”
+
+Quincey was the first to rise after the pause. He knelt down before her
+and taking her hand in his said solemnly:--
+
+“I’m only a rough fellow, who hasn’t, perhaps, lived as a man should to
+win such a distinction, but I swear to you by all that I hold sacred and
+dear that, should the time ever come, I shall not flinch from the duty
+that you have set us. And I promise you, too, that I shall make all
+certain, for if I am only doubtful I shall take it that the time has
+come!”
+
+“My true friend!” was all she could say amid her fast-falling tears, as,
+bending over, she kissed his hand.
+
+“I swear the same, my dear Madam Mina!” said Van Helsing.
+
+“And I!” said Lord Godalming, each of them in turn kneeling to her to
+take the oath. I followed, myself. Then her husband turned to her
+wan-eyed and with a greenish pallor which subdued the snowy whiteness of
+his hair, and asked:--
+
+“And must I, too, make such a promise, oh, my wife?”
+
+“You too, my dearest,” she said, with infinite yearning of pity in her
+voice and eyes. “You must not shrink. You are nearest and dearest and
+all the world to me; our souls are knit into one, for all life and all
+time. Think, dear, that there have been times when brave men have killed
+their wives and their womenkind, to keep them from falling into the
+hands of the enemy. Their hands did not falter any the more because
+those that they loved implored them to slay them. It is men’s duty
+towards those whom they love, in such times of sore trial! And oh, my
+dear, if it is to be that I must meet death at any hand, let it be at
+the hand of him that loves me best. Dr. Van Helsing, I have not
+forgotten your mercy in poor Lucy’s case to him who loved”--she stopped
+with a flying blush, and changed her phrase--“to him who had best right
+to give her peace. If that time shall come again, I look to you to make
+it a happy memory of my husband’s life that it was his loving hand which
+set me free from the awful thrall upon me.”
+
+“Again I swear!” came the Professor’s resonant voice. Mrs. Harker
+smiled, positively smiled, as with a sigh of relief she leaned back and
+said:--
+
+“And now one word of warning, a warning which you must never forget:
+this time, if it ever come, may come quickly and unexpectedly, and in
+such case you must lose no time in using your opportunity. At such a
+time I myself might be--nay! if the time ever comes, _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 for ever--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 any one--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 with emotion that often he
+had to pause, he read the simple and beautiful service from the Burial
+of the Dead. I--I cannot go on--words--and--v-voice--f-fail m-me!”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was right in her instinct. Strange as it all was, bizarre as it may
+hereafter seem even to us who felt its potent influence at the time, it
+comforted us much; and the silence, which showed Mrs. Harker’s coming
+relapse from her freedom of soul, did not seem so full of despair to any
+of us as we had dreaded.
+
+
+_Jonathan Harker’s Journal._
+
+_15 October, Varna._--We left Charing Cross on the morning of the 12th,
+got to Paris the same night, and took the places secured for us in the
+Orient Express. We travelled 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
+hypnotise 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. To-morrow 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 will not count for
+much. We think that we shall not have much trouble with officials or the
+seamen. Thank God! this is the country where bribery can do anything,
+and we are well supplied with money. We have only to make sure that the
+ship cannot come into port between sunset and sunrise without our being
+warned, and we shall be safe. Judge Moneybag will settle this case, I
+think!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_16 October._--Mina’s report still the same: lapping waves and rushing
+water, darkness and favouring winds. We are evidently in good time, and
+when we hear of the _Czarina Catherine_ we shall be ready. As she must
+pass the Dardanelles we are sure to have some report.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_17 October._--Everything is pretty well fixed now, I think, to welcome
+the Count on his return from his tour. Godalming told the shippers that
+he fancied that the box sent aboard might contain something stolen from
+a friend of his, and got a half consent that he might open it at his own
+risk. The owner gave him a paper telling the Captain to give him every
+facility in doing whatever he chose on board the ship, and also a
+similar authorisation to his agent at Varna. We have seen the agent, who
+was much impressed with Godalming’s kindly manner to him, and we are all
+satisfied that whatever he can do to aid our wishes will be done. We
+have already arranged what to do in case we get the box open. If the
+Count is there, Van Helsing and Seward will cut off his head at once and
+drive a stake through his heart. Morris and Godalming and I shall
+prevent interference, even if we have to use the arms which we shall
+have ready. The Professor says that if we can so treat the Count’s body,
+it will soon after fall into dust. In such case there would be no
+evidence against us, in case any suspicion of murder were aroused. But
+even if it were not, we should stand or fall by our act, and perhaps
+some day this very script may be evidence to come between some of us and
+a rope. For myself, I should take the chance only too thankfully if it
+were to come. We mean to leave no stone unturned to carry out our
+intent. We have arranged with certain officials that the instant the
+_Czarina Catherine_ is seen, we are to be informed by a special
+messenger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_24 October._--A whole week of waiting. Daily telegrams to Godalming,
+but only the same story: “Not yet reported.” Mina’s morning and evening
+hypnotic answer is unvaried: lapping waves, rushing water, and creaking
+masts.
+
+_Telegram, October 24th._
+
+_Rufus Smith, Lloyd’s, London, to Lord Godalming, care of H. B. M.
+Vice-Consul, Varna._
+
+“_Czarina Catherine_ reported this morning from Dardanelles.”
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_25 October._--How I miss my phonograph! To write diary with a pen is
+irksome to me; but Van Helsing says I must. We were all wild with
+excitement yesterday when Godalming got his telegram from Lloyd’s. I
+know now what men feel in battle when the call to action is heard. Mrs.
+Harker, alone of our party, did not show any signs of emotion. After
+all, it is not strange that she did not; for we took special care not to
+let her know anything about it, and we all tried not to show any
+excitement when we were in her presence. In old days she would, I am
+sure, have noticed, no matter how we might have tried to conceal it; but
+in this way she is greatly changed during the past three weeks. The
+lethargy grows upon her, and though she seems strong and well, and is
+getting back some of her colour, Van Helsing and I are not satisfied. We
+talk of her often; we have not, however, said a word to the others. It
+would break poor Harker’s heart--certainly his nerve--if he knew that we
+had even a suspicion on the subject. Van Helsing examines, he tells me,
+her teeth very carefully, whilst she is in the hypnotic condition, for
+he says that so long as they do not begin to sharpen there is no active
+danger of a change in her. If this change should come, it would be
+necessary to take steps!... We both know what those steps would have to
+be, though we do not mention our thoughts to each other. We should
+neither of us shrink from the task--awful though it be to contemplate.
+“Euthanasia” is an excellent and a comforting word! I am grateful to
+whoever invented it.
+
+It is only about 24 hours’ sail from the Dardanelles to here, at the
+rate the _Czarina Catherine_ has come from London. She should therefore
+arrive some time in the morning; but as she cannot possibly get in
+before then, we are all about to retire early. We shall get up at one
+o’clock, so as to be ready.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_25 October, Noon_.--No news yet of the ship’s arrival. Mrs. Harker’s
+hypnotic report this morning was the same as usual, so it is possible
+that we may get news at any moment. We men are all in a fever of
+excitement, except Harker, who is calm; his hands are cold as ice, and
+an hour ago I found him whetting the edge of the great Ghoorka knife
+which he now always carries with him. It will be a bad lookout for the
+Count if the edge of that “Kukri” ever touches his throat, driven by
+that stern, ice-cold hand!
+
+Van Helsing and I were a little alarmed about Mrs. Harker to-day. About
+noon she got into a sort of lethargy which we did not like; although we
+kept silence to the others, we were neither of us happy about it. She
+had been restless all the morning, so that we were at first glad to know
+that she was sleeping. When, however, her husband mentioned casually
+that she was sleeping so soundly that he could not wake her, we went to
+her room to see for ourselves. She was breathing naturally and looked so
+well and peaceful that we agreed that the sleep was better for her than
+anything else. Poor girl, she has so much to forget that it is no wonder
+that sleep, if it brings oblivion to her, does her good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Later._--Our opinion was justified, for when after a refreshing sleep
+of some hours she woke up, she seemed brighter and better than she had
+been for days. At sunset she made the usual hypnotic report. Wherever he
+may be in the Black Sea, the Count is hurrying to his destination. To
+his doom, I trust!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_26 October._--Another day and no tidings of the _Czarina Catherine_.
+She ought to be here by now. That she is still journeying _somewhere_ is
+apparent, for Mrs. Harker’s hypnotic report at sunrise was still the
+same. It is possible that the vessel may be lying by, at times, for fog;
+some of the steamers which came in last evening reported patches of fog
+both to north and south of the port. We must continue our watching, as
+the ship may now be signalled any moment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_27 October, Noon._--Most strange; no news yet of the ship we wait for.
+Mrs. Harker reported last night and this morning as usual: “lapping
+waves and rushing water,” though she added that “the waves were very
+faint.” The telegrams from London have been the same: “no further
+report.” Van Helsing is terribly anxious, and told me just now that he
+fears the Count is escaping us. He added significantly:--
+
+“I did not like that lethargy of Madam Mina’s. Souls and memories can do
+strange things during trance.” I was about to ask him more, but Harker
+just then came in, and he held up a warning hand. We must try to-night
+at sunset to make her speak more fully when in her hypnotic state.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _28 October._--Telegram. _Rufus Smith, London, to Lord Godalming,
+     care H. B. M. Vice Consul, Varna._
+
+     “_Czarina Catherine_ reported entering Galatz at one o’clock
+     to-day.”
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_28 October._--When the telegram came announcing the arrival in Galatz I
+do not think it was such a shock to any of us as might have been
+expected. True, we did not know whence, or how, or when, the bolt would
+come; but I think we all expected that something strange would happen.
+The delay 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, was it a surprise. I suppose
+that nature works on such a hopeful basis that we believe against
+ourselves that things will be as they ought to be, not as we should know
+that they will be. Transcendentalism is a beacon to the angels, even if
+it be a will-o’-the-wisp to man. It was an odd experience and we all
+took it differently. Van Helsing raised his hand over his head for a
+moment, as though in remonstrance with the Almighty; but he said not a
+word, and in a few seconds stood up with his face sternly set. Lord
+Godalming grew very pale, and sat breathing heavily. I was myself half
+stunned and looked in wonder at one after another. Quincey Morris
+tightened his belt with that quick movement which I knew so well; in our
+old wandering days it meant “action.” Mrs. Harker grew ghastly white, so
+that the scar on her forehead seemed to burn, but she folded her hands
+meekly and looked up in prayer. Harker smiled--actually smiled--the
+dark, bitter smile of one who is without hope; but at the same time his
+action belied his words, for his hands instinctively sought the hilt of
+the great Kukri knife and rested there. “When does the next train start
+for Galatz?” said Van Helsing to us generally.
+
+“At 6:30 to-morrow 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 to-morrow 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 search the ship
+just as it was here. Morris Quincey, 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
+realise 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!”
+
+“There 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 and ears to hear than he, shut, as he is, in his coffin-box.
+Now he make his most effort to escape us. At present he want her not.
+
+“He is sure with his so great knowledge that she will come at his call;
+but he cut her off--take her, as he can do, out of his own power, that
+so she come not to him. Ah! there I have hope that our man-brains that
+have been of man so long and that have not lost the grace of God, will
+come higher than his child-brain that lie in his tomb for centuries,
+that grow not yet to our stature, and that do only work selfish and
+therefore small. Here comes Madam Mina; not a word to her of her trance!
+She know 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 of 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--then
+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 she 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 _quâ_ criminal he is of imperfectly formed mind.
+Thus, in a difficulty he has to seek resource in habit. His past is a
+clue, and the one page of it that we know--and that from his own
+lips--tells that once before, when in what Mr. Morris would call a
+‘tight place,’ he went back to his own country from the land he had
+tried to invade, and thence, without losing purpose, prepared himself
+for a new effort. He came again better equipped for his work; and won.
+So he came to London to invade a new land. He was beaten, and when all
+hope of success was lost, and his existence in danger, he fled back over
+the sea to his home; just as formerly he had fled back over the Danube
+from Turkey Land.”
+
+“Good, good! oh, you so clever lady!” said Van Helsing,
+enthusiastically, as he stooped and kissed her hand. A moment later he
+said to me, as calmly as though we had been having a sick-room
+consultation:--
+
+“Seventy-two only; and in all this excitement. I have hope.” Turning to
+her again, he said with keen expectation:--
+
+“But go on. Go on! there is more to tell if you will. Be not afraid;
+John and I know. I do in any case, and shall tell you if you are right.
+Speak, without fear!”
+
+“I will try to; but you will forgive me if I seem 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, as you have won from your
+suffering at his hands. This is now all the 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 her typewriter all since she brought the MS. to us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+DR. SEWARD’S DIARY
+
+
+_29 October._--This is written in the train from Varna to Galatz. Last
+night we all assembled a little before the time of sunset. Each of us
+had done his work as well as he could; so far as thought, and endeavour,
+and opportunity go, we are prepared for the whole of our journey, and
+for our work when we get to Galatz. When the usual time came round Mrs.
+Harker prepared herself for her hypnotic effort; and after a longer and
+more serious effort on the part of Van Helsing than has been usually
+necessary, she sank into the trance. Usually she speaks on a hint; but
+this time the Professor had to ask her questions, and to ask them pretty
+resolutely, before we could learn anything; at last her answer came:--
+
+“I can see nothing; we are still; there are no waves lapping, but only a
+steady swirl of water softly running against the hawser. I can hear
+men’s voices calling, near and far, and the roll and creak of oars in
+the rowlocks. A gun is fired somewhere; the echo of it seems far away.
+There is tramping of feet overhead, and ropes and chains are dragged
+along. What is this? There is a gleam of light; I can feel the air
+blowing upon me.”
+
+Here she stopped. She had risen, as if impulsively, from where she lay
+on the sofa, and raised both her hands, palms upwards, as if lifting a
+weight. Van Helsing and I looked at each other with understanding.
+Quincey raised his eyebrows slightly and looked at her intently, whilst
+Harker’s hand instinctively closed round the hilt of his Kukri. There
+was a long pause. We all knew that the time when she could speak was
+passing; but we felt that it was useless to say anything. Suddenly she
+sat up, and, as she opened her eyes, said sweetly:--
+
+“Would none of you like a cup of tea? You must all be so tired!” We
+could only make her happy, and so acquiesced. 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 can jump or fly on shore, as he did
+at Whitby. But if the day come before he get 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 to-night, 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
+to-night.
+
+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 sun-up. Thus we shall have two more
+hypnotic messages from Mrs. Harker; either or both may possibly throw
+more light on what is happening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Later._--Sunset has come and gone. Fortunately it came at a time when
+there was no distraction; for had it occurred whilst we were at a
+station, we might not have secured the necessary calm and isolation.
+Mrs. Harker yielded to the hypnotic influence even less readily than
+this morning. I am in fear that her power of reading the Count’s
+sensations may die away, just when we want it most. It seems to me that
+her imagination is beginning to work. Whilst she has been in the trance
+hitherto she has confined herself to the simplest of facts. If this goes
+on it may ultimately mislead us. If I thought that the Count’s power
+over her would die away equally with her power of knowledge it would be
+a happy thought; but I am afraid that it may not be so. When she did
+speak, her words were enigmatical:--
+
+“Something is going out; I can feel it pass me like a cold wind. I can
+hear, far off, confused sounds--as of men talking in strange tongues,
+fierce-falling water, and the howling of wolves.” She stopped and a
+shudder ran through her, increasing in intensity for a few seconds,
+till, at the end, she shook as though in a palsy. She said no more, even
+in answer to the Professor’s imperative questioning. When she woke from
+the trance, she was cold, and exhausted, and languid; but her mind was
+all alert. She could not remember anything, but asked what she had said;
+when she was told, she pondered over it deeply for a long time and in
+silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_30 October, 7 a. m._--We are near Galatz now, and I may not have time
+to write later. Sunrise this morning was anxiously looked for by us all.
+Knowing of the increasing difficulty of procuring the hypnotic trance,
+Van Helsing began his passes earlier than usual. They produced no
+effect, however, until the regular time, when she yielded with a still
+greater difficulty, only a minute before the sun rose. The Professor
+lost no time in his questioning; her answer came with equal quickness:--
+
+“All is dark. I hear water swirling by, level with my ears, and the
+creaking of wood on wood. Cattle low far off. There is another sound, a
+queer one like----” She stopped and grew white, and whiter still.
+
+“Go on; go on! Speak, I command you!” said Van Helsing in an agonised
+voice. At the same time there was despair in his eyes, for the risen sun
+was reddening even Mrs. Harker’s pale face. She opened her eyes, and we
+all started as she said, sweetly and seemingly with the utmost
+unconcern:--
+
+“Oh, Professor, why ask me to do what you know I can’t? I don’t remember
+anything.” Then, seeing the look of amazement on our faces, she said,
+turning from one to the other with a troubled look:--
+
+“What have I said? What have I done? I know nothing, only that I was
+lying here, half asleep, and heard you say ‘go on! speak, I command you!’
+It seemed so funny to hear you order me about, as if I were a bad
+child!”
+
+“Oh, Madam Mina,” he said, sadly, “it is proof, if proof be needed, of
+how I love and honour you, when a word for your good, spoken more
+earnest than ever, can seem so strange because it is to order her whom I
+am proud to obey!”
+
+The whistles are sounding; we are nearing Galatz. We are on fire with
+anxiety and eagerness.
+
+
+_Mina Harker’s Journal._
+
+_30 October._--Mr. Morris took me to the hotel where our rooms had been
+ordered by telegraph, he being the one who could best be spared, since
+he does not speak any foreign language. The forces were distributed
+much as they had been at Varna, except that Lord Godalming went to the
+Vice-Consul, as his rank might serve as an immediate guarantee of some
+sort to the official, we being in extreme hurry. Jonathan and the two
+doctors went to the shipping agent to learn particulars of the arrival
+of the _Czarina Catherine_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Later._--Lord Godalming has returned. The Consul is away, and the
+Vice-Consul sick; so the routine work has been attended to by a clerk.
+He was very obliging, and offered to do anything in his power.
+
+
+_Jonathan Harker’s Journal._
+
+_30 October._--At nine o’clock Dr. Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, and I called
+on Messrs. Mackenzie & Steinkoff, the agents of the London firm of
+Hapgood. They had received a wire from London, in answer to Lord
+Godalming’s telegraphed request, asking us to show them 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
+harbour. 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 expeckit 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’ till 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 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
+agin 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 sun-up, a man came
+aboard wi’ an order, written to him from England, to receive a box
+marked for one Count Dracula. Sure eneuch the matter was one ready to
+his hand. He had his papers a’ reet, an’ glad I was to be rid o’ the
+dam’ thing, for I was beginnin’ masel’ to feel uneasy at it. If the Deil
+did have any luggage aboord the ship, I’m thinkin’ it was nane ither
+than that same!”
+
+“What was the name of the man who took it?” asked Dr. Van Helsing with
+restrained eagerness.
+
+“I’ll be tellin’ ye quick!” he answered, and, stepping down to his
+cabin, produced a receipt signed “Immanuel Hildesheim.” Burgen-strasse
+16 was the address. We found out that this was all the Captain knew; so
+with thanks we came away.
+
+We found Hildesheim in his office, a Hebrew of rather the Adelphi
+Theatre type, with a nose like a sheep, and a fez. His arguments were
+pointed with specie--we doing the punctuation--and with a little
+bargaining he told us what he knew. This turned out to be simple but
+important. He had received a letter from Mr. de Ville of London, telling
+him to receive, if possible before sunrise so as to avoid customs, a box
+which would arrive at Galatz in the _Czarina Catherine_. This he was to
+give in charge to a certain Petrof Skinsky, who dealt with the Slovaks
+who traded down the river to the port. He had been paid for his work by
+an English bank note, which had been duly cashed for gold at the Danube
+International Bank. When Skinsky had come to him, he had taken him to
+the ship and handed over the box, so as to save porterage. That was all
+he knew.
+
+We then sought for Skinsky, but were unable to find him. One of his
+neighbours, who did not seem to bear him any affection, said that he had
+gone away two days before, no one knew whither. This was corroborated by
+his landlord, who had received by messenger the key of the house
+together with the rent due, in English money. This had been between ten
+and eleven o’clock last night. We were at a standstill again.
+
+Whilst we were talking one came running and breathlessly gasped out that
+the body of Skinsky had been found inside the wall of the churchyard of
+St. Peter, and that the throat had been torn open as if by some wild
+animal. Those we had been speaking with ran off to see the horror, the
+women crying out “This is the work of a Slovak!” We hurried away lest we
+should have been in some way drawn into the affair, and so detained.
+
+As we came home we could arrive at no definite conclusion. We were all
+convinced that the box was on its way, by water, to somewhere; but where
+that might be we would have to discover. With heavy hearts we came home
+to the hotel to Mina.
+
+When we met together, the first thing was to consult as to taking Mina
+again into our confidence. Things are getting desperate, and it is at
+least a chance, though a hazardous one. As a preliminary step, I was
+released from my promise to her.
+
+
+_Mina Harker’s Journal._
+
+_30 October, evening._--They were so tired and worn out and dispirited
+that there was nothing to be done till they had some rest; so I asked
+them all to lie down for half an hour whilst I should enter everything
+up to the moment. I feel so grateful to the man who invented the
+“Traveller’s” typewriter, and to Mr. Morris for getting this one for
+me. I should have felt quite astray doing the work if I had to write
+with a pen....
+
+It is all done; poor dear, dear Jonathan, what he must have suffered,
+what must he 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?
+
+1. _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!
+
+2. _By Rail._--There is no one in charge of the box. It would have to
+take its chance of being delayed; and delay would be fatal, with enemies
+on the track. True, he might escape at night; but what would he be, if
+left in a strange place with no refuge that he could fly to? This is not
+what he intends; and he does not mean to risk it.
+
+3. _By Water._--Here is the safest way, in one respect, but with most
+danger in another. On the water he is powerless except at night; even
+then he can only summon fog and storm and snow and his wolves. But were
+he wrecked, the living water would engulf him, helpless; and he would
+indeed be lost. He could have the vessel drive to land; but if it were
+unfriendly land, wherein he was not free to move, his position would
+still be desperate.
+
+We know from the record that he was on the water; so what we have to do
+is to ascertain _what_ water.
+
+The first thing is to realise exactly what he has done as yet; we may,
+then, get a light on what his later 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 for 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 sound if floating down stream.
+
+Of course it may not be either the Sereth or the Pruth, but we may
+possibly investigate further. Now of these two, the Pruth is the more
+easily navigated, but the Sereth is, at Fundu, joined by the Bistritza
+which runs up round the Borgo Pass. The loop it makes is manifestly as
+close to Dracula’s castle as can be got by water.
+
+
+_Mina Harker’s Journal--continued._
+
+When I had done reading, Jonathan took me in his arms and kissed me. The
+others kept shaking me by both hands, and Dr. Van Helsing said:--
+
+“Our dear Madam Mina is once more our teacher. Her eyes have been where
+we were blinded. Now we are on the track once again, and this time we
+may succeed. Our enemy is at his most helpless; and if we can come on
+him by day, on the water, our task will be over. He has a start, but he
+is powerless to hasten, as he may not leave his 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 re-incarnate.” 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 ... 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 death-trap? 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 there, that her eyes may not
+see. We men here, all save Jonathan, have seen with their own eyes what
+is 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 the 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 it is properly applied; and what might it do
+when basely used. I felt so thankful that Lord Godalming is rich, and
+that both he and Mr. Morris, who also has plenty of money, are willing
+to spend it so freely. For if they did not, our little expedition could
+not start, either so promptly or so well equipped, as it will within
+another hour. It is not three hours since it was arranged what part each
+of us was to do; and now Lord Godalming and Jonathan have a lovely steam
+launch, with steam up ready to start at a moment’s notice. Dr. Seward
+and Mr. Morris have half a dozen good horses, well appointed. We have
+all the maps and appliances of various kinds that can be had. Professor
+Van Helsing and I are to leave by the 11:40 train to-night 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 good-bye 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 30. Night._--I am writing this in the light from the furnace
+door of the steam launch: Lord Godalming is firing up. He is an
+experienced hand at the work, as he has had for years a launch of his
+own on the Thames, and another on the Norfolk Broads. Regarding our
+plans, we finally decided that Mina’s guess was correct, and that if any
+waterway was chosen for the Count’s escape back to his Castle, the
+Sereth and then the Bistritza at its junction, would be the one. We took
+it, that somewhere about the 47th degree, north latitude, would be the
+place chosen for the 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 movable horn, and
+can be easily adapted for Mina, if required.
+
+It is a wild adventure we are on. Here, as we are rushing along through
+the darkness, with the cold from the river seeming to rise up and strike
+us; with all the mysterious voices of the night around us, it all comes
+home. We seem to be drifting into unknown places and unknown ways; into
+a whole world of dark and dreadful things. Godalming is shutting the
+furnace door....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_31 October._--Still hurrying along. The day has come, and Godalming is
+sleeping. I am on watch. The morning is bitterly cold; the furnace heat
+is grateful, though we have heavy fur coats. As yet we have passed only
+a few open boats, but none of them had on board any box or package of
+anything like the size of the one we seek. The men were scared every
+time we turned our electric lamp on them, and fell on their knees and
+prayed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_1 November, evening._--No news all day; we have found nothing of the
+kind we seek. We have now passed into the Bistritza; and if we are wrong
+in our surmise our chance is gone. We have over-hauled 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 over-hauled since then this trick has succeeded; we have had every
+deference shown to us, and not once any objection to whatever we chose
+to ask or do. Some of the Slovaks tell us that a big boat passed them,
+going at more than usual speed as she had a double crew on board. This
+was before they came to Fundu, so they could not tell us whether the
+boat turned into the Bistritza or continued on up the Sereth. At Fundu
+we could not hear of any such boat, so she must have passed there in the
+night. I am feeling very sleepy; the cold is perhaps beginning to tell
+upon me, and nature must have rest some time. Godalming insists that he
+shall keep the first watch. God bless him for all his goodness to poor
+dear Mina and me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_2 November, morning._--It is broad daylight. That good fellow would not
+wake me. He says it would have been a sin to, for I slept peacefully and
+was forgetting my trouble. It seems brutally selfish to me to have slept
+so long, and let him watch all night; but he was quite right. I am a new
+man this morning; and, as I sit here and watch him sleeping, I can do
+all that is necessary both as to minding the engine, steering, and
+keeping watch. I can feel that my strength and energy are coming back to
+me. I wonder where Mina is now, and Van Helsing. They should have got to
+Veresti about noon on Wednesday. It would take them some time to get the
+carriage and horses; so if they had started and travelled hard, they
+would be about now at the Borgo Pass. God guide and help them! I am
+afraid to think what may happen. If we could only go faster! but we
+cannot; the engines are throbbing and doing their utmost. I wonder how
+Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris are getting on. There seem to be endless
+streams running down the mountains into this river, but as none of them
+are very large--at present, at all events, though they are terrible
+doubtless in winter and when the snow melts--the horsemen may not have
+met much obstruction. I hope that before we get to Strasba we may see
+them; for if by that time we have not overtaken the Count, it may be
+necessary to take counsel together what to do next.
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_2 November._--Three days on the road. No news, and no time to write it
+if there had been, for every moment is precious. We have had only the
+rest needful for the horses; but we are both bearing it wonderfully.
+Those adventurous days of ours are turning up useful. We must push on;
+we shall never feel happy till we get the launch in sight again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_3 November._--We heard at Fundu that the launch had gone up the
+Bistritza. I wish it wasn’t so cold. There are signs of snow coming; and
+if it falls heavy it will stop us. In such case we must get a sledge and
+go on, Russian fashion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_4 November._--To-day we heard of the launch having been detained by an
+accident when trying to force a way up the rapids. The Slovak boats get
+up all right, by aid of a rope and steering with knowledge. Some went up
+only a few hours before. Godalming is an amateur fitter himself, and
+evidently it was he who put the launch in trim again. Finally, they got
+up the rapids all right, with local help, and are off on the chase
+afresh. I fear that the boat is not any better for the accident; the
+peasantry tell us that after she got upon smooth water again, she kept
+stopping every now and again so long as she was in sight. We must push
+on harder than ever; our help may be wanted soon.
+
+
+_Mina Harker’s Journal._
+
+_31 October._--Arrived at Veresti at noon. The Professor tells me that
+this morning at dawn he could hardly hypnotise me at all, and that all I
+could say was: “dark and quiet.” He is off now buying a carriage and
+horses. He says that he will later on try to buy additional horses, so
+that we may be able to change them on the way. We have something more
+than 70 miles before us. The country is lovely, and most interesting; if
+only we were under different conditions, how delightful it would be to
+see it all. If Jonathan and I were driving through it alone what a
+pleasure it would be. To stop and see people, and learn something of
+their life, and to fill our minds and memories with all the colour and
+picturesqueness of the whole wild, beautiful country and the quaint
+people! But, alas!--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Later._--Dr. Van Helsing has returned. He has got the carriage and
+horses; we are to have some dinner, and to start in an hour. The
+landlady is putting us up a huge basket of provisions; it seems enough
+for a company of soldiers. The Professor encourages her, and whispers to
+me that it may be a week before we can get any good 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 XXVII
+
+MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL
+
+
+_1 November._--All day long we have travelled, and at a good speed. The
+horses seem to know that they are being kindly treated, for they go
+willingly their full stage at best speed. We have now had so many
+changes and find the same thing so constantly that we are encouraged to
+think that the journey will be an easy one. Dr. Van Helsing is laconic;
+he tells the farmers that he is hurrying to Bistritz, and pays them well
+to make the exchange of horses. We get hot soup, or coffee, or tea; and
+off we go. It is a lovely country; full of beauties of all imaginable
+kinds, and the people are brave, and strong, and simple, and seem full
+of nice qualities. They are _very, very_ superstitious. In the first
+house where we stopped, when the woman who served us saw the scar on my
+forehead, she crossed herself and put out two fingers towards me, to
+keep off the evil eye. I believe they went to the trouble of putting an
+extra amount of garlic into our food; and I can’t abide garlic. Ever
+since then I have taken care not to take off my hat or veil, and so have
+escaped their suspicions. We are travelling fast, and as we have no
+driver with us to carry tales, we go ahead of scandal; but I daresay
+that fear of the evil eye will follow hard behind us all the way. The
+Professor seems tireless; all day he would not take any rest, though he
+made me sleep for a long spell. At sunset time he hypnotised me, and he
+says that 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 got 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 instinct 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 we must not break down when most of all his strength will be
+needed.... All is ready; we are off shortly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_2 November, morning._--I was successful, and we took turns driving all
+night; now the day is on us, bright though cold. There is a strange
+heaviness in the air--I say heaviness for want of a better word; I mean
+that it oppresses us both. It is very cold, and only our warm furs keep
+us comfortable. At dawn Van Helsing hypnotised me; he says I answered
+“darkness, creaking wood and roaring water,” so the river is changing as
+they ascend. I do hope that my darling will not run any chance of
+danger--more than need be; but we are in God’s hands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_2 November, night._--All day long driving. The country gets wilder as
+we go, and the great spurs of the Carpathians, which at Veresti seemed
+so far from us and so low on the horizon, now seem to gather round us
+and tower in front. We both seem in good spirits; I think we make an
+effort each to cheer the other; in the doing so we cheer ourselves. Dr.
+Van Helsing says that by morning we shall reach the Borgo Pass. The
+houses are very few here now, and the Professor says that the last horse
+we got will have to go on with us, as we may not be able to change. He
+got two in addition to the two we changed, so that now we have a rude
+four-in-hand. The dear horses are patient and good, and they give us no
+trouble. We are not worried with other travellers, and so even I can
+drive. We shall get to the Pass in daylight; we do not want to arrive
+before. So we take it easy, and have each a long rest in turn. Oh, what
+will to-morrow bring to us? We go to seek the place where my poor
+darling suffered so much. God grant that we may be guided aright, and
+that He will deign to watch over my husband and those dear to us both,
+and who are in such deadly peril. As for me, I am not worthy in His
+sight. Alas! I am unclean to His eyes, and shall be until He may deign
+to let me stand forth in His sight as one of those who have not incurred
+His wrath.
+
+
+_Memorandum by Abraham Van Helsing._
+
+_4 November._--This to my old and true friend John Seward, M.D., of
+Purfleet, London, in case I may not see him. It may explain. It is
+morning, and I write by a fire which all the night I have kept
+alive--Madam Mina aiding me. It is cold, cold; so cold that the grey
+heavy sky is full of snow, which when it falls will settle for all
+winter as the ground is hardening to receive it. It seems to have
+affected Madam Mina; she has been so heavy of head all day that she was
+not like herself. She sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps! She who is usual
+so alert, have done literally nothing all the day; she even have lost
+her appetite. She make no entry into her little diary, she who write so
+faithful at every pause. Something whisper to me that all is not well.
+However, to-night 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 hypnotise her, but alas! with no effect; the power has grown
+less and less with each day, and to-night 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 by-road. It is used but little, and very different from the coach
+road from the Bukovina to Bistritz, which is more wide and hard, and
+more of use.
+
+So we came down this road; when we meet other ways--not always were we
+sure that they were roads at all, for they be neglect and light snow
+have fallen--the horses know and they only. I give rein to them, and
+they go on so patient. By-and-by we find all the things which Jonathan
+have note in that wonderful diary of him. Then we go on for long, long
+hours and hours. At the first, I tell Madam Mina to sleep; she try, and
+she succeed. She sleep all the time; till at the last, I feel myself to
+suspicious grow, and attempt to wake her. But she sleep on, and I may
+not wake her though I try. I do not wish to try too hard lest I harm
+her; for I know that she have suffer much, and sleep at times be
+all-in-all to her. I think I drowse myself, for all of sudden I feel
+guilt, as though I have done something; I find myself bolt up, with the
+reins in my hand, and the good horses go along jog, jog, just as ever. I
+look down and find Madam Mina still sleep. 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 hypnotise her; but alas! though she shut her eyes
+obedient, she may not sleep. The sun rise up, and up, and up; and then
+sleep come to her too late, but so heavy that she will not wake. I have
+to lift her up, and place her sleeping in the carriage when I have
+harnessed the horses and made all ready. Madam still sleep, and she look
+in her sleep more healthy and more redder than before. And I like it
+not. And I am afraid, afraid, afraid!--I am afraid of all things--even
+to think but I must go on my way. The stake we play for is life and
+death, or more than these, and we must not flinch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_5 November, morning._--Let me be accurate in everything, for though you
+and I have seen some strange things together, you may at the first think
+that I, Van Helsing, am mad--that the many horrors and the so long
+strain on nerves has at the last turn my brain.
+
+All yesterday we travel, ever 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 hypnotise 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 ever 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 materialise till--if God have not
+take 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! 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 our protections. They could not
+approach, me, whilst so armed, nor Madam Mina whilst she remained 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 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 hypnotise her; but she lay in a deep and sudden sleep, from which I
+could not wake her. I tried to hypnotise 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. To-day 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 to my terrible
+work. Madam Mina still sleeps; and, God be thanked! she is calm in her
+sleep....
+
+
+_Jonathan Harker’s Journal._
+
+_4 November, evening._--The accident to the launch has been a terrible
+thing for us. Only for it we should have overtaken the boat long ago;
+and by now my dear Mina would have been free. I fear to think of her,
+off on the wolds near that horrid place. We have got horses, and we
+follow on the track. I note this whilst Godalming is getting ready. We
+have our arms. The Szgany must look out if they mean fight. Oh, if only
+Morris and Seward were with us. We must only hope! If I write no more
+Good-bye, Mina! God bless and keep you.
+
+
+_Dr. Seward’s Diary._
+
+_5 November._--With the dawn we saw the body of Szgany before us dashing
+away from the river with their leiter-wagon. They surrounded it in a
+cluster, and hurried along as though beset. The snow is falling lightly
+and there is a strange excitement in the air. It may be our own
+feelings, but the depression is strange. Far off I hear the howling of
+wolves; the snow brings them down from the mountains, and there are
+dangers to all of us, and from all sides. The horses are nearly ready,
+and we are soon off. We ride to death of some one. God alone knows who,
+or where, or what, or when, or how it may be....
+
+
+_Dr. Van Helsing’s Memorandum._
+
+_5 November, afternoon._--I am at least sane. Thank God for that mercy
+at all events, though the proving it has been dreadful. When I left
+Madam Mina sleeping within the Holy circle, I took my way to the castle.
+The blacksmith hammer which I took in the carriage from Veresti was
+useful; though the doors were all open I broke them off the rusty
+hinges, lest some ill-intent or ill-chance should close them, so that
+being entered I might not get out. Jonathan’s bitter experience served
+me here. By memory of his diary I found my way to the old chapel, for I
+knew that here my work lay. The air was oppressive; it seemed as if
+there was some sulphurous fume, which at times made me dizzy. Either
+there was a roaring in my ears or I heard afar off the howl of wolves.
+Then I bethought me of my dear Madam Mina, and I was in terrible plight.
+The dilemma had me between his horns.
+
+Her, I had not dare to take into this place, but left safe from the
+Vampire in that Holy circle; and yet even there would be the wolf! I
+resolve me that my work lay here, and that as to the wolves we must
+submit, if it were God’s will. At any rate it was only death and
+freedom beyond. So did I choose for her. Had it but been for myself the
+choice had been easy, the maw of the wolf were better to rest in than
+the grave of the Vampire! So I make my choice to go on with my work.
+
+I knew that there were at least three graves to find--graves that are
+inhabit; so I search, and search, and I find one of them. She lay in her
+Vampire sleep, so full of life and voluptuous beauty that I shudder as
+though I have come to do murder. Ah, I doubt not that in 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 Un-Dead have hypnotise 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 man is weak. And there remain one more victim in the Vampire
+fold; one more to swell the grim and grisly ranks of the Un-Dead!...
+
+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 paralyse my faculties and to clog my
+very soul. It may have been that the need of natural sleep, and the
+strange oppression of the air were beginning to overcome me. Certain it
+was that I was lapsing into sleep, the open-eyed sleep of one who yields
+to a sweet fascination, when there came through the snow-stilled air a
+long, low wail, so full of woe and pity that it woke me like the sound
+of a clarion. For it was the voice of my dear Madam Mina that I heard.
+
+Then I braced myself again to my horrid task, and found by wrenching
+away tomb-tops one other of the sisters, the other dark one. I dared not
+pause to look on her as I had on her sister, lest once more I should
+begin to be enthrall; but I go on searching until, presently, I find in
+a high great tomb as if made to one much beloved that other fair sister
+which, like Jonathan I had seen to gather herself out of the atoms of
+the mist. She was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful, so
+exquisitely voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me, which calls
+some of my sex to love and to protect one of hers, made my head whirl
+with new emotion. But God be thanked, that soul-wail of my dear Madam
+Mina had not died out of my ears; and, before the spell could be wrought
+further upon me, I had nerved myself to my wild work. By this time I had
+searched all the tombs in the chapel, so far as I could tell; and as
+there had been only three of these Un-Dead phantoms around us in the
+night, I took it that there were no more of active Un-Dead 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 Un-Dead 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, Un-Dead, 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 if 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 realisation 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 in to its native dust, as though the death that should have come
+centuries agone 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 Un-Dead.
+
+When I stepped into the circle where Madam Mina slept, she woke from her
+sleep, and, seeing, me, cried out in pain that I had endured too much.
+
+“Come!” she said, “come away from this awful place! Let us go to meet my
+husband who is, I know, coming towards us.” She was looking thin and
+pale and weak; but her eyes were pure and glowed with fervour. I was
+glad to see her paleness and her illness, for my mind was full of the
+fresh horror of that ruddy vampire sleep.
+
+And so with trust and hope, and yet full of fear, we go eastward to meet
+our friends--and _him_--whom Madam Mina tell me that she _know_ are
+coming to meet us.
+
+
+_Mina Harker’s Journal._
+
+_6 November._--It was late in the afternoon when the Professor and I
+took our way towards the east whence I knew Jonathan was coming. We did
+not go fast, though the way was steeply downhill, for we had to take
+heavy rugs and wraps with us; we dared not face the possibility of being
+left without warmth in the cold and the snow. We had to take some of our
+provisions, too, for we were in a perfect desolation, and, so far as we
+could see through the snowfall, there was not even the sign of
+habitation. When we had gone about a mile, I was tired with the heavy
+walking and sat down to rest. Then we looked back and saw where the
+clear line of Dracula’s castle cut the sky; for we were so deep under
+the hill whereon it was set that the angle of perspective of the
+Carpathian mountains was far below it. We saw it in all its grandeur,
+perched a thousand feet on the summit of a sheer precipice, and with
+seemingly a great gap between it and the steep of the adjacent mountain
+on any side. There was something wild and uncanny about the place. We
+could hear the distant howling of wolves. They were far off, but the
+sound, even though coming muffled through the deadening snowfall, was
+full of terror. I knew from the way Dr. Van Helsing was searching about
+that he was trying to seek some strategic point, where we would be less
+exposed in case of attack. The rough roadway still led downwards; we
+could trace it through the drifted snow.
+
+In a little while the Professor signalled to me, so I got up and joined
+him. He had found a wonderful spot, a sort of natural hollow in a rock,
+with an entrance like a doorway between two boulders. He took me by the
+hand and drew me in: “See!” he said, “here you will be in shelter; and
+if the wolves do come I can meet them one by one.” He brought in our
+furs, and made a snug nest for me, and got out some provisions and
+forced them upon me. But I could not eat; to even try to do so was
+repulsive to me, and, much as I would have liked to please him, I could
+not bring myself to the attempt. He looked very sad, but did not
+reproach me. Taking his field-glasses from the case, he stood on the top
+of the rock, and began to search the horizon. Suddenly he called out:--
+
+“Look! Madam Mina, look! look!” I sprang up and stood beside him on the
+rock; he handed me his glasses and pointed. The snow was now falling
+more heavily, and swirled about fiercely, for a high wind was beginning
+to blow. However, there were times when there were pauses between the
+snow flurries and I could see a long way round. From the height where we
+were it was possible to see a great distance; and far off, beyond the
+white waste of snow, I could see the river lying like a black ribbon in
+kinks and curls as it wound its way. Straight in front of us and not far
+off--in fact, so near that I wondered we had not noticed before--came a
+group of mounted men hurrying along. In the midst of them was a cart, a
+long leiter-wagon which swept from side to side, like a dog’s tail
+wagging, with each stern inequality of the road. Outlined against the
+snow as they were, I could see from the men’s clothes that they were
+peasants or gypsies of some kind.
+
+On the cart was a great square chest. My heart leaped as I saw it, for I
+felt that the end was coming. The evening was now drawing close, and
+well I knew that at sunset the Thing, which was till then imprisoned
+there, would take new freedom and could in any of many forms elude all
+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
+break-neck 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 realise, 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 pointing 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 ardour 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 quick 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 resistance. The sun was almost down on the mountain tops, and the
+shadows of the whole group fell long 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 too 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 any service! Oh, God!” he cried
+suddenly, struggling up 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
+note-books 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.
+
+                                THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                       _There’s More to Follow!_
+
+     More stories of the sort you like; more, probably, by the author of
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+     on the _reverse side_ of the wrapper of this book. Look it over
+     before you lay it aside. There are books here you are sure to
+     want--some, possibly, that you have _always_ wanted.
+
+     It is a _selected_ list; every book in it has achieved a certain
+     measure of _success_.
+
+     The Grosset & Dunlap list is not only the greatest Index of Good
+     Fiction available, it represents in addition a generally accepted
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+
+                _Look on the Other Side of the Wrapper!_
+
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+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
+THE KING versus WARGRAVE
+
+THE LOST MR. LINTHWAITE
+
+THE MILL OF MANY WINDOWS
+
+THE HEAVEN-KISSED HILL
+
+THE MIDDLE TEMPLE MURDER
+
+RAVENSDENE COURT
+
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+
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+
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+
+THE VALLEY OF HEADSTRONG MEN
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK
diff --git a/search-engine/books/Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus.txt b/search-engine/books/Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus.txt
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+Title: Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus
+Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
+
+                             FRANKENSTEIN;
+
+                                  OR,
+
+                         THE MODERN PROMETHEUS.
+
+
+    IN THREE VOLUMES.
+    VOL. I.
+
+    London:
+
+    _PRINTED FOR_
+    LACKINGTON, HUGHES, HARDING, MAVOR, & JONES,
+    FINSBURY SQUARE.
+
+    1818.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
+    To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
+    From darkness to promote me?——
+
+                                  Paradise Lost.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                          _TO_
+                     WILLIAM GODWIN,
+    _AUTHOR OF POLITICAL JUSTICE, CALEB WILLIAMS, &c._
+                      THESE VOLUMES
+               _Are respectfully inscribed_
+                           BY
+                       THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr.
+Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of
+impossible occurrence. I shall not be supposed as according the remotest
+degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in assuming it as
+the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely
+weaving a series of supernatural terrors. The event on which the
+interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere
+tale of spectres or enchantment. It was recommended by the novelty of
+the situations which it developes; and, however impossible as a physical
+fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of
+human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the
+ordinary relations of existing events can yield.
+
+I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary
+principles of human nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate
+upon their combinations. The _Iliad_, the tragic poetry of
+Greece,—Shakespeare, in the _Tempest_ and _Midsummer Night’s
+Dream_,—and most especially Milton, in _Paradise Lost_, conform to this
+rule; and the most humble novelist, who seeks to confer or receive
+amusement from his labours, may, without presumption, apply to prose
+fiction a licence, or rather a rule, from the adoption of which so many
+exquisite combinations of human feeling have resulted in the highest
+specimens of poetry.
+
+The circumstance on which my story rests was suggested in casual
+conversation. It was commenced, partly as a source of amusement, and
+partly as an expedient for exercising any untried resources of mind.
+Other motives were mingled with these, as the work proceeded. I am by no
+means indifferent to the manner in which whatever moral tendencies exist
+in the sentiments or characters it contains shall affect the reader; yet
+my chief concern in this respect has been limited to the avoiding of the
+enervating effects of the novels of the present day, and to the
+exhibitions of the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence
+of universal virtue. The opinions which naturally spring from the
+character and situation of the hero are by no means to be conceived as
+existing always in my own conviction; nor is any inference justly to be
+drawn from the following pages as prejudicing any philosophical doctrine
+of whatever kind.
+
+It is a subject also of additional interest to the author, that this
+story was begun in the majestic region where the scene is principally
+laid, and in society which cannot cease to be regretted. I passed the
+summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The season was cold and rainy,
+and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, and
+occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts, which
+happened to fall into our hands. These tales excited in us a playful
+desire of imitation. Two other friends (a tale from the pen of one of
+whom would be far more acceptable to the public than any thing I can
+ever hope to produce) and myself agreed to write each a story, founded
+on some supernatural occurrence.
+
+The weather, however, suddenly became serene; and my two friends left me
+on a journey among the Alps, and lost, in the magnificent scenes which
+they present, all memory of their ghostly visions. The following tale is
+the only one which has been completed.
+
+
+
+
+FRANKENSTEIN;
+
+OR, THE
+
+_MODERN PROMETHEUS._
+
+
+
+
+LETTER I.
+
+
+_To Mrs._ SAVILLE, _England_.
+
+St. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17—.
+
+You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the
+commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil
+forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my
+dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the success of
+my undertaking.
+
+I am already far north of London; and as I walk in the streets of
+Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which
+braces my nerves, and fills me with delight. Do you understand this
+feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which
+I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by
+this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid. I try
+in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and
+desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of
+beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible; its
+broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual
+splendour. There—for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust
+in preceding navigators—there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing
+over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in
+beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its
+productions and features may be without example, as the phænomena of the
+heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What
+may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover
+the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a
+thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render
+their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my
+ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before
+visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man.
+These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of
+danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with
+the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday
+mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But, supposing
+all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable
+benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by
+discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which
+at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret
+of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an
+undertaking such as mine.
+
+These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my
+letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to
+heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a
+steady purpose,—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
+This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. I have
+read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been
+made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the
+seas which surround the pole. You may remember, that a history of all
+the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our
+good uncle Thomas’s library. My education was neglected, yet I was
+passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night,
+and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as
+a child, on learning that my father’s dying injunction had forbidden my
+uncle to allow me to embark in a sea-faring life.
+
+These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets
+whose effusions entranced my soul, and lifted it to heaven. I also
+became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation;
+I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the
+names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted
+with my failure, and how heavily I bore the disappointment. But just at
+that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were
+turned into the channel of their earlier bent.
+
+Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I can,
+even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great
+enterprise. I commenced by inuring my body to hardship. I accompanied
+the whale-fishers on several expeditions to the North Sea; I voluntarily
+endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; I often worked harder
+than the common sailors during the day, and devoted my nights to the
+study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of
+physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest
+practical advantage. Twice I actually hired myself as an under-mate in
+a Greenland whaler, and acquitted myself to admiration. I must own I
+felt a little proud, when my captain offered me the second dignity in
+the vessel, and entreated me to remain with the greatest earnestness; so
+valuable did he consider my services.
+
+And now, dear Margaret, do I not deserve to accomplish some great
+purpose. My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I
+preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh,
+that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage
+and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are
+often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage;
+the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not
+only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own,
+when their’s are failing.
+
+This is the most favourable period for travelling in Russia. They fly
+quickly over the snow in their sledges; the motion is pleasant, and, in
+my opinion, far more agreeable than that of an English stage-coach. The
+cold is not excessive, if you are wrapt in furs, a dress which I have
+already adopted; for there is a great difference between walking the
+deck and remaining seated motionless for hours, when no exercise
+prevents the blood from actually freezing in your veins. I have no
+ambition to lose my life on the post-road between St. Petersburgh and
+Archangel.
+
+I shall depart for the latter town in a fortnight or three weeks; and my
+intention is to hire a ship there, which can easily be done by paying
+the insurance for the owner, and to engage as many sailors as I think
+necessary among those who are accustomed to the whale-fishing. I do not
+intend to sail until the month of June: and when shall I return? Ah,
+dear sister, how can I answer this question? If I succeed, many, many
+months, perhaps years, will pass before you and I may meet. If I fail,
+you will see me again soon, or never.
+
+Farewell, my dear, excellent, Margaret. Heaven shower down blessings on
+you, and save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for
+all your love and kindness.
+
+Your affectionate brother,
+
+R. WALTON.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER II.
+
+
+_To Mrs._ SAVILLE, _England_.
+
+Archangel, 28th March, 17—.
+
+How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow;
+yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. I have hired a vessel,
+and am occupied in collecting my sailors; those whom I have already
+engaged appear to be men on whom I can depend, and are certainly
+possessed of dauntless courage.
+
+But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the
+absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have
+no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success,
+there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by
+disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I
+shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium
+for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who
+could sympathize with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem
+me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I
+have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as
+well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve
+or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your
+poor brother! I am too ardent in execution, and too impatient of
+difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am
+self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a
+common, and read nothing but our uncle Thomas’s books of voyages. At
+that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own
+country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive
+its most important benefits from such a conviction, that I perceived the
+necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my
+native country. Now I am twenty-eight, and am in reality more illiterate
+than many school-boys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more,
+and that my day dreams are more extended and magnificent; but they want
+(as the painters call it) _keeping_; and I greatly need a friend who
+would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection
+enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.
+
+Well, these are useless complaints; I shall certainly find no friend on
+the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen.
+Yet some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in
+these rugged bosoms. My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of wonderful
+courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory. He is an
+Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices,
+unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest endowments of
+humanity. I first became acquainted with him on board a whale vessel:
+finding that he was unemployed in this city, I easily engaged him to
+assist in my enterprise.
+
+The master is a person of an excellent disposition, and is remarkable in
+the ship for his gentleness, and the mildness of his discipline. He is,
+indeed, of so amiable a nature, that he will not hunt (a favourite, and
+almost the only amusement here), because he cannot endure to spill
+blood. He is, moreover, heroically generous. Some years ago he loved a
+young Russian lady, of moderate fortune; and having amassed a
+considerable sum in prize-money, the father of the girl consented to the
+match. He saw his mistress once before the destined ceremony; but she
+was bathed in tears, and, throwing herself at his feet, entreated him to
+spare her, confessing at the same time that she loved another, but that
+he was poor, and that her father would never consent to the union. My
+generous friend reassured the suppliant, and on being informed of the
+name of her lover instantly abandoned his pursuit. He had already bought
+a farm with his money, on which he had designed to pass the remainder of
+his life; but he bestowed the whole on his rival, together with the
+remains of his prize-money to purchase stock, and then himself solicited
+the young woman’s father to consent to her marriage with her lover. But
+the old man decidedly refused, thinking himself bound in honour to my
+friend; who, when he found the father inexorable, quitted his country,
+nor returned until he heard that his former mistress was married
+according to her inclinations. “What a noble fellow!” you will exclaim.
+He is so; but then he has passed all his life on board a vessel, and has
+scarcely an idea beyond the rope and the shroud.
+
+But do not suppose that, because I complain a little, or because I can
+conceive a consolation for my toils which I may never know, that I am
+wavering in my resolutions. Those are as fixed as fate; and my voyage is
+only now delayed until the weather shall permit my embarkation. The
+winter has been dreadfully severe; but the spring promises well, and it
+is considered as a remarkably early season; so that, perhaps, I may sail
+sooner than I expected. I shall do nothing rashly; you know me
+sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness whenever the
+safety of others is committed to my care.
+
+I cannot describe to you my sensations on the near prospect of my
+undertaking. It is impossible to communicate to you a conception of the
+trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which I am
+preparing to depart. I am going to unexplored regions, to “the land of
+mist and snow;” but I shall kill no albatross, therefore do not be
+alarmed for my safety.
+
+Shall I meet you again, after having traversed immense seas, and
+returned by the most southern cape of Africa or America? I dare not
+expect such success, yet I cannot bear to look on the reverse of the
+picture. Continue to write to me by every opportunity: I may receive
+your letters (though the chance is very doubtful) on some occasions when
+I need them most to support my spirits. I love you very tenderly.
+Remember me with affection, should you never hear from me again.
+
+Your affectionate brother,
+
+ROBERT WALTON.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER III.
+
+
+_To Mrs._ SAVILLE, _England_.
+
+July 7th, 17—.
+
+MY DEAR SISTER,
+
+I write a few lines in haste, to say that I am safe, and well advanced
+on my voyage. This letter will reach England by a merchant-man now on
+its homeward voyage from Archangel; more fortunate than I, who may not
+see my native land, perhaps, for many years. I am, however, in good
+spirits: my men are bold, and apparently firm of purpose; nor do the
+floating sheets of ice that continually pass us, indicating the dangers
+of the region towards which we are advancing, appear to dismay them. We
+have already reached a very high latitude; but it is the height of
+summer, and although not so warm as in England, the southern gales,
+which blow us speedily towards those shores which I so ardently desire
+to attain, breathe a degree of renovating warmth which I had not
+expected.
+
+No incidents have hitherto befallen us, that would make a figure in a
+letter. One or two stiff gales, and the breaking of a mast, are
+accidents which experienced navigators scarcely remember to record; and
+I shall be well content, if nothing worse happen to us during our
+voyage.
+
+Adieu, my dear Margaret. Be assured, that for my own sake, as well as
+your’s, I will not rashly encounter danger. I will be cool, persevering,
+and prudent.
+
+Remember me to all my English friends.
+
+Most affectionately yours,
+
+R. W.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER IV.
+
+
+_To Mrs._ SAVILLE, _England_.
+
+August 5th, 17—.
+
+So strange an accident has happened to us, that I cannot forbear
+recording it, although it is very probable that you will see me before
+these papers can come into your possession.
+
+Last Monday (July 31st), we were nearly surrounded by ice, which closed
+in the ship on all sides, scarcely leaving her the sea room in which she
+floated. Our situation was somewhat dangerous, especially as we were
+compassed round by a very thick fog. We accordingly lay to, hoping that
+some change would take place in the atmosphere and weather.
+
+About two o’clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld, stretched out in
+every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have
+no end. Some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to grow
+watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted
+our attention, and diverted our solicitude from our own situation. We
+perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on
+towards the north, at the distance of half a mile: a being which had the
+shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat in the sledge,
+and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid progress of the traveller
+with our telescopes, until he was lost among the distant inequalities of
+the ice.
+
+This appearance excited our unqualified wonder. We were, as we believed,
+many hundred miles from any land; but this apparition seemed to denote
+that it was not, in reality, so distant as we had supposed. Shut in,
+however, by ice, it was impossible to follow his track, which we had
+observed with the greatest attention.
+
+About two hours after this occurrence, we heard the ground sea; and
+before night the ice broke, and freed our ship. We, however, lay to
+until the morning, fearing to encounter in the dark those large loose
+masses which float about after the breaking up of the ice. I profited of
+this time to rest for a few hours.
+
+In the morning, however, as soon as it was light, I went upon deck, and
+found all the sailors busy on one side of the vessel, apparently talking
+to some one in the sea. It was, in fact, a sledge, like that we had seen
+before, which had drifted towards us in the night, on a large fragment
+of ice. Only one dog remained alive; but there was a human being within
+it, whom the sailors were persuading to enter the vessel. He was not, as
+the other traveller seemed to be, a savage inhabitant of some
+undiscovered island, but an European. When I appeared on deck, the
+master said, “Here is our captain, and he will not allow you to perish
+on the open sea.”
+
+On perceiving me, the stranger addressed me in English, although with a
+foreign accent. “Before I come on board your vessel,” said he, “will you
+have the kindness to inform me whither you are bound?”
+
+You may conceive my astonishment on hearing such a question addressed to
+me from a man on the brink of destruction, and to whom I should have
+supposed that my vessel would have been a resource which he would not
+have exchanged for the most precious wealth the earth can afford. I
+replied, however, that we were on a voyage of discovery towards the
+northern pole.
+
+Upon hearing this he appeared satisfied, and consented to come on board.
+Good God! Margaret, if you had seen the man who thus capitulated for his
+safety, your surprise would have been boundless. His limbs were nearly
+frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. I
+never saw a man in so wretched a condition. We attempted to carry him
+into the cabin; but as soon as he had quitted the fresh air, he fainted.
+We accordingly brought him back to the deck, and restored him to
+animation by rubbing him with brandy, and forcing him to swallow a small
+quantity. As soon as he shewed signs of life, we wrapped him up in
+blankets, and placed him near the chimney of the kitchen-stove. By slow
+degrees he recovered, and ate a little soup, which restored him
+wonderfully.
+
+Two days passed in this manner before he was able to speak; and I often
+feared that his sufferings had deprived him of understanding. When he
+had in some measure recovered, I removed him to my own cabin, and
+attended on him as much as my duty would permit. I never saw a more
+interesting creature: his eyes have generally an expression of wildness,
+and even madness; but there are moments when, if any one performs an act
+of kindness towards him, or does him any the most trifling service, his
+whole countenance is lighted up, as it were, with a beam of benevolence
+and sweetness that I never saw equalled. But he is generally melancholy
+and despairing; and sometimes he gnashes his teeth, as if impatient of
+the weight of woes that oppresses him.
+
+When my guest was a little recovered, I had great trouble to keep off
+the men, who wished to ask him a thousand questions; but I would not
+allow him to be tormented by their idle curiosity, in a state of body
+and mind whose restoration evidently depended upon entire repose. Once,
+however, the lieutenant asked, Why he had come so far upon the ice in so
+strange a vehicle?
+
+His countenance instantly assumed an aspect of the deepest gloom; and he
+replied, “To seek one who fled from me.”
+
+“And did the man whom you pursued travel in the same fashion?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then I fancy we have seen him; for, the day before we picked you up, we
+saw some dogs drawing a sledge, with a man in it, across the ice.”
+
+This aroused the stranger’s attention; and he asked a multitude of
+questions concerning the route which the dæmon, as he called him, had
+pursued. Soon after, when he was alone with me, he said, “I have,
+doubtless, excited your curiosity, as well as that of these good people;
+but you are too considerate to make inquiries.”
+
+“Certainly; it would indeed be very impertinent and inhuman in me to
+trouble you with any inquisitiveness of mine.”
+
+“And yet you rescued me from a strange and perilous situation; you have
+benevolently restored me to life.”
+
+Soon after this he inquired, if I thought that the breaking up of the
+ice had destroyed the other sledge? I replied, that I could not answer
+with any degree of certainty; for the ice had not broken until near
+midnight, and the traveller might have arrived at a place of safety
+before that time; but of this I could not judge.
+
+From this time the stranger seemed very eager to be upon deck, to watch
+for the sledge which had before appeared; but I have persuaded him to
+remain in the cabin, for he is far too weak to sustain the rawness of
+the atmosphere. But I have promised that some one should watch for him,
+and give him instant notice if any new object should appear in sight.
+
+Such is my journal of what relates to this strange occurrence up to the
+present day. The stranger has gradually improved in health, but is very
+silent, and appears uneasy when any one except myself enters his cabin.
+Yet his manners are so conciliating and gentle, that the sailors are all
+interested in him, although they have had very little communication with
+him. For my own part, I begin to love him as a brother; and his constant
+and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion. He must have been
+a noble creature in his better days, being even now in wreck so
+attractive and amiable.
+
+I said in one of my letters, my dear Margaret, that I should find no
+friend on the wide ocean; yet I have found a man who, before his spirit
+had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as
+the brother of my heart.
+
+I shall continue my journal concerning the stranger at intervals, should
+I have any fresh incidents to record.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+August 13th, 17—.
+
+My affection for my guest increases every day. He excites at once my
+admiration and my pity to an astonishing degree. How can I see so noble
+a creature destroyed by misery without feeling the most poignant grief?
+He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated; and when he
+speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they
+flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence.
+
+He is now much recovered from his illness, and is continually on the
+deck, apparently watching for the sledge that preceded his own. Yet,
+although unhappy, he is not so utterly occupied by his own misery, but
+that he interests himself deeply in the employments of others. He has
+asked me many questions concerning my design; and I have related my
+little history frankly to him. He appeared pleased with the confidence,
+and suggested several alterations in my plan, which I shall find
+exceedingly useful. There is no pedantry in his manner; but all he does
+appears to spring solely from the interest he instinctively takes in the
+welfare of those who surround him. He is often overcome by gloom, and
+then he sits by himself, and tries to overcome all that is sullen or
+unsocial in his humour. These paroxysms pass from him like a cloud from
+before the sun, though his dejection never leaves him. I have
+endeavoured to win his confidence; and I trust that I have succeeded.
+One day I mentioned to him the desire I had always felt of finding a
+friend who might sympathize with me, and direct me by his counsel. I
+said, I did not belong to that class of men who are offended by advice.
+“I am self-educated, and perhaps I hardly rely sufficiently upon my own
+powers. I wish therefore that my companion should be wiser and more
+experienced than myself, to confirm and support me; nor have I believed
+it impossible to find a true friend.”
+
+“I agree with you,” replied the stranger, “in believing that friendship
+is not only a desirable, but a possible acquisition. I once had a
+friend, the most noble of human creatures, and am entitled, therefore,
+to judge respecting friendship. You have hope, and the world before you,
+and have no cause for despair. But I——I have lost every thing, and
+cannot begin life anew.”
+
+As he said this, his countenance became expressive of a calm settled
+grief, that touched me to the heart. But he was silent, and presently
+retired to his cabin.
+
+Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does
+the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight
+afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of
+elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may
+suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet when he has
+retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit, that has a
+halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.
+
+Will you laugh at the enthusiasm I express concerning this divine
+wanderer? If you do, you must have certainly lost that simplicity which
+was once your characteristic charm. Yet, if you will, smile at the
+warmth of my expressions, while I find every day new causes for
+repeating them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+August 19th, 17—.
+
+Yesterday the stranger said to me, “You may easily perceive, Captain
+Walton, that I have suffered great and unparalleled misfortunes. I had
+determined, once, that the memory of these evils should die with me; but
+you have won me to alter my determination. You seek for knowledge and
+wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of
+your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. I do
+not know that the relation of my misfortunes will be useful to you, yet,
+if you are inclined, listen to my tale. I believe that the strange
+incidents connected with it will afford a view of nature, which may
+enlarge your faculties and understanding. You will hear of powers and
+occurrences, such as you have been accustomed to believe impossible: but
+I do not doubt that my tale conveys in its series internal evidence of
+the truth of the events of which it is composed.”
+
+You may easily conceive that I was much gratified by the offered
+communication; yet I could not endure that he should renew his grief by
+a recital of his misfortunes. I felt the greatest eagerness to hear the
+promised narrative, partly from curiosity, and partly from a strong
+desire to ameliorate his fate, if it were in my power. I expressed these
+feelings in my answer.
+
+“I thank you,” he replied, “for your sympathy, but it is useless; my
+fate is nearly fulfilled. I wait but for one event, and then I shall
+repose in peace. I understand your feeling,” continued he, perceiving
+that I wished to interrupt him; “but you are mistaken, my friend, if
+thus you will allow me to name you; nothing can alter my destiny: listen
+to my history, and you will perceive how irrevocably it is determined.”
+
+He then told me, that he would commence his narrative the next day when
+I should be at leisure. This promise drew from me the warmest thanks. I
+have resolved every night, when I am not engaged, to record, as nearly
+as possible in his own words, what he has related during the day. If I
+should be engaged, I will at least make notes. This manuscript will
+doubtless afford you the greatest pleasure: but to me, who know him, and
+who hear it from his own lips, with what interest and sympathy shall I
+read it in some future day!
+
+
+
+
+FRANKENSTEIN;
+
+OR,
+
+THE MODERN PROMETHEUS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+I am by birth a Genevese; and my family is one of the most distinguished
+of that republic. My ancestors had been for many years counsellors and
+syndics; and my father had filled several public situations with honour
+and reputation. He was respected by all who knew him for his integrity
+and indefatigable attention to public business. He passed his younger
+days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country; and it was not
+until the decline of life that he thought of marrying, and bestowing on
+the state sons who might carry his virtues and his name down to
+posterity.
+
+As the circumstances of his marriage illustrate his character, I cannot
+refrain from relating them. One of his most intimate friends was a
+merchant, who, from a flourishing state, fell, through numerous
+mischances, into poverty. This man, whose name was Beaufort, was of a
+proud and unbending disposition, and could not bear to live in poverty
+and oblivion in the same country where he had formerly been
+distinguished for his rank and magnificence. Having paid his debts,
+therefore, in the most honourable manner, he retreated with his daughter
+to the town of Lucerne, where he lived unknown and in wretchedness. My
+father loved Beaufort with the truest friendship, and was deeply grieved
+by his retreat in these unfortunate circumstances. He grieved also for
+the loss of his society, and resolved to seek him out and endeavour to
+persuade him to begin the world again through his credit and assistance.
+
+Beaufort had taken effectual measures to conceal himself; and it was ten
+months before my father discovered his abode. Overjoyed at this
+discovery, he hastened to the house, which was situated in a mean
+street, near the Reuss. But when he entered, misery and despair alone
+welcomed him. Beaufort had saved but a very small sum of money from the
+wreck of his fortunes; but it was sufficient to provide him with
+sustenance for some months, and in the mean time he hoped to procure
+some respectable employment in a merchant’s house. The interval was
+consequently spent in inaction; his grief only became more deep and
+rankling, when he had leisure for reflection; and at length it took so
+fast hold of his mind, that at the end of three months he lay on a bed
+of sickness, incapable of any exertion.
+
+His daughter attended him with the greatest tenderness; but she saw with
+despair that their little fund was rapidly decreasing, and that there
+was no other prospect of support. But Caroline Beaufort possessed a mind
+of an uncommon mould; and her courage rose to support her in her
+adversity. She procured plain work; she plaited straw; and by various
+means contrived to earn a pittance scarcely sufficient to support life.
+
+Several months passed in this manner. Her father grew worse; her time
+was more entirely occupied in attending him; her means of subsistence
+decreased; and in the tenth month her father died in her arms, leaving
+her an orphan and a beggar. This last blow overcame her; and she knelt
+by Beaufort’s coffin, weeping bitterly, when my father entered the
+chamber. He came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who
+committed herself to his care, and after the interment of his friend he
+conducted her to Geneva, and placed her under the protection of a
+relation. Two years after this event Caroline became his wife.
+
+When my father became a husband and a parent, he found his time so
+occupied by the duties of his new situation, that he relinquished many
+of his public employments, and devoted himself to the education of his
+children. Of these I was the eldest, and the destined successor to all
+his labours and utility. No creature could have more tender parents than
+mine. My improvement and health were their constant care, especially as
+I remained for several years their only child. But before I continue my
+narrative, I must record an incident which took place when I was four
+years of age.
+
+My father had a sister, whom he tenderly loved, and who had married
+early in life an Italian gentleman. Soon after her marriage, she had
+accompanied her husband into her native country, and for some years my
+father had very little communication with her. About the time I
+mentioned she died; and a few months afterwards he received a letter
+from her husband, acquainting him with his intention of marrying an
+Italian lady, and requesting my father to take charge of the infant
+Elizabeth, the only child of his deceased sister. “It is my wish,” he
+said, “that you should consider her as your own daughter, and educate
+her thus. Her mother’s fortune is secured to her, the documents of which
+I will commit to your keeping. Reflect upon this proposition; and decide
+whether you would prefer educating your niece yourself to her being
+brought up by a stepmother.”
+
+My father did not hesitate, and immediately went to Italy, that he
+might accompany the little Elizabeth to her future home. I have often
+heard my mother say, that she was at that time the most beautiful child
+she had ever seen, and shewed signs even then of a gentle and
+affectionate disposition. These indications, and a desire to bind as
+closely as possible the ties of domestic love, determined my mother to
+consider Elizabeth as my future wife; a design which she never found
+reason to repent.
+
+From this time Elizabeth Lavenza became my playfellow, and, as we grew
+older, my friend. She was docile and good tempered, yet gay and playful
+as a summer insect. Although she was lively and animated, her feelings
+were strong and deep, and her disposition uncommonly affectionate. No
+one could better enjoy liberty, yet no one could submit with more grace
+than she did to constraint and caprice. Her imagination was luxuriant,
+yet her capability of application was great. Her person was the image of
+her mind; her hazel eyes, although as lively as a bird’s, possessed an
+attractive softness. Her figure was light and airy; and, though capable
+of enduring great fatigue, she appeared the most fragile creature in the
+world. While I admired her understanding and fancy, I loved to tend on
+her, as I should on a favourite animal; and I never saw so much grace
+both of person and mind united to so little pretension.
+
+Every one adored Elizabeth. If the servants had any request to make, it
+was always through her intercession. We were strangers to any species of
+disunion and dispute; for although there was a great dissimilitude in
+our characters, there was an harmony in that very dissimilitude. I was
+more calm and philosophical than my companion; yet my temper was not so
+yielding. My application was of longer endurance; but it was not so
+severe whilst it endured. I delighted in investigating the facts
+relative to the actual world; she busied herself in following the aërial
+creations of the poets. The world was to me a secret, which I desired to
+discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with
+imaginations of her own.
+
+My brothers were considerably younger than myself; but I had a friend
+in one of my schoolfellows, who compensated for this deficiency. Henry
+Clerval was the son of a merchant of Geneva, an intimate friend of my
+father. He was a boy of singular talent and fancy. I remember, when he
+was nine years old, he wrote a fairy tale, which was the delight and
+amazement of all his companions. His favourite study consisted in books
+of chivalry and romance; and when very young, I can remember, that we
+used to act plays composed by him out of these favourite books, the
+principal characters of which were Orlando, Robin Hood, Amadis, and St.
+George.
+
+No youth could have passed more happily than mine. My parents were
+indulgent, and my companions amiable. Our studies were never forced; and
+by some means we always had an end placed in view, which excited us to
+ardour in the prosecution of them. It was by this method, and not by
+emulation, that we were urged to application. Elizabeth was not incited
+to apply herself to drawing, that her companions might not outstrip her;
+but through the desire of pleasing her aunt, by the representation of
+some favourite scene done by her own hand. We learned Latin and English,
+that we might read the writings in those languages; and so far from
+study being made odious to us through punishment, we loved application,
+and our amusements would have been the labours of other children.
+Perhaps we did not read so many books, or learn languages so quickly, as
+those who are disciplined according to the ordinary methods; but what
+we learned was impressed the more deeply on our memories.
+
+In this description of our domestic circle I include Henry Clerval; for
+he was constantly with us. He went to school with me, and generally
+passed the afternoon at our house; for being an only child, and
+destitute of companions at home, his father was well pleased that he
+should find associates at our house; and we were never completely happy
+when Clerval was absent.
+
+I feel pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before
+misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of
+extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. But,
+in drawing the picture of my early days, I must not omit to record those
+events which led, by insensible steps to my after tale of misery: for
+when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion, which
+afterwards ruled my destiny, I find it arise, like a mountain river,
+from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it
+proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away
+all my hopes and joys.
+
+Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire
+therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my
+predilection for that science. When I was thirteen years of age, we all
+went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon: the inclemency of
+the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. In this
+house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I
+opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate, and
+the wonderful facts which he relates, soon changed this feeling into
+enthusiasm. A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind; and, bounding with
+joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. I cannot help remarking
+here the many opportunities instructors possess of directing the
+attention of their pupils to useful knowledge, which they utterly
+neglect. My father looked carelessly at the title-page of my book, and
+said, “Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time
+upon this; it is sad trash.”
+
+If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains, to explain to
+me, that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded, and that
+a modern system of science had been introduced, which possessed much
+greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were
+chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical; under
+such circumstances, I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside, and,
+with my imagination warmed as it was, should probably have applied
+myself to the more rational theory of chemistry which has resulted from
+modern discoveries. It is even possible, that the train of my ideas
+would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. But the
+cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me
+that he was acquainted with its contents; and I continued to read with
+the greatest avidity.
+
+When I returned home, my first care was to procure the whole works of
+this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read
+and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they
+appeared to me treasures known to few beside myself; and although I
+often wished to communicate these secret stores of knowledge to my
+father, yet his indefinite censure of my favourite Agrippa always
+withheld me. I disclosed my discoveries to Elizabeth, therefore, under a
+promise of strict secrecy; but she did not interest herself in the
+subject, and I was left by her to pursue my studies alone.
+
+It may appear very strange, that a disciple of Albertus Magnus should
+arise in the eighteenth century; but our family was not scientifical,
+and I had not attended any of the lectures given at the schools of
+Geneva. My dreams were therefore undisturbed by reality; and I entered
+with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone
+and the elixir of life. But the latter obtained my most undivided
+attention: wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend
+the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and
+render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!
+
+Nor were these my only visions. The raising of ghosts or devils was a
+promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors, the fulfilment of
+which I most eagerly sought; and if my incantations were always
+unsuccessful, I attributed the failure rather to my own inexperience and
+mistake, than to a want of skill or fidelity in my instructors.
+
+The natural phænomena that take place every day before our eyes did not
+escape my examinations. Distillation, and the wonderful effects of
+steam, processes of which my favourite authors were utterly ignorant,
+excited my astonishment; but my utmost wonder was engaged by some
+experiments on an air-pump, which I saw employed by a gentleman whom we
+were in the habit of visiting.
+
+The ignorance of the early philosophers on these and several other
+points served to decrease their credit with me: but I could not entirely
+throw them aside, before some other system should occupy their place in
+my mind.
+
+When I was about fifteen years old, we had retired to our house near
+Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunder-storm. It
+advanced from behind the mountains of Jura; and the thunder burst at
+once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I
+remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity
+and delight. As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of
+fire issue from an old and beautiful oak, which stood about twenty yards
+from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had
+disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. When we visited
+it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner.
+It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin
+ribbands of wood. I never beheld any thing so utterly destroyed.
+
+The catastrophe of this tree excited my extreme astonishment; and I
+eagerly inquired of my father the nature and origin of thunder and
+lightning. He replied, “Electricity;” describing at the same time the
+various effects of that power. He constructed a small electrical
+machine, and exhibited a few experiments; he made also a kite, with a
+wire and string, which drew down that fluid from the clouds.
+
+This last stroke completed the overthrow of Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus
+Magnus, and Paracelsus, who had so long reigned the lords of my
+imagination. But by some fatality I did not feel inclined to commence
+the study of any modern system; and this disinclination was influenced
+by the following circumstance.
+
+My father expressed a wish that I should attend a course of lectures
+upon natural philosophy, to which I cheerfully consented. Some accident
+prevented my attending these lectures until the course was nearly
+finished. The lecture, being therefore one of the last, was entirely
+incomprehensible to me. The professor discoursed with the greatest
+fluency of potassium and boron, of sulphates and oxyds, terms to which I
+could affix no idea; and I became disgusted with the science of natural
+philosophy, although I still read Pliny and Buffon with delight,
+authors, in my estimation, of nearly equal interest and utility.
+
+My occupations at this age were principally the mathematics, and most of
+the branches of study appertaining to that science. I was busily
+employed in learning languages; Latin was already familiar to me, and I
+began to read some of the easiest Greek authors without the help of a
+lexicon. I also perfectly understood English and German. This is the
+list of my accomplishments at the age of seventeen; and you may conceive
+that my hours were fully employed in acquiring and maintaining a
+knowledge of this various literature.
+
+Another task also devolved upon me, when I became the instructor of my
+brothers. Ernest was six years younger than myself, and was my principal
+pupil. He had been afflicted with ill health from his infancy, through
+which Elizabeth and I had been his constant nurses: his disposition was
+gentle, but he was incapable of any severe application. William, the
+youngest of our family, was yet an infant, and the most beautiful little
+fellow in the world; his lively blue eyes, dimpled cheeks, and endearing
+manners, inspired the tenderest affection.
+
+Such was our domestic circle, from which care and pain seemed for ever
+banished. My father directed our studies, and my mother partook of our
+enjoyments. Neither of us possessed the slightest pre-eminence over the
+other; the voice of command was never heard amongst us; but mutual
+affection engaged us all to comply with and obey the slightest desire of
+each other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+When I had attained the age of seventeen, my parents resolved that I
+should become a student at the university of Ingolstadt. I had hitherto
+attended the schools of Geneva; but my father thought it necessary, for
+the completion of my education, that I should be made acquainted with
+other customs than those of my native country. My departure was
+therefore fixed at an early date; but, before the day resolved upon
+could arrive, the first misfortune of my life occurred—an omen, as it
+were, of my future misery.
+
+Elizabeth had caught the scarlet fever; but her illness was not severe,
+and she quickly recovered. During her confinement, many arguments had
+been urged to persuade my mother to refrain from attending upon her. She
+had, at first, yielded to our entreaties; but when she heard that her
+favourite was recovering, she could no longer debar herself from her
+society, and entered her chamber long before the danger of infection was
+past. The consequences of this imprudence were fatal. On the third day
+my mother sickened; her fever was very malignant, and the looks of her
+attendants prognosticated the worst event. On her death-bed the
+fortitude and benignity of this admirable woman did not desert her. She
+joined the hands of Elizabeth and myself: “My children,” she said, “my
+firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your
+union. This expectation will now be the consolation of your father.
+Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to your younger cousins.
+Alas! I regret that I am taken from you; and, happy and beloved as I
+have been, is it not hard to quit you all? But these are not thoughts
+befitting me; I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death, and
+will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world.”
+
+She died calmly; and her countenance expressed affection even in death.
+I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by
+that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul,
+and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long
+before the mind can persuade itself that she, whom we saw every day, and
+whose very existence appeared a part of our own, can have departed for
+ever—that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished,
+and the sound of a voice so familiar, and dear to the ear, can be
+hushed, never more to be heard. These are the reflections of the first
+days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then
+the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has not that
+rude hand rent away some dear connexion; and why should I describe a
+sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives,
+when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that
+plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not
+banished. My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to
+perform; we must continue our course with the rest, and learn to think
+ourselves fortunate, whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized.
+
+My journey to Ingolstadt, which had been deferred by these events, was
+now again determined upon. I obtained from my father a respite of some
+weeks. This period was spent sadly; my mother’s death, and my speedy
+departure, depressed our spirits; but Elizabeth endeavoured to renew the
+spirit of cheerfulness in our little society. Since the death of her
+aunt, her mind had acquired new firmness and vigour. She determined to
+fulfil her duties with the greatest exactness; and she felt that that
+most imperious duty, of rendering her uncle and cousins happy, had
+devolved upon her. She consoled me, amused her uncle, instructed my
+brothers; and I never beheld her so enchanting as at this time, when she
+was continually endeavouring to contribute to the happiness of others,
+entirely forgetful of herself.
+
+The day of my departure at length arrived. I had taken leave of all my
+friends, excepting Clerval, who spent the last evening with us. He
+bitterly lamented that he was unable to accompany me: but his father
+could not be persuaded to part with him, intending that he should become
+a partner with him in business, in compliance with his favourite theory,
+that learning was superfluous in the commerce of ordinary life. Henry
+had a refined mind; he had no desire to be idle, and was well pleased to
+become his father’s partner, but he believed that a man might be a very
+good trader, and yet possess a cultivated understanding.
+
+We sat late, listening to his complaints, and making many little
+arrangements for the future. The next morning early I departed. Tears
+gushed from the eyes of Elizabeth; they proceeded partly from sorrow at
+my departure, and partly because she reflected that the same journey was
+to have taken place three months before, when a mother’s blessing would
+have accompanied me.
+
+I threw myself into the chaise that was to convey me away, and indulged
+in the most melancholy reflections. I, who had ever been surrounded by
+amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavouring to bestow
+mutual pleasure, I was now alone. In the university, whither I was
+going, I must form my own friends, and be my own protector. My life had
+hitherto been remarkably secluded and domestic; and this had given me
+invincible repugnance to new countenances. I loved my brothers,
+Elizabeth, and Clerval; these were “old familiar faces;” but I believed
+myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers. Such were my
+reflections as I commenced my journey; but as I proceeded, my spirits
+and hopes rose. I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge. I had
+often, when at home, thought it hard to remain during my youth cooped up
+in one place, and had longed to enter the world, and take my station
+among other human beings. Now my desires were complied with, and it
+would, indeed, have been folly to repent.
+
+I had sufficient leisure for these and many other reflections during my
+journey to Ingolstadt, which was long and fatiguing. At length the high
+white steeple of the town met my eyes. I alighted, and was conducted to
+my solitary apartment, to spend the evening as I pleased.
+
+The next morning I delivered my letters of introduction, and paid a
+visit to some of the principal professors, and among others to M.
+Krempe, professor of natural philosophy. He received me with politeness,
+and asked me several questions concerning my progress in the different
+branches of science appertaining to natural philosophy. I mentioned, it
+is true, with fear and trembling, the only authors I had ever read upon
+those subjects. The professor stared: “Have you,” he said, “really spent
+your time in studying such nonsense?”
+
+I replied in the affirmative. “Every minute,” continued M. Krempe with
+warmth, “every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly
+and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems,
+and useless names. Good God! in what desert land have you lived, where
+no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies, which you have
+so greedily imbibed, are a thousand years old, and as musty as they are
+ancient? I little expected in this enlightened and scientific age to
+find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. My dear Sir, you must
+begin your studies entirely anew.”
+
+So saying, he stept aside, and wrote down a list of several books
+treating of natural philosophy, which he desired me to procure, and
+dismissed me, after mentioning that in the beginning of the following
+week he intended to commence a course of lectures upon natural
+philosophy in its general relations, and that M. Waldman, a
+fellow-professor, would lecture upon chemistry the alternate days that
+he missed.
+
+I returned home, not disappointed, for I had long considered those
+authors useless whom the professor had so strongly reprobated; but I did
+not feel much inclined to study the books which I procured at his
+recommendation. M. Krempe was a little squat man, with a gruff voice and
+repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in
+favour of his doctrine. Besides, I had a contempt for the uses of modern
+natural philosophy. It was very different, when the masters of the
+science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were
+grand: but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer
+seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my
+interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange
+chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.
+
+Such were my reflections during the first two or three days spent almost
+in solitude. But as the ensuing week commenced, I thought of the
+information which M. Krempe had given me concerning the lectures. And
+although I could not consent to go and hear that little conceited fellow
+deliver sentences out of a pulpit, I recollected what he had said of M.
+Waldman, whom I had never seen, as he had hitherto been out of town.
+
+Partly from curiosity, and partly from idleness, I went into the
+lecturing room, which M. Waldman entered shortly after. This professor
+was very unlike his colleague. He appeared about fifty years of age, but
+with an aspect expressive of the greatest benevolence; a few gray hairs
+covered his temples, but those at the back of his head were nearly
+black. His person was short, but remarkably erect; and his voice the
+sweetest I had ever heard. He began his lecture by a recapitulation of
+the history of chemistry and the various improvements made by different
+men of learning, pronouncing with fervour the names of the most
+distinguished discoverers. He then took a cursory view of the present
+state of the science, and explained many of its elementary terms. After
+having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a panegyric
+upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never forget:—
+
+“The ancient teachers of this science,” said he, “promised
+impossibilities, and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very
+little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir
+of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made
+to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pour over the microscope or
+crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the
+recesses of nature, and shew how she works in her hiding places. They
+ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates,
+and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost
+unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the
+earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.”
+
+I departed highly pleased with the professor and his lecture, and paid
+him a visit the same evening. His manners in private were even more mild
+and attractive than in public; for there was a certain dignity in his
+mien during his lecture, which in his own house was replaced by the
+greatest affability and kindness. He heard with attention my little
+narration concerning my studies, and smiled at the names of Cornelius
+Agrippa, and Paracelsus, but without the contempt that M. Krempe had
+exhibited. He said, that “these were men to whose indefatigable zeal
+modern philosophers were indebted for most of the foundations of their
+knowledge. They had left to us, as an easier task, to give new names,
+and arrange in connected classifications, the facts which they in a
+great degree had been the instruments of bringing to light. The labours
+of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in
+ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.” I listened to his
+statement, which was delivered without any presumption or affectation;
+and then added, that his lecture had removed my prejudices against
+modern chemists; and I, at the same time, requested his advice
+concerning the books I ought to procure.
+
+“I am happy,” said M. Waldman, “to have gained a disciple; and if your
+application equals your ability, I have no doubt of your success.
+Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest
+improvements have been and may be made; it is on that account that I
+have made it my peculiar study; but at the same time I have not
+neglected the other branches of science. A man would make but a very
+sorry chemist, if he attended to that department of human knowledge
+alone. If your wish is to become really a man of science, and not merely
+a petty experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of
+natural philosophy, including mathematics.”
+
+He then took me into his laboratory, and explained to me the uses of
+his various machines; instructing me as to what I ought to procure, and
+promising me the use of his own, when I should have advanced far enough
+in the science not to derange their mechanism. He also gave me the list
+of books which I had requested; and I took my leave.
+
+Thus ended a day memorable to me; it decided my future destiny.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+From this day natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, in the
+most comprehensive sense of the term, became nearly my sole occupation.
+I read with ardour those works, so full of genius and discrimination,
+which modern inquirers have written on these subjects. I attended the
+lectures, and cultivated the acquaintance, of the men of science of the
+university; and I found even in M. Krempe a great deal of sound sense
+and real information, combined, it is true, with a repulsive physiognomy
+and manners, but not on that account the less valuable. In M. Waldman I
+found a true friend. His gentleness was never tinged by dogmatism; and
+his instructions were given with an air of frankness and good nature,
+that banished every idea of pedantry. It was, perhaps, the amiable
+character of this man that inclined me more to that branch of natural
+philosophy which he professed, than an intrinsic love for the science
+itself. But this state of mind had place only in the first steps towards
+knowledge: the more fully I entered into the science, the more
+exclusively I pursued it for its own sake. That application, which at
+first had been a matter of duty and resolution, now became so ardent and
+eager, that the stars often disappeared in the light of morning whilst
+I was yet engaged in my laboratory.
+
+As I applied so closely, it may be easily conceived that I improved
+rapidly. My ardour was indeed the astonishment of the students; and my
+proficiency, that of the masters. Professor Krempe often asked me, with
+a sly smile, how Cornelius Agrippa went on? whilst M. Waldman expressed
+the most heart-felt exultation in my progress. Two years passed in this
+manner, during which I paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged, heart
+and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries, which I hoped to make.
+None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements
+of science. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before
+you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit
+there is continual food for discovery and wonder. A mind of moderate
+capacity, which closely pursues one study, must infallibly arrive at
+great proficiency in that study; and I, who continually sought the
+attainment of one object of pursuit, and was solely wrapt up in this,
+improved so rapidly, that, at the end of two years, I made some
+discoveries in the improvement of some chemical instruments, which
+procured me great esteem and admiration at the university. When I had
+arrived at this point, and had become as well acquainted with the theory
+and practice of natural philosophy as depended on the lessons of any of
+the professors at Ingolstadt, my residence there being no longer
+conducive to my improvements, I thought of returning to my friends and
+my native town, when an incident happened that protracted my stay.
+
+One of the phænonema which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the
+structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life.
+Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was
+a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery;
+yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted,
+if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. I revolved
+these circumstances in my mind, and determined thenceforth to apply
+myself more particularly to those branches of natural philosophy which
+relate to physiology. Unless I had been animated by an almost
+supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been
+irksome, and almost intolerable. To examine the causes of life, we must
+first have recourse to death. I became acquainted with the science of
+anatomy: but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural
+decay and corruption of the human body. In my education my father had
+taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no
+supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale
+of superstition, or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness
+had no effect upon my fancy; and a church-yard was to me merely the
+receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of
+beauty and strength, had become food for the worm. Now I was led to
+examine the cause and progress of this decay, and forced to spend days
+and nights in vaults and charnel houses. My attention was fixed upon
+every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human
+feelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I
+beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I
+saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I paused,
+examining and analysing all the minutiæ of causation, as exemplified in
+the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst
+of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me—a light so brilliant
+and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the
+immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised that
+among so many men of genius, who had directed their inquiries towards
+the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so
+astonishing a secret.
+
+Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not
+more certainly shine in the heavens, than that which I now affirm is
+true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the
+discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of
+incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of
+generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing
+animation upon lifeless matter.
+
+The astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery soon
+gave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in painful
+labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires, was the most
+gratifying consummation of my toils. But this discovery was so great
+and overwhelming, that all the steps by which I had been progressively
+led to it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result. What had been
+the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world,
+was now within my grasp. Not that, like a magic scene, it all opened
+upon me at once: the information I had obtained was of a nature rather
+to direct my endeavours so soon as I should point them towards the
+object of my search, than to exhibit that object already accomplished. I
+was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead, and found a
+passage to life aided only by one glimmering, and seemingly ineffectual
+light.
+
+I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes
+express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with
+which I am acquainted; that cannot be: listen patiently until the end of
+my story, and you will easily perceive why I am reserved upon that
+subject. I will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent as I then was, to
+your destruction and infallible misery. Learn from me, if not by my
+precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of
+knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town
+to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature
+will allow.
+
+When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated
+a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it. Although
+I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame
+for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles,
+and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour.
+I doubted at first whether I should attempt the creation of a being like
+myself or one of simpler organization; but my imagination was too much
+exalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give
+life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man. The materials at
+present within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an
+undertaking; but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed. I
+prepared myself for a multitude of reverses; my operations might be
+incessantly baffled, and at last my work be imperfect: yet, when I
+considered the improvement which every day takes place in science and
+mechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least
+lay the foundations of future success. Nor could I consider the
+magnitude and complexity of my plan as any argument of its
+impracticability. It was with these feelings that I began the creation
+of a human being. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great
+hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to
+make the being of a gigantic stature; that is to say, about eight feet
+in height, and proportionably large. After having formed this
+determination, and having spent some months in successfully collecting
+and arranging my materials, I began.
+
+No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like
+a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared
+to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a
+torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as
+its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their
+being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so
+completely as I should deserve their’s. Pursuing these reflections, I
+thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might
+in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where
+death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.
+
+These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with
+unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person
+had become emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very brink of
+certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or
+the next hour might realize. One secret which I alone possessed was the
+hope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight
+labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued
+nature to her hiding places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret
+toil, as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured
+the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble,
+and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost
+frantic impulse, urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or
+sensation but for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance,
+that only made me feel with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural
+stimulus ceasing to operate, I had returned to my old habits. I
+collected bones from charnel houses; and disturbed, with profane
+fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary
+chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all
+the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of
+filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in
+attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the
+slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human
+nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by
+an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a
+conclusion.
+
+The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in
+one pursuit. It was a most beautiful season; never did the fields bestow
+a more plentiful harvest, or the vines yield a more luxuriant vintage:
+but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. And the same
+feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to
+forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not
+seen for so long a time. I knew my silence disquieted them; and I well
+remembered the words of my father: “I know that while you are pleased
+with yourself, you will think of us with affection, and we shall hear
+regularly from you. You must pardon me, if I regard any interruption in
+your correspondence as a proof that your other duties are equally
+neglected.”
+
+I knew well therefore what would be my father’s feelings; but I could
+not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which
+had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished, as it were,
+to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the
+great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be
+completed.
+
+I then thought that my father would be unjust if he ascribed my neglect
+to vice, or faultiness on my part; but I am now convinced that he was
+justified in conceiving that I should not be altogether free from blame.
+A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful
+mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his
+tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an
+exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a
+tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those
+simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is
+certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If
+this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit
+whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic
+affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Cæsar would have spared his
+country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the
+empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.
+
+But I forget that I am moralizing in the most interesting part of my
+tale; and your looks remind me to proceed.
+
+My father made no reproach in his letters; and only took notice of my
+silence by inquiring into my occupations more particularly than before.
+Winter, spring, and summer, passed away during my labours; but I did not
+watch the blossom or the expanding leaves—sights which before always
+yielded me supreme delight, so deeply was I engrossed in my occupation.
+The leaves of that year had withered before my work drew near to a
+close; and now every day shewed me more plainly how well I had
+succeeded. But my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared
+rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other
+unwholesome trade, than an artist occupied by his favourite employment.
+Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a
+most painful degree; a disease that I regretted the more because I had
+hitherto enjoyed most excellent health, and had always boasted of the
+firmness of my nerves. But I believed that exercise and amusement would
+soon drive away such symptoms; and I promised myself both of these, when
+my creation should be complete.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment
+of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected
+the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being
+into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the
+morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was
+nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I
+saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a
+convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
+
+How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the
+wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form?
+His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as
+beautiful. Beautiful!—Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the
+work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black,
+and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only
+formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost
+of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his
+shrivelled complexion, and straight black lips.
+
+The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of
+human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole
+purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived
+myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far
+exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the
+dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.
+Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of
+the room, and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable
+to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the
+tumult I had before endured; and I threw myself on the bed in my
+clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was
+in vain: I slept indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I
+thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets
+of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I
+imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of
+death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the
+corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I
+saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel. I started from
+my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth
+chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow
+light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I
+beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up
+the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were
+fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds,
+while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not
+hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped,
+and rushed down stairs. I took refuge in the court-yard belonging to the
+house which I inhabited; where I remained during the rest of the night,
+walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively,
+catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach
+of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.
+
+Oh! no mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy
+again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I
+had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those
+muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing
+such as even Dante could not have conceived.
+
+I passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and
+hardly, that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly
+sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with
+this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment: dreams that had
+been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space, were now become a
+hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!
+
+Morning, dismal and wet, at length dawned, and discovered to my
+sleepless and aching eyes the church of Ingolstadt, its white steeple
+and clock, which indicated the sixth hour. The porter opened the gates
+of the court, which had that night been my asylum, and I issued into the
+streets, pacing them with quick steps, as if I sought to avoid the
+wretch whom I feared every turning of the street would present to my
+view. I did not dare return to the apartment which I inhabited, but felt
+impelled to hurry on, although wetted by the rain, which poured from a
+black and comfortless sky.
+
+I continued walking in this manner for some time, endeavouring, by
+bodily exercise, to ease the load that weighed upon my mind. I
+traversed the streets, without any clear conception of where I was, or
+what I was doing. My heart palpitated in the sickness of fear; and I
+hurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me:
+
+    Like one who, on a lonely road,
+      Doth walk in fear and dread,
+    And, having once turn’d round, walks on,
+      And turns no more his head;
+    Because he knows a frightful fiend
+      Doth close behind him tread.
+
+Continuing thus, I came at length opposite to the inn at which the
+various diligences and carriages usually stopped. Here I paused, I knew
+not why; but I remained some minutes with my eyes fixed on a coach that
+was coming towards me from the other end of the street. As it drew
+nearer, I observed that it was the Swiss diligence: it stopped just
+where I was standing; and, on the door being opened, I perceived Henry
+Clerval, who, on seeing me, instantly sprung out. “My dear
+Frankenstein,” exclaimed he, “how glad I am to see you! how fortunate
+that you should be here at the very moment of my alighting!”
+
+Nothing could equal my delight on seeing Clerval; his presence brought
+back to my thoughts my father, Elizabeth, and all those scenes of home
+so dear to my recollection. I grasped his hand, and in a moment forgot
+my horror and misfortune; I felt suddenly, and for the first time during
+many months, calm and serene joy. I welcomed my friend, therefore, in
+the most cordial manner, and we walked towards my college. Clerval
+continued talking for some time about our mutual friends, and his own
+good fortune in being permitted to come to Ingolstadt. “You may easily
+believe,” said he, “how great was the difficulty to persuade my father
+that it was not absolutely necessary for a merchant not to understand
+any thing except book-keeping; and, indeed, I believe I left him
+incredulous to the last, for his constant answer to my unwearied
+entreaties was the same as that of the Dutch schoolmaster in the Vicar
+of Wakefield: ‘I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek, I eat
+heartily without Greek.’ But his affection for me at length overcame his
+dislike of learning, and he has permitted me to undertake a voyage of
+discovery to the land of knowledge.”
+
+“It gives me the greatest delight to see you; but tell me how you left
+my father, brothers, and Elizabeth.”
+
+“Very well, and very happy, only a little uneasy that they hear from you
+so seldom. By the bye, I mean to lecture you a little upon their account
+myself.—But, my dear Frankenstein,” continued he, stopping short, and
+gazing full in my face, “I did not before remark how very ill you
+appear; so thin and pale; you look as if you had been watching for
+several nights.”
+
+“You have guessed right; I have lately been so deeply engaged in one
+occupation, that I have not allowed myself sufficient rest, as you see:
+but I hope, I sincerely hope, that all these employments are now at an
+end, and that I am at length free.”
+
+I trembled excessively; I could not endure to think of, and far less to
+allude to the occurrences of the preceding night. I walked with a quick
+pace, and we soon arrived at my college. I then reflected, and the
+thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my
+apartment might still be there, alive, and walking about. I dreaded to
+behold this monster; but I feared still more that Henry should see him.
+Entreating him therefore to remain a few minutes at the bottom of the
+stairs, I darted up towards my own room. My hand was already on the lock
+of the door before I recollected myself. I then paused; and a cold
+shivering came over me. I threw the door forcibly open, as children are
+accustomed to do when they expect a spectre to stand in waiting for them
+on the other side; but nothing appeared. I stepped fearfully in: the
+apartment was empty; and my bedroom was also freed from its hideous
+guest. I could hardly believe that so great a good-fortune could have
+befallen me; but when I became assured that my enemy had indeed fled, I
+clapped my hands for joy, and ran down to Clerval.
+
+We ascended into my room, and the servant presently brought breakfast;
+but I was unable to contain myself. It was not joy only that possessed
+me; I felt my flesh tingle with excess of sensitiveness, and my pulse
+beat rapidly. I was unable to remain for a single instant in the same
+place; I jumped over the chairs, clapped my hands, and laughed aloud.
+Clerval at first attributed my unusual spirits to joy on his arrival;
+but when he observed me more attentively, he saw a wildness in my eyes
+for which he could not account; and my loud, unrestrained, heartless
+laughter, frightened and astonished him.
+
+“My dear Victor,” cried he, “what, for God’s sake, is the matter? Do not
+laugh in that manner. How ill you are! What is the cause of all this?”
+
+“Do not ask me,” cried I, putting my hands before my eyes, for I thought
+I saw the dreaded spectre glide into the room; “_he_ can tell.—Oh, save
+me! save me!” I imagined that the monster seized me; I struggled
+furiously, and fell down in a fit.
+
+Poor Clerval! what must have been his feelings? A meeting, which he
+anticipated with such joy, so strangely turned to bitterness. But I was
+not the witness of his grief; for I was lifeless, and did not recover my
+senses for a long, long time.
+
+This was the commencement of a nervous fever, which confined me for
+several months. During all that time Henry was my only nurse. I
+afterwards learned that, knowing my father’s advanced age, and unfitness
+for so long a journey, and how wretched my sickness would make
+Elizabeth, he spared them this grief by concealing the extent of my
+disorder. He knew that I could not have a more kind and attentive nurse
+than himself; and, firm in the hope he felt of my recovery, he did not
+doubt that, instead of doing harm, he performed the kindest action that
+he could towards them.
+
+But I was in reality very ill; and surely nothing but the unbounded and
+unremitting attentions of my friend could have restored me to life. The
+form of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was for ever before
+my eyes, and I raved incessantly concerning him. Doubtless my words
+surprised Henry: he at first believed them to be the wanderings of my
+disturbed imagination; but the pertinacity with which I continually
+recurred to the same subject persuaded him that my disorder indeed owed
+its origin to some uncommon and terrible event.
+
+By very slow degrees, and with frequent relapses, that alarmed and
+grieved my friend, I recovered. I remember the first time I became
+capable of observing outward objects with any kind of pleasure, I
+perceived that the fallen leaves had disappeared, and that the young
+buds were shooting forth from the trees that shaded my window. It was a
+divine spring; and the season contributed greatly to my convalescence. I
+felt also sentiments of joy and affection revive in my bosom; my gloom
+disappeared, and in a short time I became as cheerful as before I was
+attacked by the fatal passion.
+
+“Dearest Clerval,” exclaimed I, “how kind, how very good you are to me.
+This whole winter, instead of being spent in study, as you promised
+yourself, has been consumed in my sick room. How shall I ever repay
+you? I feel the greatest remorse for the disappointment of which I have
+been the occasion; but you will forgive me.”
+
+“You will repay me entirely, if you do not discompose yourself, but get
+well as fast as you can; and since you appear in such good spirits, I
+may speak to you on one subject, may I not?”
+
+I trembled. One subject! what could it be? Could he allude to an object
+on whom I dared not even think?
+
+“Compose yourself,” said Clerval, who observed my change of colour, “I
+will not mention it, if it agitates you; but your father and cousin
+would be very happy if they received a letter from you in your own
+hand-writing. They hardly know how ill you have been, and are uneasy at
+your long silence.”
+
+“Is that all? my dear Henry. How could you suppose that my first thought
+would not fly towards those dear, dear friends whom I love, and who are
+so deserving of my love.”
+
+“If this is your present temper, my friend, you will perhaps be glad to
+see a letter that has been lying here some days for you: it is from your
+cousin, I believe.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Clerval then put the following letter into my hands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“_To_ V. FRANKENSTEIN.
+
+“MY DEAR COUSIN,
+
+“I cannot describe to you the uneasiness we have all felt concerning
+your health. We cannot help imagining that your friend Clerval conceals
+the extent of your disorder: for it is now several months since we have
+seen your hand-writing; and all this time you have been obliged to
+dictate your letters to Henry. Surely, Victor, you must have been
+exceedingly ill; and this makes us all very wretched, as much so nearly
+as after the death of your dear mother. My uncle was almost persuaded
+that you were indeed dangerously ill, and could hardly be restrained
+from undertaking a journey to Ingolstadt. Clerval always writes that you
+are getting better; I eagerly hope that you will confirm this
+intelligence soon in your own hand-writing; for indeed, indeed, Victor,
+we are all very miserable on this account. Relieve us from this fear,
+and we shall be the happiest creatures in the world. Your father’s
+health is now so vigorous, that he appears ten years younger since last
+winter. Ernest also is so much improved, that you would hardly know him:
+he is now nearly sixteen, and has lost that sickly appearance which he
+had some years ago; he is grown quite robust and active.
+
+“My uncle and I conversed a long time last night about what profession
+Ernest should follow. His constant illness when young has deprived him
+of the habits of application; and now that he enjoys good health, he is
+continually in the open air, climbing the hills, or rowing on the lake.
+I therefore proposed that he should be a farmer; which you know, Cousin,
+is a favourite scheme of mine. A farmer’s is a very healthy happy life;
+and the least hurtful, or rather the most beneficial profession of any.
+My uncle had an idea of his being educated as an advocate, that through
+his interest he might become a judge. But, besides that he is not at all
+fitted for such an occupation, it is certainly more creditable to
+cultivate the earth for the sustenance of man, than to be the confidant,
+and sometimes the accomplice, of his vices; which is the profession of a
+lawyer. I said, that the employments of a prosperous farmer, if they
+were not a more honourable, they were at least a happier species of
+occupation than that of a judge, whose misfortune it was always to
+meddle with the dark side of human nature. My uncle smiled, and said,
+that I ought to be an advocate myself, which put an end to the
+conversation on that subject.
+
+“And now I must tell you a little story that will please, and perhaps
+amuse you. Do you not remember Justine Moritz? Probably you do not; I
+will relate her history, therefore, in a few words. Madame Moritz, her
+mother, was a widow with four children, of whom Justine was the third.
+This girl had always been the favourite of her father; but, through a
+strange perversity, her mother could not endure her, and, after the
+death of M. Moritz, treated her very ill. My aunt observed this; and,
+when Justine was twelve years of age, prevailed on her mother to allow
+her to live at her house. The republican institutions of our country
+have produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in
+the great monarchies that surround it. Hence there is less distinction
+between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the lower orders
+being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined
+and moral. A servant in Geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant
+in France and England. Justine, thus received in our family, learned the
+duties of a servant; a condition which, in our fortunate country, does
+not include the idea of ignorance, and a sacrifice of the dignity of a
+human being.
+
+“After what I have said, I dare say you well remember the heroine of my
+little tale: for Justine was a great favourite of your’s; and I
+recollect you once remarked, that if you were in an ill-humour, one
+glance from Justine could dissipate it, for the same reason that Ariosto
+gives concerning the beauty of Angelica—she looked so frank-hearted and
+happy. My aunt conceived a great attachment for her, by which she was
+induced to give her an education superior to that which she had at
+first intended. This benefit was fully repaid; Justine was the most
+grateful little creature in the world: I do not mean that she made any
+professions, I never heard one pass her lips; but you could see by her
+eyes that she almost adored her protectress. Although her disposition
+was gay, and in many respects inconsiderate, yet she paid the greatest
+attention to every gesture of my aunt. She thought her the model of all
+excellence, and endeavoured to imitate her phraseology and manners, so
+that even now she often reminds me of her.
+
+“When my dearest aunt died, every one was too much occupied in their own
+grief to notice poor Justine, who had attended her during her illness
+with the most anxious affection. Poor Justine was very ill; but other
+trials were reserved for her.
+
+“One by one, her brothers and sister died; and her mother, with the
+exception of her neglected daughter, was left childless. The conscience
+of the woman was troubled; she began to think that the deaths of her
+favourites was a judgment from heaven to chastise her partiality. She
+was a Roman Catholic; and I believe her confessor confirmed the idea
+which she had conceived. Accordingly, a few months after your departure
+for Ingolstadt, Justine was called home by her repentant mother. Poor
+girl! she wept when she quitted our house: she was much altered since
+the death of my aunt; grief had given softness and a winning mildness to
+her manners, which had before been remarkable for vivacity. Nor was her
+residence at her mother’s house of a nature to restore her gaiety. The
+poor woman was very vacillating in her repentance. She sometimes begged
+Justine to forgive her unkindness, but much oftener accused her of
+having caused the deaths of her brothers and sister. Perpetual fretting
+at length threw Madame Moritz into a decline, which at first increased
+her irritability, but she is now at peace for ever. She died on the
+first approach of cold weather, at the beginning of this last winter.
+Justine has returned to us; and I assure you I love her tenderly. She is
+very clever and gentle, and extremely pretty; as I mentioned before, her
+mien and her expressions continually remind me of my dear aunt.
+
+“I must say also a few words to you, my dear cousin, of little darling
+William. I wish you could see him; he is very tall of his age, with
+sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eye-lashes, and curling hair. When he
+smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek, which are rosy with
+health. He has already had one or two little _wives_, but Louisa Biron
+is his favourite, a pretty little girl of five years of age.
+
+“Now, dear Victor, I dare say you wish to be indulged in a little gossip
+concerning the good people of Geneva. The pretty Miss Mansfield has
+already received the congratulatory visits on her approaching marriage
+with a young Englishman, John Melbourne, Esq. Her ugly sister, Manon,
+married M. Duvillard, the rich banker, last autumn. Your favourite
+schoolfellow, Louis Manoir, has suffered several misfortunes since the
+departure of Clerval from Geneva. But he has already recovered his
+spirits, and is reported to be on the point of marrying a very lively
+pretty Frenchwoman, Madame Tavernier. She is a widow, and much older
+than Manoir; but she is very much admired, and a favourite with every
+body.
+
+“I have written myself into good spirits, dear cousin; yet I cannot
+conclude without again anxiously inquiring concerning your health. Dear
+Victor, if you are not very ill, write yourself, and make your father
+and all of us happy; or——I cannot bear to think of the other side of
+the question; my tears already flow. Adieu, my dearest cousin.”
+
+“ELIZABETH LAVENZA.
+
+“Geneva, March 18th, 17—.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Dear, dear Elizabeth!” I exclaimed when I had read her letter, “I will
+write instantly, and relieve them from the anxiety they must feel.” I
+wrote, and this exertion greatly fatigued me; but my convalescence had
+commenced, and proceeded regularly. In another fortnight I was able to
+leave my chamber.
+
+One of my first duties on my recovery was to introduce Clerval to the
+several professors of the university. In doing this, I underwent a kind
+of rough usage, ill befitting the wounds that my mind had sustained.
+Ever since the fatal night, the end of my labours, and the beginning of
+my misfortunes, I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of
+natural philosophy. When I was otherwise quite restored to health, the
+sight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony of my nervous
+symptoms. Henry saw this, and had removed all my apparatus from my view.
+He had also changed my apartment; for he perceived that I had acquired a
+dislike for the room which had previously been my laboratory. But these
+cares of Clerval were made of no avail when I visited the professors. M.
+Waldman inflicted torture when he praised, with kindness and warmth, the
+astonishing progress I had made in the sciences. He soon perceived that
+I disliked the subject; but, not guessing the real cause, he attributed
+my feelings to modesty, and changed the subject from my improvement to
+the science itself, with a desire, as I evidently saw, of drawing me
+out. What could I do? He meant to please, and he tormented me. I felt as
+if he had placed carefully, one by one, in my view those instruments
+which were to be afterwards used in putting me to a slow and cruel
+death. I writhed under his words, yet dared not exhibit the pain I felt.
+Clerval, whose eyes and feelings were always quick in discerning the
+sensations of others, declined the subject, alleging, in excuse, his
+total ignorance; and the conversation took a more general turn. I
+thanked my friend from my heart, but I did not speak. I saw plainly that
+he was surprised, but he never attempted to draw my secret from me; and
+although I loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew
+no bounds, yet I could never persuade myself to confide to him that
+event which was so often present to my recollection, but which I feared
+the detail to another would only impress more deeply.
+
+M. Krempe was not equally docile; and in my condition at that time, of
+almost insupportable sensitiveness, his harsh blunt encomiums gave me
+even more pain than the benevolent approbation of M. Waldman. “D—n the
+fellow!” cried he; “why, M. Clerval, I assure you he has outstript us
+all. Aye, stare if you please; but it is nevertheless true. A youngster
+who, but a few years ago, believed Cornelius Agrippa as firmly as the
+gospel, has now set himself at the head of the university; and if he is
+not soon pulled down, we shall all be out of countenance.—Aye, aye,”
+continued he, observing my face expressive of suffering, “M.
+Frankenstein is modest; an excellent quality in a young man. Young men
+should be diffident of themselves, you know, M. Clerval; I was myself
+when young: but that wears out in a very short time.”
+
+M. Krempe had now commenced an eulogy on himself, which happily turned
+the conversation from a subject that was so annoying to me.
+
+Clerval was no natural philosopher. His imagination was too vivid for
+the minutiæ of science. Languages were his principal study; and he
+sought, by acquiring their elements, to open a field for
+self-instruction on his return to Geneva. Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew,
+gained his attention, after he had made himself perfectly master of
+Greek and Latin. For my own part, idleness had ever been irksome to me;
+and now that I wished to fly from reflection, and hated my former
+studies, I felt great relief in being the fellow-pupil with my friend,
+and found not only instruction but consolation in the works of the
+orientalists. Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy elevating to a
+degree I never experienced in studying the authors of any other country.
+When you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and
+garden of roses,—in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire
+that consumes your own heart. How different from the manly and heroical
+poetry of Greece and Rome.
+
+Summer passed away in these occupations, and my return to Geneva was
+fixed for the latter end of autumn; but being delayed by several
+accidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable,
+and my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring. I felt this delay
+very bitterly; for I longed to see my native town, and my beloved
+friends. My return had only been delayed so long from an unwillingness
+to leave Clerval in a strange place, before he had become acquainted
+with any of its inhabitants. The winter, however, was spent cheerfully;
+and although the spring was uncommonly late, when it came, its beauty
+compensated for its dilatoriness.
+
+The month of May had already commenced, and I expected the letter daily
+which was to fix the date of my departure, when Henry proposed a
+pedestrian tour in the environs of Ingolstadt that I might bid a
+personal farewell to the country I had so long inhabited. I acceded
+with pleasure to this proposition: I was fond of exercise, and Clerval
+had always been my favourite companion in the rambles of this nature
+that I had taken among the scenes of my native country.
+
+We passed a fortnight in these perambulations: my health and spirits had
+long been restored, and they gained additional strength from the
+salubrious air I breathed, the natural incidents of our progress, and
+the conversation of my friend. Study had before secluded me from the
+intercourse of my fellow-creatures, and rendered me unsocial; but
+Clerval called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught me
+to love the aspect of nature, and the cheerful faces of children.
+Excellent friend! how sincerely did you love me, and endeavour to
+elevate my mind, until it was on a level with your own. A selfish
+pursuit had cramped and narrowed me, until your gentleness and affection
+warmed and opened my senses; I became the same happy creature who, a few
+years ago, loving and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care. When happy,
+inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful
+sensations. A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstacy. The
+present season was indeed divine; the flowers of spring bloomed in the
+hedges, while those of summer were already in bud: I was undisturbed by
+thoughts which during the preceding year had pressed upon me,
+notwithstanding my endeavours to throw them off, with an invincible
+burden.
+
+Henry rejoiced in my gaiety, and sincerely sympathized in my feelings:
+he exerted himself to amuse me, while he expressed the sensations that
+filled his soul. The resources of his mind on this occasion were truly
+astonishing: his conversation was full of imagination; and very often,
+in imitation of the Persian and Arabic writers, he invented tales of
+wonderful fancy and passion. At other times he repeated my favourite
+poems, or drew me out into arguments, which he supported with great
+ingenuity.
+
+We returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon: the peasants were
+dancing, and every one we met appeared gay and happy. My own spirits
+were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and
+hilarity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+On my return, I found the following letter from my father:—
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“_To_ V. FRANKENSTEIN.
+
+“MY DEAR VICTOR,
+
+“You have probably waited impatiently for a letter to fix the date of
+your return to us; and I was at first tempted to write only a few lines,
+merely mentioning the day on which I should expect you. But that would
+be a cruel kindness, and I dare not do it. What would be your surprise,
+my son, when you expected a happy and gay welcome, to behold, on the
+contrary, tears and wretchedness? And how, Victor, can I relate our
+misfortune? Absence cannot have rendered you callous to our joys and
+griefs; and how shall I inflict pain on an absent child? I wish to
+prepare you for the woeful news, but I know it is impossible; even now
+your eye skims over the page, to seek the words which are to convey to
+you the horrible tidings.
+
+“William is dead!—that sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed
+my heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay! Victor, he is murdered!
+
+“I will not attempt to console you; but will simply relate the
+circumstances of the transaction.
+
+“Last Thursday (May 7th) I, my niece, and your two brothers, went to
+walk in Plainpalais. The evening was warm and serene, and we prolonged
+our walk farther than usual. It was already dusk before we thought of
+returning; and then we discovered that William and Ernest, who had gone
+on before, were not to be found. We accordingly rested on a seat until
+they should return. Presently Ernest came, and inquired if we had seen
+his brother: he said, that they had been playing together, that William
+had run away to hide himself, and that he vainly sought for him, and
+afterwards waited for him a long time, but that he did not return.
+
+“This account rather alarmed us, and we continued to search for him
+until night fell, when Elizabeth conjectured that he might have returned
+to the house. He was not there. We returned again, with torches; for I
+could not rest, when I thought that my sweet boy had lost himself, and
+was exposed to all the damps and dews of night: Elizabeth also suffered
+extreme anguish. About five in the morning I discovered my lovely boy,
+whom the night before I had seen blooming and active in health,
+stretched on the grass livid and motionless: the print of the murderer’s
+finger was on his neck.
+
+“He was conveyed home, and the anguish that was visible in my
+countenance betrayed the secret to Elizabeth. She was very earnest to
+see the corpse. At first I attempted to prevent her; but she persisted,
+and entering the room where it lay, hastily examined the neck of the
+victim, and clasping her hands exclaimed, ‘O God! I have murdered my
+darling infant!’
+
+“She fainted, and was restored with extreme difficulty. When she again
+lived, it was only to weep and sigh. She told me, that that same evening
+William had teazed her to let him wear a very valuable miniature that
+she possessed of your mother. This picture is gone, and was doubtless
+the temptation which urged the murderer to the deed. We have no trace of
+him at present, although our exertions to discover him are unremitted;
+but they will not restore my beloved William.
+
+“Come, dearest Victor; you alone can console Elizabeth. She weeps
+continually, and accuses herself unjustly as the cause of his death; her
+words pierce my heart. We are all unhappy; but will not that be an
+additional motive for you, my son, to return and be our comforter? Your
+dear mother! Alas, Victor! I now say, Thank God she did not live to
+witness the cruel, miserable death of her youngest darling!
+
+“Come, Victor; not brooding thoughts of vengeance against the assassin,
+but with feelings of peace and gentleness, that will heal, instead of
+festering the wounds of our minds. Enter the house of mourning, my
+friend, but with kindness and affection for those who love you, and not
+with hatred for your enemies.
+
+“Your affectionate and afflicted father,
+
+“ALPHONSE FRANKENSTEIN.
+
+“Geneva, May 12th, 17—.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clerval, who had watched my countenance as I read this letter, was
+surprised to observe the despair that succeeded to the joy I at first
+expressed on receiving news from my friends. I threw the letter on the
+table, and covered my face with my hands.
+
+“My dear Frankenstein,” exclaimed Henry, when he perceived me weep with
+bitterness, “are you always to be unhappy? My dear friend, what has
+happened?”
+
+I motioned to him to take up the letter, while I walked up and down the
+room in the extremest agitation. Tears also gushed from the eyes of
+Clerval, as he read the account of my misfortune.
+
+“I can offer you no consolation, my friend,” said he; “your disaster is
+irreparable. What do you intend to do?”
+
+“To go instantly to Geneva: come with me, Henry, to order the horses.”
+
+During our walk, Clerval endeavoured to raise my spirits. He did not do
+this by common topics of consolation, but by exhibiting the truest
+sympathy. “Poor William!” said he, “that dear child; he now sleeps with
+his angel mother. His friends mourn and weep, but he is at rest: he does
+not now feel the murderer’s grasp; a sod covers his gentle form, and he
+knows no pain. He can no longer be a fit subject for pity; the survivors
+are the greatest sufferers, and for them time is the only consolation.
+Those maxims of the Stoics, that death was no evil, and that the mind of
+man ought to be superior to despair on the eternal absence of a beloved
+object, ought not to be urged. Even Cato wept over the dead body of his
+brother.”
+
+Clerval spoke thus as we hurried through the streets; the words
+impressed themselves on my mind, and I remembered them afterwards in
+solitude. But now, as soon as the horses arrived, I hurried into a
+cabriole, and bade farewell to my friend.
+
+My journey was very melancholy. At first I wished to hurry on, for I
+longed to console and sympathize with my loved and sorrowing friends;
+but when I drew near my native town, I slackened my progress. I could
+hardly sustain the multitude of feelings that crowded into my mind. I
+passed through scenes familiar to my youth, but which I had not seen for
+nearly six years. How altered every thing might be during that time? One
+sudden and desolating change had taken place; but a thousand little
+circumstances might have by degrees worked other alterations which,
+although they were done more tranquilly, might not be the less decisive.
+Fear overcame me; I dared not advance, dreading a thousand nameless
+evils that made me tremble, although I was unable to define them.
+
+I remained two days at Lausanne, in this painful state of mind. I
+contemplated the lake: the waters were placid; all around was calm, and
+the snowy mountains, “the palaces of nature,” were not changed. By
+degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me, and I continued my
+journey towards Geneva.
+
+The road ran by the side of the lake, which became narrower as I
+approached my native town. I discovered more distinctly the black sides
+of Jura, and the bright summit of Mont Blânc; I wept like a child: “Dear
+mountains! my own beautiful lake! how do you welcome your wanderer? Your
+summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to
+prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?”
+
+I fear, my friend, that I shall render myself tedious by dwelling on
+these preliminary circumstances; but they were days of comparative
+happiness, and I think of them with pleasure. My country, my beloved
+country! who but a native can tell the delight I took in again beholding
+thy streams, thy mountains, and, more than all, thy lovely lake.
+
+Yet, as I drew nearer home, grief and fear again overcame me. Night also
+closed around; and when I could hardly see the dark mountains, I felt
+still more gloomily. The picture appeared a vast and dim scene of evil,
+and I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched
+of human beings. Alas! I prophesied truly, and failed only in one single
+circumstance, that in all the misery I imagined and dreaded, I did not
+conceive the hundredth part of the anguish I was destined to endure.
+
+It was completely dark when I arrived in the environs of Geneva; the
+gates of the town were already shut; and I was obliged to pass the night
+at Secheron, a village half a league to the east of the city. The sky
+was serene; and, as I was unable to rest, I resolved to visit the spot
+where my poor William had been murdered. As I could not pass through the
+town, I was obliged to cross the lake in a boat to arrive at
+Plainpalais. During this short voyage I saw the lightnings playing on
+the summit of Mont Blânc in the most beautiful figures. The storm
+appeared to approach rapidly; and, on landing, I ascended a low hill,
+that I might observe its progress. It advanced; the heavens were
+clouded, and I soon felt the rain coming slowly in large drops, but its
+violence quickly increased.
+
+I quitted my seat, and walked on, although the darkness and storm
+increased every minute, and the thunder burst with a terrific crash
+over my head. It was echoed from Salêve, the Juras, and the Alps of
+Savoy; vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the
+lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an instant
+every thing seemed of a pitchy darkness, until the eye recovered itself
+from the preceding flash. The storm, as is often the case in
+Switzerland, appeared at once in various parts of the heavens. The most
+violent storm hung exactly north of the town, over that part of the lake
+which lies between the promontory of Belrive and the village of Copêt.
+Another storm enlightened Jura with faint flashes; and another darkened
+and sometimes disclosed the Môle, a peaked mountain to the east of the
+lake.
+
+While I watched the storm, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with
+a hasty step. This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; I clasped
+my hands, and exclaimed aloud, “William, dear angel! this is thy
+funeral, this thy dirge!” As I said these words, I perceived in the
+gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood
+fixed, gazing intently: I could not be mistaken. A flash of lightning
+illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its
+gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than
+belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the
+filthy dæmon to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I
+shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? No sooner did
+that idea cross my imagination, than I became convinced of its truth; my
+teeth chattered, and I was forced to lean against a tree for support.
+The figure passed me quickly, and I lost it in the gloom. Nothing in
+human shape could have destroyed that fair child. _He_ was the murderer!
+I could not doubt it. The mere presence of the idea was an irresistible
+proof of the fact. I thought of pursuing the devil; but it would have
+been in vain, for another flash discovered him to me hanging among the
+rocks of the nearly perpendicular ascent of Mont Salêve, a hill that
+bounds Plainpalais on the south. He soon reached the summit, and
+disappeared.
+
+I remained motionless. The thunder ceased; but the rain still continued,
+and the scene was enveloped in an impenetrable darkness. I revolved in
+my mind the events which I had until now sought to forget: the whole
+train of my progress towards the creation; the appearance of the work of
+my own hands alive at my bed side; its departure. Two years had now
+nearly elapsed since the night on which he first received life; and was
+this his first crime? Alas! I had turned loose into the world a depraved
+wretch, whose delight was in carnage and misery; had he not murdered my
+brother?
+
+No one can conceive the anguish I suffered during the remainder of the
+night, which I spent, cold and wet, in the open air. But I did not feel
+the inconvenience of the weather; my imagination was busy in scenes of
+evil and despair. I considered the being whom I had cast among mankind,
+and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror, such
+as the deed which he had now done, nearly in the light of my own
+vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to destroy
+all that was dear to me.
+
+Day dawned; and I directed my steps towards the town. The gates were
+open; and I hastened to my father’s house. My first thought was to
+discover what I knew of the murderer, and cause instant pursuit to be
+made. But I paused when I reflected on the story that I had to tell. A
+being whom I myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at
+midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain. I remembered
+also the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at the time
+that I dated my creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a
+tale otherwise so utterly improbable. I well knew that if any other had
+communicated such a relation to me, I should have looked upon it as the
+ravings of insanity. Besides, the strange nature of the animal would
+elude all pursuit, even if I were so far credited as to persuade my
+relatives to commence it. Besides, of what use would be pursuit? Who
+could arrest a creature capable of scaling the overhanging sides of Mont
+Salêve? These reflections determined me, and I resolved to remain
+silent.
+
+It was about five in the morning when I entered my father’s house. I
+told the servants not to disturb the family, and went into the library
+to attend their usual hour of rising.
+
+Six years had elapsed, passed as a dream but for one indelible trace,
+and I stood in the same place where I had last embraced my father before
+my departure for Ingolstadt. Beloved and respectable parent! He still
+remained to me. I gazed on the picture of my mother, which stood over
+the mantle-piece. It was an historical subject, painted at my father’s
+desire, and represented Caroline Beaufort in an agony of despair,
+kneeling by the coffin of her dead father. Her garb was rustic, and her
+cheek pale; but there was an air of dignity and beauty, that hardly
+permitted the sentiment of pity. Below this picture was a miniature of
+William; and my tears flowed when I looked upon it. While I was thus
+engaged, Ernest entered: he had heard me arrive, and hastened to welcome
+me. He expressed a sorrowful delight to see me: “Welcome, my dearest
+Victor,” said he. “Ah! I wish you had come three months ago, and then
+you would have found us all joyous and delighted. But we are now
+unhappy; and, I am afraid, tears instead of smiles will be your welcome.
+Our father looks so sorrowful: this dreadful event seems to have revived
+in his mind his grief on the death of Mamma. Poor Elizabeth also is
+quite inconsolable.” Ernest began to weep as he said these words.
+
+“Do not,” said I, “welcome me thus; try to be more calm, that I may not
+be absolutely miserable the moment I enter my father’s house after so
+long an absence. But, tell me, how does my father support his
+misfortunes? and how is my poor Elizabeth?”
+
+“She indeed requires consolation; she accused herself of having caused
+the death of my brother, and that made her very wretched. But since the
+murderer has been discovered——”
+
+“The murderer discovered! Good God! how can that be? who could attempt
+to pursue him? It is impossible; one might as well try to overtake the
+winds, or confine a mountain-stream with a straw.”
+
+“I do not know what you mean; but we were all very unhappy when she was
+discovered. No one would believe it at first; and even now Elizabeth
+will not be convinced, notwithstanding all the evidence. Indeed, who
+would credit that Justine Moritz, who was so amiable, and fond of all
+the family, could all at once become so extremely wicked?”
+
+“Justine Moritz! Poor, poor girl, is she the accused? But it is
+wrongfully; every one knows that; no one believes it, surely, Ernest?”
+
+“No one did at first; but several circumstances came out, that have
+almost forced conviction upon us: and her own behaviour has been so
+confused, as to add to the evidence of facts a weight that, I fear,
+leaves no hope for doubt. But she will be tried to-day, and you will
+then hear all.”
+
+He related that, the morning on which the murder of poor William had
+been discovered, Justine had been taken ill, and confined to her bed;
+and, after several days, one of the servants, happening to examine the
+apparel she had worn on the night of the murder, had discovered in her
+pocket the picture of my mother, which had been judged to be the
+temptation of the murderer. The servant instantly shewed it to one of
+the others, who, without saying a word to any of the family, went to a
+magistrate; and, upon their deposition, Justine was apprehended. On
+being charged with the fact, the poor girl confirmed the suspicion in a
+great measure by her extreme confusion of manner.
+
+This was a strange tale, but it did not shake my faith; and I replied
+earnestly, “You are all mistaken; I know the murderer. Justine, poor,
+good Justine, is innocent.”
+
+At that instant my father entered. I saw unhappiness deeply impressed on
+his countenance, but he endeavoured to welcome me cheerfully; and, after
+we had exchanged our mournful greeting, would have introduced some other
+topic than that of our disaster, had not Ernest exclaimed, “Good God,
+Papa! Victor says that he knows who was the murderer of poor William.”
+
+“We do also, unfortunately,” replied my father; “for indeed I had rather
+have been for ever ignorant than have discovered so much depravity and
+ingratitude in one I valued so highly.”
+
+“My dear father, you are mistaken; Justine is innocent.”
+
+“If she is, God forbid that she should suffer as guilty. She is to be
+tried to-day, and I hope, I sincerely hope, that she will be acquitted.”
+
+This speech calmed me. I was firmly convinced in my own mind that
+Justine, and indeed every human being, was guiltless of this murder. I
+had no fear, therefore, that any circumstantial evidence could be
+brought forward strong enough to convict her; and, in this assurance, I
+calmed myself, expecting the trial with eagerness, but without
+prognosticating an evil result.
+
+We were soon joined by Elizabeth. Time had made great alterations in her
+form since I had last beheld her. Six years before she had been a
+pretty, good-humoured girl, whom every one loved and caressed. She was
+now a woman in stature and expression of countenance, which was
+uncommonly lovely. An open and capacious forehead gave indications of a
+good understanding, joined to great frankness of disposition. Her eyes
+were hazel, and expressive of mildness, now through recent affliction
+allied to sadness. Her hair was of a rich, dark auburn, her complexion
+fair, and her figure slight and graceful. She welcomed me with the
+greatest affection. “Your arrival, my dear cousin,” said she, “fills me
+with hope. You perhaps will find some means to justify my poor guiltless
+Justine. Alas! who is safe, if she be convicted of crime? I rely on her
+innocence as certainly as I do upon my own. Our misfortune is doubly
+hard to us; we have not only lost that lovely darling boy, but this poor
+girl, whom I sincerely love, is to be torn away by even a worse fate. If
+she is condemned, I never shall know joy more. But she will not, I am
+sure she will not; and then I shall be happy again, even after the sad
+death of my little William.”
+
+“She is innocent, my Elizabeth,” said I, “and that shall be proved;
+fear nothing, but let your spirits be cheered by the assurance of her
+acquittal.”
+
+“How kind you are! every one else believes in her guilt, and that made
+me wretched; for I knew that it was impossible: and to see every one
+else prejudiced in so deadly a manner, rendered me hopeless and
+despairing.” She wept.
+
+“Sweet niece,” said my father, “dry your tears. If she is, as you
+believe, innocent, rely on the justice of our judges, and the activity
+with which I shall prevent the slightest shadow of partiality.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+We passed a few sad hours, until eleven o’clock, when the trial was to
+commence. My father and the rest of the family being obliged to attend
+as witnesses, I accompanied them to the court. During the whole of this
+wretched mockery of justice, I suffered living torture. It was to be
+decided, whether the result of my curiosity and lawless devices would
+cause the death of two of my fellow-beings: one a smiling babe, full of
+innocence and joy; the other far more dreadfully murdered, with every
+aggravation of infamy that could make the murder memorable in horror.
+Justine also was a girl of merit, and possessed qualities which promised
+to render her life happy: now all was to be obliterated in an
+ignominious grave; and I the cause! A thousand times rather would I have
+confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine; but I was
+absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been
+considered as the ravings of a madman, and would not have exculpated her
+who suffered through me.
+
+The appearance of Justine was calm. She was dressed in mourning; and her
+countenance, always engaging, was rendered, by the solemnity of her
+feelings, exquisitely beautiful. Yet she appeared confident in
+innocence, and did not tremble, although gazed on and execrated by
+thousands; for all the kindness which her beauty might otherwise have
+excited, was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the
+imagination of the enormity she was supposed to have committed. She was
+tranquil, yet her tranquillity was evidently constrained; and as her
+confusion had before been adduced as a proof of her guilt, she worked up
+her mind to an appearance of courage. When she entered the court, she
+threw her eyes round it, and quickly discovered where we were seated. A
+tear seemed to dim her eye when she saw us; but she quickly recovered
+herself, and a look of sorrowful affection seemed to attest her utter
+guiltlessness.
+
+The trial began; and after the advocate against her had stated the
+charge, several witnesses were called. Several strange facts combined
+against her, which might have staggered any one who had not such proof
+of her innocence as I had. She had been out the whole of the night on
+which the murder had been committed, and towards morning had been
+perceived by a market-woman not far from the spot where the body of the
+murdered child had been afterwards found. The woman asked her what she
+did there; but she looked very strangely, and only returned a confused
+and unintelligible answer. She returned to the house about eight
+o’clock; and when one inquired where she had passed the night, she
+replied, that she had been looking for the child, and demanded
+earnestly, if any thing had been heard concerning him. When shewn the
+body, she fell into violent hysterics, and kept her bed for several
+days. The picture was then produced, which the servant had found in her
+pocket; and when Elizabeth, in a faltering voice, proved that it was the
+same which, an hour before the child had been missed, she had placed
+round his neck, a murmur of horror and indignation filled the court.
+
+Justine was called on for her defence. As the trial had proceeded, her
+countenance had altered. Surprise, horror, and misery, were strongly
+expressed. Sometimes she struggled with her tears; but when she was
+desired to plead, she collected her powers, and spoke in an audible
+although variable voice:—
+
+“God knows,” she said, “how entirely I am innocent. But I do not pretend
+that my protestations should acquit me: I rest my innocence on a plain
+and simple explanation of the facts which have been adduced against me;
+and I hope the character I have always borne will incline my judges to a
+favourable interpretation, where any circumstance appears doubtful or
+suspicious.”
+
+She then related that, by the permission of Elizabeth, she had passed
+the evening of the night on which the murder had been committed, at the
+house of an aunt at Chêne, a village situated at about a league from
+Geneva. On her return, at about nine o’clock, she met a man, who asked
+her if she had seen any thing of the child who was lost. She was alarmed
+by this account, and passed several hours in looking for him, when the
+gates of Geneva were shut, and she was forced to remain several hours of
+the night in a barn belonging to a cottage, being unwilling to call up
+the inhabitants, to whom she was well known. Unable to rest or sleep,
+she quitted her asylum early, that she might again endeavour to find my
+brother. If she had gone near the spot where his body lay, it was
+without her knowledge. That she had been bewildered when questioned by
+the market-woman, was not surprising, since she had passed a sleepless
+night, and the fate of poor William was yet uncertain. Concerning the
+picture she could give no account.
+
+“I know,” continued the unhappy victim, “how heavily and fatally this
+one circumstance weighs against me, but I have no power of explaining
+it; and when I have expressed my utter ignorance, I am only left to
+conjecture concerning the probabilities by which it might have been
+placed in my pocket. But here also I am checked. I believe that I have
+no enemy on earth, and none surely would have been so wicked as to
+destroy me wantonly. Did the murderer place it there? I know of no
+opportunity afforded him for so doing; or if I had, why should he have
+stolen the jewel, to part with it again so soon?
+
+“I commit my cause to the justice of my judges, yet I see no room for
+hope. I beg permission to have a few witnesses examined concerning my
+character; and if their testimony shall not overweigh my supposed guilt,
+I must be condemned, although I would pledge my salvation on my
+innocence.”
+
+Several witnesses were called, who had known her for many years, and
+they spoke well of her; but fear, and hatred of the crime of which they
+supposed her guilty, rendered them timorous, and unwilling to come
+forward. Elizabeth saw even this last resource, her excellent
+dispositions and irreproachable conduct, about to fail the accused,
+when, although violently agitated, she desired permission to address the
+court.
+
+“I am,” said she, “the cousin of the unhappy child who was murdered, or
+rather his sister, for I was educated by and have lived with his parents
+ever since and even long before his birth. It may therefore be judged
+indecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when I see a
+fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended
+friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of
+her character. I am well acquainted with the accused. I have lived in
+the same house with her, at one time for five, and at another for nearly
+two years. During all that period she appeared to me the most amiable
+and benevolent of human creatures. She nursed Madame Frankenstein, my
+aunt, in her last illness with the greatest affection and care; and
+afterwards attended her own mother during a tedious illness, in a manner
+that excited the admiration of all who knew her. After which she again
+lived in my uncle’s house, where she was beloved by all the family. She
+was warmly attached to the child who is now dead, and acted towards him
+like a most affectionate mother. For my own part, I do not hesitate to
+say, that, notwithstanding all the evidence produced against her, I
+believe and rely on her perfect innocence. She had no temptation for
+such an action: as to the bauble on which the chief proof rests, if she
+had earnestly desired it, I should have willingly given it to her; so
+much do I esteem and value her.”
+
+Excellent Elizabeth! A murmur of approbation was heard; but it was
+excited by her generous interference, and not in favour of poor Justine,
+on whom the public indignation was turned with renewed violence,
+charging her with the blackest ingratitude. She herself wept as
+Elizabeth spoke, but she did not answer. My own agitation and anguish
+was extreme during the whole trial. I believed in her innocence; I knew
+it. Could the dæmon, who had (I did not for a minute doubt) murdered my
+brother, also in his hellish sport have betrayed the innocent to death
+and ignominy. I could not sustain the horror of my situation; and when I
+perceived that the popular voice, and the countenances of the judges,
+had already condemned my unhappy victim, I rushed out of the court in
+agony. The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained
+by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom, and would not
+forego their hold.
+
+I passed a night of unmingled wretchedness. In the morning I went to the
+court; my lips and throat were parched. I dared not ask the fatal
+question; but I was known, and the officer guessed the cause of my
+visit. The ballots had been thrown; they were all black, and Justine was
+condemned.
+
+I cannot pretend to describe what I then felt. I had before experienced
+sensations of horror; and I have endeavoured to bestow upon them
+adequate expressions, but words cannot convey an idea of the
+heart-sickening despair that I then endured. The person to whom I
+addressed myself added, that Justine had already confessed her guilt.
+“That evidence,” he observed, “was hardly required in so glaring a case,
+but I am glad of it; and, indeed, none of our judges like to condemn a
+criminal upon circumstantial evidence, be it ever so decisive.”
+
+When I returned home, Elizabeth eagerly demanded the result.
+
+“My cousin,” replied I, “it is decided as you may have expected; all
+judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer, than that one guilty
+should escape. But she has confessed.”
+
+This was a dire blow to poor Elizabeth, who had relied with firmness
+upon Justine’s innocence. “Alas!” said she, “how shall I ever again
+believe in human benevolence? Justine, whom I loved and esteemed as my
+sister, how could she put on those smiles of innocence only to betray;
+her mild eyes seemed incapable of any severity or ill-humour, and yet
+she has committed a murder.”
+
+Soon after we heard that the poor victim had expressed a wish to see my
+cousin. My father wished her not to go; but said, that he left it to her
+own judgment and feelings to decide. “Yes,” said Elizabeth, “I will go,
+although she is guilty; and you, Victor, shall accompany me: I cannot go
+alone.” The idea of this visit was torture to me, yet I could not
+refuse.
+
+We entered the gloomy prison-chamber, and beheld Justine sitting on some
+straw at the further end; her hands were manacled, and her head rested
+on her knees. She rose on seeing us enter; and when we were left alone
+with her, she threw herself at the feet of Elizabeth, weeping bitterly.
+My cousin wept also.
+
+“Oh, Justine!” said she, “why did you rob me of my last consolation. I
+relied on your innocence; and although I was then very wretched, I was
+not so miserable as I am now.”
+
+“And do you also believe that I am so very, very wicked? Do you also
+join with my enemies to crush me?” Her voice was suffocated with sobs.
+
+“Rise, my poor girl,” said Elizabeth, “why do you kneel, if you are
+innocent? I am not one of your enemies; I believed you guiltless,
+notwithstanding every evidence, until I heard that you had yourself
+declared your guilt. That report, you say, is false; and be assured,
+dear Justine, that nothing can shake my confidence in you for a moment,
+but your own confession.”
+
+“I did confess; but I confessed a lie. I confessed, that I might obtain
+absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my
+other sins. The God of heaven forgive me! Ever since I was condemned, my
+confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced, until I almost
+began to think that I was the monster that he said I was. He threatened
+excommunication and hell fire in my last moments, if I continued
+obdurate. Dear lady, I had none to support me; all looked on me as a
+wretch doomed to ignominy and perdition. What could I do? In an evil
+hour I subscribed to a lie; and now only am I truly miserable.”
+
+She paused, weeping, and then continued—“I thought with horror, my
+sweet lady, that you should believe your Justine, whom your blessed aunt
+had so highly honoured, and whom you loved, was a creature capable of a
+crime which none but the devil himself could have perpetrated. Dear
+William! dearest blessed child! I soon shall see you again in heaven,
+where we shall all be happy; and that consoles me, going as I am to
+suffer ignominy and death.”
+
+“Oh, Justine! forgive me for having for one moment distrusted you. Why
+did you confess? But do not mourn, my dear girl; I will every where
+proclaim your innocence, and force belief. Yet you must die; you, my
+playfellow, my companion, my more than sister. I never can survive so
+horrible a misfortune.”
+
+“Dear, sweet Elizabeth, do not weep. You ought to raise me with thoughts
+of a better life, and elevate me from the petty cares of this world of
+injustice and strife. Do not you, excellent friend, drive me to
+despair.”
+
+“I will try to comfort you; but this, I fear, is an evil too deep and
+poignant to admit of consolation, for there is no hope. Yet heaven
+bless thee, my dearest Justine, with resignation, and a confidence
+elevated beyond this world. Oh! how I hate its shews and mockeries! when
+one creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of life in a
+slow torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking
+with the blood of innocence, believe that they have done a great deed.
+They call this _retribution_. Hateful name! When that word is
+pronounced, I know greater and more horrid punishments are going to be
+inflicted than the gloomiest tyrant has ever invented to satiate his
+utmost revenge. Yet this is not consolation for you, my Justine, unless
+indeed that you may glory in escaping from so miserable a den. Alas! I
+would I were in peace with my aunt and my lovely William, escaped from a
+world which is hateful to me, and the visages of men which I abhor.”
+
+Justine smiled languidly. “This, dear lady, is despair, and not
+resignation. I must not learn the lesson that you would teach me. Talk
+of something else, something that will bring peace, and not increase of
+misery.”
+
+During this conversation I had retired to a corner of the prison-room,
+where I could conceal the horrid anguish that possessed me. Despair! Who
+dared talk of that? The poor victim, who on the morrow was to pass the
+dreary boundary between life and death, felt not as I did, such deep and
+bitter agony. I gnashed my teeth, and ground them together, uttering a
+groan that came from my inmost soul. Justine started. When she saw who
+it was, she approached me, and said, “Dear Sir, you are very kind to
+visit me; you, I hope, do not believe that I am guilty.”
+
+I could not answer. “No, Justine,” said Elizabeth; “he is more convinced
+of your innocence than I was; for even when he heard that you had
+confessed, he did not credit it.”
+
+“I truly thank him. In these last moments I feel the sincerest gratitude
+towards those who think of me with kindness. How sweet is the affection
+of others to such a wretch as I am! It removes more than half my
+misfortune; and I feel as if I could die in peace, now that my innocence
+is acknowledged by you, dear lady, and your cousin.”
+
+Thus the poor sufferer tried to comfort others and herself. She indeed
+gained the resignation she desired. But I, the true murderer, felt the
+never-dying worm alive in my bosom, which allowed of no hope or
+consolation. Elizabeth also wept, and was unhappy; but her’s also was
+the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair
+moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness. Anguish and
+despair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within
+me, which nothing could extinguish. We staid several hours with Justine;
+and it was with great difficulty that Elizabeth could tear herself away.
+“I wish,” cried she, “that I were to die with you; I cannot live in this
+world of misery.”
+
+Justine assumed an air of cheerfulness, while she with difficulty
+repressed her bitter tears. She embraced Elizabeth, and said, in a voice
+of half-suppressed emotion, “Farewell, sweet lady, dearest Elizabeth, my
+beloved and only friend; may heaven in its bounty bless and preserve
+you; may this be the last misfortune that you will ever suffer. Live,
+and be happy, and make others so.”
+
+As we returned, Elizabeth said, “You know not, my dear Victor, how much
+I am relieved, now that I trust in the innocence of this unfortunate
+girl. I never could again have known peace, if I had been deceived in my
+reliance on her. For the moment that I did believe her guilty, I felt an
+anguish that I could not have long sustained. Now my heart is lightened.
+The innocent suffers; but she whom I thought amiable and good has not
+betrayed the trust I reposed in her, and I am consoled.”
+
+Amiable cousin! such were your thoughts, mild and gentle as your own
+dear eyes and voice. But I—I was a wretch, and none ever conceived of
+the misery that I then endured.
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+FRANKENSTEIN;
+
+OR,
+
+THE MODERN PROMETHEUS.
+
+
+    IN THREE VOLUMES.
+    VOL. II.
+
+    London:
+
+    _PRINTED FOR_
+    LACKINGTON, HUGHES, HARDING, MAVOR, & JONES,
+    FINSBURY SQUARE.
+
+    1818.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
+    To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
+    From darkness to promote me?——
+
+    Paradise Lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Nothing is more painful to the human mind, than, after the feelings have
+been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of
+inaction and certainty which follows, and deprives the soul both of hope
+and fear. Justine died; she rested; and I was alive. The blood flowed
+freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my
+heart, which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered
+like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond
+description horrible, and more, much more, (I persuaded myself) was yet
+behind. Yet my heart overflowed with kindness, and the love of virtue. I
+had begun life with benevolent intentions, and thirsted for the moment
+when I should put them in practice, and make myself useful to my
+fellow-beings. Now all was blasted: instead of that serenity of
+conscience, which allowed me to look back upon the past with
+self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I
+was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to
+a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe.
+
+This state of mind preyed upon my health, which had entirely recovered
+from the first shock it had sustained. I shunned the face of man; all
+sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only
+consolation—deep, dark, death-like solitude.
+
+My father observed with pain the alteration perceptible in my
+disposition and habits, and endeavoured to reason with me on the folly
+of giving way to immoderate grief. “Do you think, Victor,” said he,
+“that I do not suffer also? No one could love a child more than I loved
+your brother;” (tears came into his eyes as he spoke); “but is it not a
+duty to the survivors, that we should refrain from augmenting their
+unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed
+to yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or
+even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for
+society.”
+
+This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case; I
+should have been the first to hide my grief, and console my friends, if
+remorse had not mingled its bitterness with my other sensations. Now I
+could only answer my father with a look of despair, and endeavour to
+hide myself from his view.
+
+About this time we retired to our house at Belrive. This change was
+particularly agreeable to me. The shutting of the gates regularly at ten
+o’clock, and the impossibility of remaining on the lake after that
+hour, had rendered our residence within the walls of Geneva very irksome
+to me. I was now free. Often, after the rest of the family had retired
+for the night, I took the boat, and passed many hours upon the water.
+Sometimes, with my sails set, I was carried by the wind; and sometimes,
+after rowing into the middle of the lake, I left the boat to pursue its
+own course, and gave way to my own miserable reflections. I was often
+tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing
+that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly, if I except
+some bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard
+only when I approached the shore—often, I say, I was tempted to plunge
+into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my
+calamities for ever. But I was restrained, when I thought of the heroic
+and suffering Elizabeth, whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was
+bound up in mine. I thought also of my father, and surviving brother:
+should I by my base desertion leave them exposed and unprotected to the
+malice of the fiend whom I had let loose among them?
+
+At these moments I wept bitterly, and wished that peace would revisit my
+mind only that I might afford them consolation and happiness. But that
+could not be. Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of
+unalterable evils; and I lived in daily fear, lest the monster whom I
+had created should perpetrate some new wickedness. I had an obscure
+feeling that all was not over, and that he would still commit some
+signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the
+recollection of the past. There was always scope for fear, so long as
+any thing I loved remained behind. My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be
+conceived. When I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became
+inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so
+thoughtlessly bestowed. When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my
+hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation. I would have made a
+pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I, when there, have
+precipitated him to their base. I wished to see him again, that I might
+wreak the utmost extent of anger on his head, and avenge the deaths of
+William and Justine.
+
+Our house was the house of mourning. My father’s health was deeply
+shaken by the horror of the recent events. Elizabeth was sad and
+desponding; she no longer took delight in her ordinary occupations; all
+pleasure seemed to her sacrilege toward the dead; eternal woe and tears
+she then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence so
+blasted and destroyed. She was no longer that happy creature, who in
+earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake, and talked with
+ecstacy of our future prospects. She had become grave, and often
+conversed of the inconstancy of fortune, and the instability of human
+life.
+
+“When I reflect, my dear cousin,” said she, “on the miserable death of
+Justine Moritz, I no longer see the world and its works as they before
+appeared to me. Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and
+injustice, that I read in books or heard from others, as tales of
+ancient days, or imaginary evils; at least they were remote, and more
+familiar to reason than to the imagination; but now misery has come
+home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other’s blood.
+Yet I am certainly unjust. Every body believed that poor girl to be
+guilty; and if she could have committed the crime for which she
+suffered, assuredly she would have been the most depraved of human
+creatures. For the sake of a few jewels, to have murdered the son of her
+benefactor and friend, a child whom she had nursed from its birth, and
+appeared to love as if it had been her own! I could not consent to the
+death of any human being; but certainly I should have thought such a
+creature unfit to remain in the society of men. Yet she was innocent. I
+know, I feel she was innocent; you are of the same opinion, and that
+confirms me. Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth,
+who can assure themselves of certain happiness? I feel as if I were
+walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are
+crowding, and endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss. William and
+Justine were assassinated, and the murderer escapes; he walks about the
+world free, and perhaps respected. But even if I were condemned to
+suffer on the scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places
+with such a wretch.”
+
+I listened to this discourse with the extremest agony. I, not in deed,
+but in effect, was the true murderer. Elizabeth read my anguish in my
+countenance, and kindly taking my hand said, “My dearest cousin, you
+must calm yourself. These events have affected me, God knows how deeply;
+but I am not so wretched as you are. There is an expression of despair,
+and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance, that makes me tremble. Be
+calm, my dear Victor; I would sacrifice my life to your peace. We surely
+shall be happy: quiet in our native country, and not mingling in the
+world, what can disturb our tranquillity?”
+
+She shed tears as she said this, distrusting the very solace that she
+gave; but at the same time she smiled, that she might chase away the
+fiend that lurked in my heart. My father, who saw in the unhappiness
+that was painted in my face only an exaggeration of that sorrow which I
+might naturally feel, thought that an amusement suited to my taste would
+be the best means of restoring to me my wonted serenity. It was from
+this cause that he had removed to the country; and, induced by the same
+motive, he now proposed that we should all make an excursion to the
+valley of Chamounix. I had been there before, but Elizabeth and Ernest
+never had; and both had often expressed an earnest desire to see the
+scenery of this place, which had been described to them as so wonderful
+and sublime. Accordingly we departed from Geneva on this tour about the
+middle of the month of August, nearly two months after the death of
+Justine.
+
+The weather was uncommonly fine; and if mine had been a sorrow to be
+chased away by any fleeting circumstance, this excursion would certainly
+have had the effect intended by my father. As it was, I was somewhat
+interested in the scene; it sometimes lulled, although it could not
+extinguish my grief. During the first day we travelled in a carriage. In
+the morning we had seen the mountains at a distance, towards which we
+gradually advanced. We perceived that the valley through which we wound,
+and which was formed by the river Arve, whose course we followed, closed
+in upon us by degrees; and when the sun had set, we beheld immense
+mountains and precipices overhanging us on every side, and heard the
+sound of the river raging among rocks, and the dashing of water-falls
+around.
+
+The next day we pursued our journey upon mules; and as we ascended still
+higher, the valley assumed a more magnificent and astonishing character.
+Ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains; the
+impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from
+among the trees, formed a scene of singular beauty. But it was augmented
+and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and shining
+pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the
+habitations of another race of beings.
+
+We passed the bridge of Pelissier, where the ravine, which the river
+forms, opened before us, and we began to ascend the mountain that
+overhangs it. Soon after we entered the valley of Chamounix. This valley
+is more wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and picturesque as
+that of Servox, through which we had just passed. The high and snowy
+mountains were its immediate boundaries; but we saw no more ruined
+castles and fertile fields. Immense glaciers approached the road; we
+heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche, and marked the
+smoke of its passage. Mont Blânc, the supreme and magnificent Mont
+Blânc, raised itself from the surrounding _aiguilles_, and its
+tremendous _dome_ overlooked the valley.
+
+During this journey, I sometimes joined Elizabeth, and exerted myself to
+point out to her the various beauties of the scene. I often suffered my
+mule to lag behind, and indulged in the misery of reflection. At other
+times I spurred on the animal before my companions, that I might forget
+them, the world, and, more than all, myself. When at a distance, I
+alighted, and threw myself on the grass, weighed down by horror and
+despair. At eight in the evening I arrived at Chamounix. My father and
+Elizabeth were very much fatigued; Ernest, who accompanied us, was
+delighted, and in high spirits: the only circumstance that detracted
+from his pleasure was the south wind, and the rain it seemed to promise
+for the next day.
+
+We retired early to our apartments, but not to sleep; at least I did
+not. I remained many hours at the window, watching the pallid lightning
+that played above Mont Blânc, and listening to the rushing of the Arve,
+which ran below my window.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The next day, contrary to the prognostications of our guides, was fine,
+although clouded. We visited the source of the Arveiron, and rode about
+the valley until evening. These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded
+me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving. They
+elevated me from all littleness of feeling; and although they did not
+remove my grief, they subdued and tranquillized it. In some degree,
+also, they diverted my mind from the thoughts over which it had brooded
+for the last month. I returned in the evening, fatigued, but less
+unhappy, and conversed with my family with more cheerfulness than had
+been my custom for some time. My father was pleased, and Elizabeth
+overjoyed. “My dear cousin,” said she, “you see what happiness you
+diffuse when you are happy; do not relapse again!”
+
+The following morning the rain poured down in torrents, and thick mists
+hid the summits of the mountains. I rose early, but felt unusually
+melancholy. The rain depressed me; my old feelings recurred, and I was
+miserable. I knew how disappointed my father would be at this sudden
+change, and I wished to avoid him until I had recovered myself so far as
+to be enabled to conceal those feelings that overpowered me. I knew
+that they would remain that day at the inn; and as I had ever inured
+myself to rain, moisture, and cold, I resolved to go alone to the summit
+of Montanvert. I remembered the effect that the view of the tremendous
+and ever-moving glacier had produced upon my mind when I first saw it.
+It had then filled me with a sublime ecstacy that gave wings to the
+soul, and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy.
+The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the
+effect of solemnizing my mind, and causing me to forget the passing
+cares of life. I determined to go alone, for I was well acquainted with
+the path, and the presence of another would destroy the solitary
+grandeur of the scene.
+
+The ascent is precipitous, but the path is cut into continual and short
+windings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity of the
+mountain. It is a scene terrifically desolate. In a thousand spots the
+traces of the winter avalanche may be perceived, where trees lie broken
+and strewed on the ground; some entirely destroyed, others bent, leaning
+upon the jutting rocks of the mountain, or transversely upon other
+trees. The path, as you ascend higher, is intersected by ravines of
+snow, down which stones continually roll from above; one of them is
+particularly dangerous, as the slightest sound, such as even speaking in
+a loud voice, produces a concussion of air sufficient to draw
+destruction upon the head of the speaker. The pines are not tall or
+luxuriant, but they are sombre, and add an air of severity to the scene.
+I looked on the valley beneath; vast mists were rising from the rivers
+which ran through it, and curling in thick wreaths around the opposite
+mountains, whose summits were hid in the uniform clouds, while rain
+poured from the dark sky, and added to the melancholy impression I
+received from the objects around me. Alas! why does man boast of
+sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders
+them more necessary beings. If our impulses were confined to hunger,
+thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by
+every wind that blows, and a chance word or scene that that word may
+convey to us.
+
+    We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.
+      We rise; one wand’ring thought pollutes the day.
+    We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh, or weep,
+      Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;
+    It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,
+      The path of its departure still is free.
+    Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
+      Nought may endure but mutability!
+
+It was nearly noon when I arrived at the top of the ascent. For some
+time I sat upon the rock that overlooks the sea of ice. A mist covered
+both that and the surrounding mountains. Presently a breeze dissipated
+the cloud, and I descended upon the glacier. The surface is very uneven,
+rising like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and
+interspersed by rifts that sink deep. The field of ice is almost a
+league in width, but I spent nearly two hours in crossing it. The
+opposite mountain is a bare perpendicular rock. From the side where I
+now stood Montanvert was exactly opposite, at the distance of a league;
+and above it rose Mont Blânc, in awful majesty. I remained in a recess
+of the rock, gazing on this wonderful and stupendous scene. The sea, or
+rather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains, whose
+aërial summits hung over its recesses. Their icy and glittering peaks
+shone in the sunlight over the clouds. My heart, which was before
+sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed—“Wandering
+spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow
+me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the
+joys of life.”
+
+As I said this, I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance,
+advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices
+in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature also, as
+he approached, seemed to exceed that of man. I was troubled: a mist came
+over my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me; but I was quickly
+restored by the cold gale of the mountains. I perceived, as the shape
+came nearer, (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch
+whom I had created. I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait
+his approach, and then close with him in mortal combat. He approached;
+his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and
+malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible
+for human eyes. But I scarcely observed this; anger and hatred had at
+first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him
+with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt.
+
+“Devil!” I exclaimed, “do you dare approach me? and do not you fear the
+fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head? Begone, vile
+insect! or rather stay, that I may trample you to dust! and, oh, that I
+could, with the extinction of your miserable existence, restore those
+victims whom you have so diabolically murdered!”
+
+“I expected this reception,” said the dæmon. “All men hate the wretched;
+how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet
+you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art
+bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You
+purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty
+towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If
+you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace;
+but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated
+with the blood of your remaining friends.”
+
+“Abhorred monster! fiend that thou art! the tortures of hell are too
+mild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! you reproach me with
+your creation; come on then, that I may extinguish the spark which I so
+negligently bestowed.”
+
+My rage was without bounds; I sprang on him, impelled by all the
+feelings which can arm one being against the existence of another.
+
+He easily eluded me, and said,
+
+“Be calm! I entreat you to hear me, before you give vent to your hatred
+on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to
+increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of
+anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made
+me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine; my joints
+more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to
+thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my
+natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which
+thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other, and
+trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and
+affection, is most due. Remember, that I am thy creature: I ought to be
+thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy
+for no misdeed. Every where I see bliss, from which I alone am
+irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.
+Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.”
+
+“Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you and
+me; we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in
+which one must fall.”
+
+“How can I move thee? Will no entreaties cause thee to turn a favourable
+eye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion? Believe
+me, Frankenstein: I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and
+humanity: but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor
+me; what hope can I gather from your fellow-creatures, who owe me
+nothing? they spurn and hate me. The desert mountains and dreary
+glaciers are my refuge. I have wandered here many days; the caves of
+ice, which I only do not fear, are a dwelling to me, and the only one
+which man does not grudge. These bleak skies I hail, for they are kinder
+to me than your fellow-beings. If the multitude of mankind knew of my
+existence, they would do as you do, and arm themselves for my
+destruction. Shall I not then hate them who abhor me? I will keep no
+terms with my enemies. I am miserable, and they shall share my
+wretchedness. Yet it is in your power to recompense me, and deliver them
+from an evil which it only remains for you to make so great, that not
+only you and your family, but thousands of others, shall be swallowed
+up in the whirlwinds of its rage. Let your compassion be moved, and do
+not disdain me. Listen to my tale: when you have heard that, abandon or
+commiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve. But hear me. The
+guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they may be, to speak in
+their own defence before they are condemned. Listen to me, Frankenstein.
+You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience,
+destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man! Yet I
+ask you not to spare me: listen to me; and then, if you can, and if you
+will, destroy the work of your hands.”
+
+“Why do you call to my remembrance circumstances of which I shudder to
+reflect, that I have been the miserable origin and author? Cursed be the
+day, abhorred devil, in which you first saw light! Cursed (although I
+curse myself) be the hands that formed you! You have made me wretched
+beyond expression. You have left me no power to consider whether I am
+just to you, or not. Begone! relieve me from the sight of your detested
+form.”
+
+“Thus I relieve thee, my creator,” he said, and placed his hated hands
+before my eyes, which I flung from me with violence; “thus I take from
+thee a sight which you abhor. Still thou canst listen to me, and grant
+me thy compassion. By the virtues that I once possessed, I demand this
+from you. Hear my tale; it is long and strange, and the temperature of
+this place is not fitting to your fine sensations; come to the hut upon
+the mountain. The sun is yet high in the heavens; before it descends to
+hide itself behind yon snowy precipices, and illuminate another world,
+you will have heard my story, and can decide. On you it rests, whether I
+quit for ever the neighbourhood of man, and lead a harmless life, or
+become the scourge of your fellow-creatures, and the author of your own
+speedy ruin.”
+
+As he said this, he led the way across the ice: I followed. My heart was
+full, and I did not answer him; but, as I proceeded, I weighed the
+various arguments that he had used, and determined at least to listen to
+his tale. I was partly urged by curiosity, and compassion confirmed my
+resolution. I had hitherto supposed him to be the murderer of my
+brother, and I eagerly sought a confirmation or denial of this opinion.
+For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards
+his creature were, and that I ought to render him happy before I
+complained of his wickedness. These motives urged me to comply with his
+demand. We crossed the ice, therefore, and ascended the opposite rock.
+The air was cold, and the rain again began to descend: we entered the
+hut, the fiend with an air of exultation, I with a heavy heart, and
+depressed spirits. But I consented to listen; and, seating myself by the
+fire which my odious companion had lighted, he thus began his tale.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+“It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original æra of
+my being: all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct.
+A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard,
+and smelt, at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I
+learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses. By
+degrees, I remember, a stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I
+was obliged to shut my eyes. Darkness then came over me, and troubled
+me; but hardly had I felt this, when, by opening my eyes, as I now
+suppose, the light poured in upon me again. I walked, and, I believe,
+descended; but I presently found a great alteration in my sensations.
+Before, dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me, impervious to my touch
+or sight; but I now found that I could wander on at liberty, with no
+obstacles which I could not either surmount or avoid. The light became
+more and more oppressive to me; and, the heat wearying me as I walked, I
+sought a place where I could receive shade. This was the forest near
+Ingolstadt; and here I lay by the side of a brook resting from my
+fatigue, until I felt tormented by hunger and thirst. This roused me
+from my nearly dormant state, and I ate some berries which I found
+hanging on the trees, or lying on the ground. I slaked my thirst at the
+brook; and then lying down, was overcome by sleep.
+
+“It was dark when I awoke; I felt cold also, and half-frightened as it
+were instinctively, finding myself so desolate. Before I had quitted
+your apartment, on a sensation of cold, I had covered myself with some
+clothes; but these were insufficient to secure me from the dews of
+night. I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch; I knew, and could
+distinguish, nothing; but, feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat
+down and wept.
+
+“Soon a gentle light stole over the heavens, and gave me a sensation of
+pleasure. I started up, and beheld a radiant form rise from among the
+trees. I gazed with a kind of wonder. It moved slowly, but it
+enlightened my path; and I again went out in search of berries. I was
+still cold, when under one of the trees I found a huge cloak, with which
+I covered myself, and sat down upon the ground. No distinct ideas
+occupied my mind; all was confused. I felt light, and hunger, and
+thirst, and darkness; innumerable sounds rung in my ears, and on all
+sides various scents saluted me: the only object that I could
+distinguish was the bright moon, and I fixed my eyes on that with
+pleasure.
+
+“Several changes of day and night passed, and the orb of night had
+greatly lessened when I began to distinguish my sensations from each
+other. I gradually saw plainly the clear stream that supplied me with
+drink, and the trees that shaded me with their foliage. I was delighted
+when I first discovered that a pleasant sound, which often saluted my
+ears, proceeded from the throats of the little winged animals who had
+often intercepted the light from my eyes. I began also to observe, with
+greater accuracy, the forms that surrounded me, and to perceive the
+boundaries of the radiant roof of light which canopied me. Sometimes I
+tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds, but was unable.
+Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the
+uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into
+silence again.
+
+“The moon had disappeared from the night, and again, with a lessened
+form, shewed itself, while I still remained in the forest. My sensations
+had, by this time, become distinct, and my mind received every day
+additional ideas. My eyes became accustomed to the light, and to
+perceive objects in their right forms; I distinguished the insect from
+the herb, and, by degrees, one herb from another. I found that the
+sparrow uttered none but harsh notes, whilst those of the blackbird and
+thrush were sweet and enticing.
+
+“One day, when I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire which had been
+left by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the
+warmth I experienced from it. In my joy I thrust my hand into the live
+embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain. How strange, I
+thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects! I
+examined the materials of the fire, and to my joy found it to be
+composed of wood. I quickly collected some branches; but they were wet,
+and would not burn. I was pained at this, and sat still watching the
+operation of the fire. The wet wood which I had placed near the heat
+dried, and itself became inflamed. I reflected on this; and, by touching
+the various branches, I discovered the cause, and busied myself in
+collecting a great quantity of wood, that I might dry it, and have a
+plentiful supply of fire. When night came on, and brought sleep with it,
+I was in the greatest fear lest my fire should be extinguished. I
+covered it carefully with dry wood and leaves, and placed wet branches
+upon it; and then, spreading my cloak, I lay on the ground, and sunk
+into sleep.
+
+“It was morning when I awoke, and my first care was to visit the fire. I
+uncovered it, and a gentle breeze quickly fanned it into a flame. I
+observed this also, and contrived a fan of branches, which roused the
+embers when they were nearly extinguished. When night came again, I
+found, with pleasure, that the fire gave light as well as heat; and that
+the discovery of this element was useful to me in my food; for I found
+some of the offals that the travellers had left had been roasted, and
+tasted much more savoury than the berries I gathered from the trees. I
+tried, therefore, to dress my food in the same manner, placing it on the
+live embers. I found that the berries were spoiled by this operation,
+and the nuts and roots much improved.
+
+“Food, however, became scarce; and I often spent the whole day searching
+in vain for a few acorns to assuage the pangs of hunger. When I found
+this, I resolved to quit the place that I had hitherto inhabited, to
+seek for one where the few wants I experienced would be more easily
+satisfied. In this emigration, I exceedingly lamented the loss of the
+fire which I had obtained through accident, and knew not how to
+re-produce it. I gave several hours to the serious consideration of
+this difficulty; but I was obliged to relinquish all attempt to supply
+it; and, wrapping myself up in my cloak, I struck across the wood
+towards the setting sun. I passed three days in these rambles, and at
+length discovered the open country. A great fall of snow had taken place
+the night before, and the fields were of one uniform white; the
+appearance was disconsolate, and I found my feet chilled by the cold
+damp substance that covered the ground.
+
+“It was about seven in the morning, and I longed to obtain food and
+shelter; at length I perceived a small hut, on a rising ground, which
+had doubtless been built for the convenience of some shepherd. This was
+a new sight to me; and I examined the structure with great curiosity.
+Finding the door open, I entered. An old man sat in it, near a fire,
+over which he was preparing his breakfast. He turned on hearing a noise;
+and, perceiving me, shrieked loudly, and, quitting the hut, ran across
+the fields with a speed of which his debilitated form hardly appeared
+capable. His appearance, different from any I had ever before seen, and
+his flight, somewhat surprised me. But I was enchanted by the appearance
+of the hut: here the snow and rain could not penetrate; the ground was
+dry; and it presented to me then as exquisite and divine a retreat as
+Pandæmonium appeared to the dæmons of hell after their sufferings in the
+lake of fire. I greedily devoured the remnants of the shepherd’s
+breakfast, which consisted of bread, cheese, milk, and wine; the
+latter, however, I did not like. Then overcome by fatigue, I lay down
+among some straw, and fell asleep.
+
+“It was noon when I awoke; and, allured by the warmth of the sun, which
+shone brightly on the white ground, I determined to recommence my
+travels; and, depositing the remains of the peasant’s breakfast in a
+wallet I found, I proceeded across the fields for several hours, until
+at sunset I arrived at a village. How miraculous did this appear! the
+huts, the neater cottages, and stately houses, engaged my admiration by
+turns. The vegetables in the gardens, the milk and cheese that I saw
+placed at the windows of some of the cottages, allured my appetite. One
+of the best of these I entered; but I had hardly placed my foot within
+the door, before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted.
+The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until,
+grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I
+escaped to the open country, and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel,
+quite bare, and making a wretched appearance after the palaces I had
+beheld in the village. This hovel, however, joined a cottage of a neat
+and pleasant appearance; but, after my late dearly-bought experience, I
+dared not enter it. My place of refuge was constructed of wood, but so
+low, that I could with difficulty sit upright in it. No wood, however,
+was placed on the earth, which formed the floor, but it was dry; and
+although the wind entered it by innumerable chinks, I found it an
+agreeable asylum from the snow and rain.
+
+“Here then I retreated, and lay down, happy to have found a shelter,
+however miserable, from the inclemency of the season, and still more
+from the barbarity of man.
+
+“As soon as morning dawned, I crept from my kennel, that I might view
+the adjacent cottage, and discover if I could remain in the habitation I
+had found. It was situated against the back of the cottage, and
+surrounded on the sides which were exposed by a pig-stye and a clear
+pool of water. One part was open, and by that I had crept in; but now I
+covered every crevice by which I might be perceived with stones and
+wood, yet in such a manner that I might move them on occasion to pass
+out: all the light I enjoyed came through the stye, and that was
+sufficient for me.
+
+“Having thus arranged my dwelling, and carpeted it with clean straw, I
+retired; for I saw the figure of a man at a distance, and I remembered
+too well my treatment the night before, to trust myself in his power. I
+had first, however, provided for my sustenance for that day, by a loaf
+of coarse bread, which I purloined, and a cup with which I could drink,
+more conveniently than from my hand, of the pure water which flowed by
+my retreat. The floor was a little raised, so that it was kept perfectly
+dry, and by its vicinity to the chimney of the cottage it was tolerably
+warm.
+
+“Being thus provided, I resolved to reside in this hovel, until
+something should occur which might alter my determination. It was indeed
+a paradise, compared to the bleak forest, my former residence, the
+rain-dropping branches, and dank earth. I ate my breakfast with
+pleasure, and was about to remove a plank to procure myself a little
+water, when I heard a step, and, looking through a small chink, I beheld
+a young creature, with a pail on her head, passing before my hovel. The
+girl was young and of gentle demeanour, unlike what I have since found
+cottagers and farm-house servants to be. Yet she was meanly dressed, a
+coarse blue petticoat and a linen jacket being her only garb; her fair
+hair was plaited, but not adorned; she looked patient, yet sad. I lost
+sight of her; and in about a quarter of an hour she returned, bearing
+the pail, which was now partly filled with milk. As she walked along,
+seemingly incommoded by the burden, a young man met her, whose
+countenance expressed a deeper despondence. Uttering a few sounds with
+an air of melancholy, he took the pail from her head, and bore it to the
+cottage himself. She followed, and they disappeared. Presently I saw the
+young man again, with some tools in his hand, cross the field behind the
+cottage; and the girl was also busied, sometimes in the house, and
+sometimes in the yard.
+
+“On examining my dwelling, I found that one of the windows of the
+cottage had formerly occupied a part of it, but the panes had been
+filled up with wood. In one of these was a small and almost
+imperceptible chink, through which the eye could just penetrate. Through
+this crevice, a small room was visible, white-washed and clean, but very
+bare of furniture. In one corner, near a small fire, sat an old man,
+leaning his head on his hands in a disconsolate attitude. The young girl
+was occupied in arranging the cottage; but presently she took something
+out of a drawer, which employed her hands, and she sat down beside the
+old man, who, taking up an instrument, began to play, and to produce
+sounds, sweeter than the voice of the thrush or the nightingale. It was
+a lovely sight, even to me, poor wretch! who had never beheld aught
+beautiful before. The silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged
+cottager, won my reverence; while the gentle manners of the girl enticed
+my love. He played a sweet mournful air, which I perceived drew tears
+from the eyes of his amiable companion, of which the old man took no
+notice, until she sobbed audibly; he then pronounced a few sounds, and
+the fair creature, leaving her work, knelt at his feet. He raised her,
+and smiled with such kindness and affection, that I felt sensations of a
+peculiar and over-powering nature: they were a mixture of pain and
+pleasure, such as I had never before experienced, either from hunger or
+cold, warmth or food; and I withdrew from the window, unable to bear
+these emotions.
+
+“Soon after this the young man returned, bearing on his shoulders a load
+of wood. The girl met him at the door, helped to relieve him of his
+burden, and, taking some of the fuel into the cottage, placed it on the
+fire; then she and the youth went apart into a nook of the cottage, and
+he shewed her a large loaf and a piece of cheese. She seemed pleased;
+and went into the garden for some roots and plants, which she placed in
+water, and then upon the fire. She afterwards continued her work, whilst
+the young man went into the garden, and appeared busily employed in
+digging and pulling up roots. After he had been employed thus about an
+hour, the young woman joined him, and they entered the cottage together.
+
+“The old man had, in the mean time, been pensive; but, on the appearance
+of his companions, he assumed a more cheerful air, and they sat down to
+eat. The meal was quickly dispatched. The young woman was again occupied
+in arranging the cottage; the old man walked before the cottage in the
+sun for a few minutes, leaning on the arm of the youth. Nothing could
+exceed in beauty the contrast between these two excellent creatures. One
+was old, with silver hairs and a countenance beaming with benevolence
+and love: the younger was slight and graceful in his figure, and his
+features were moulded with the finest symmetry; yet his eyes and
+attitude expressed the utmost sadness and despondency. The old man
+returned to the cottage; and the youth, with tools different from those
+he had used in the morning, directed his steps across the fields.
+
+“Night quickly shut in; but, to my extreme wonder, I found that the
+cottagers had a means of prolonging light, by the use of tapers, and was
+delighted to find, that the setting of the sun did not put an end to the
+pleasure I experienced in watching my human neighbours. In the evening,
+the young girl and her companion were employed in various occupations
+which I did not understand; and the old man again took up the
+instrument, which produced the divine sounds that had enchanted me in
+the morning. So soon as he had finished, the youth began, not to play,
+but to utter sounds that were monotonous, and neither resembling the
+harmony of the old man’s instrument or the songs of the birds; I since
+found that he read aloud, but at that time I knew nothing of the science
+of words or letters.
+
+“The family, after having been thus occupied for a short time,
+extinguished their lights, and retired, as I conjectured, to rest.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+“I lay on my straw, but I could not sleep. I thought of the occurrences
+of the day. What chiefly struck me was the gentle manners of these
+people; and I longed to join them, but dared not. I remembered too well
+the treatment I had suffered the night before from the barbarous
+villagers, and resolved, whatever course of conduct I might hereafter
+think it right to pursue, that for the present I would remain quietly in
+my hovel, watching, and endeavouring to discover the motives which
+influenced their actions.
+
+“The cottagers arose the next morning before the sun. The young woman
+arranged the cottage, and prepared the food; and the youth departed
+after the first meal.
+
+“This day was passed in the same routine as that which preceded it. The
+young man was constantly employed out of doors, and the girl in various
+laborious occupations within. The old man, whom I soon perceived to be
+blind, employed his leisure hours on his instrument, or in
+contemplation. Nothing could exceed the love and respect which the
+younger cottagers exhibited towards their venerable companion. They
+performed towards him every little office of affection and duty with
+gentleness; and he rewarded them by his benevolent smiles.
+
+“They were not entirely happy. The young man and his companion often
+went apart, and appeared to weep. I saw no cause for their unhappiness;
+but I was deeply affected by it. If such lovely creatures were
+miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being,
+should be wretched. Yet why were these gentle beings unhappy? They
+possessed a delightful house (for such it was in my eyes), and every
+luxury; they had a fire to warm them when chill, and delicious viands
+when hungry; they were dressed in excellent clothes; and, still more,
+they enjoyed one another’s company and speech, interchanging each day
+looks of affection and kindness. What did their tears imply? Did they
+really express pain? I was at first unable to solve these questions; but
+perpetual attention, and time, explained to me many appearances which
+were at first enigmatic.
+
+“A considerable period elapsed before I discovered one of the causes of
+the uneasiness of this amiable family; it was poverty: and they suffered
+that evil in a very distressing degree. Their nourishment consisted
+entirely of the vegetables of their garden, and the milk of one cow, who
+gave very little during the winter, when its masters could scarcely
+procure food to support it. They often, I believe, suffered the pangs of
+hunger very poignantly, especially the two younger cottagers; for
+several times they placed food before the old man, when they reserved
+none for themselves.
+
+“This trait of kindness moved me sensibly. I had been accustomed,
+during the night, to steal a part of their store for my own consumption;
+but when I found that in doing this I inflicted pain on the cottagers, I
+abstained, and satisfied myself with berries, nuts, and roots, which I
+gathered from a neighbouring wood.
+
+“I discovered also another means through which I was enabled to assist
+their labours. I found that the youth spent a great part of each day in
+collecting wood for the family fire; and, during the night, I often took
+his tools, the use of which I quickly discovered, and brought home
+firing sufficient for the consumption of several days.
+
+“I remember, the first time that I did this, the young woman, when she
+opened the door in the morning, appeared greatly astonished on seeing a
+great pile of wood on the outside. She uttered some words in a loud
+voice, and the youth joined her, who also expressed surprise. I
+observed, with pleasure, that he did not go to the forest that day, but
+spent it in repairing the cottage, and cultivating the garden.
+
+“By degrees I made a discovery of still greater moment. I found that
+these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and
+feelings to one another by articulate sounds. I perceived that the words
+they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in
+the minds and countenances of the hearers. This was indeed a godlike
+science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it. But I was
+baffled in every attempt I made for this purpose. Their pronunciation
+was quick; and the words they uttered, not having any apparent connexion
+with visible objects, I was unable to discover any clue by which I could
+unravel the mystery of their reference. By great application, however,
+and after having remained during the space of several revolutions of the
+moon in my hovel, I discovered the names that were given to some of the
+most familiar objects of discourse: I learned and applied the words
+_fire_, _milk_, _bread_, and _wood_. I learned also the names of the
+cottagers themselves. The youth and his companion had each of them
+several names, but the old man had only one, which was _father_. The
+girl was called _sister_, or _Agatha_; and the youth _Felix_, _brother_,
+or _son_. I cannot describe the delight I felt when I learned the ideas
+appropriated to each of these sounds, and was able to pronounce them. I
+distinguished several other words, without being able as yet to
+understand or apply them; such as _good_, _dearest_, _unhappy_.
+
+“I spent the winter in this manner. The gentle manners and beauty of the
+cottagers greatly endeared them to me: when they were unhappy, I felt
+depressed; when they rejoiced, I sympathized in their joys. I saw few
+human beings beside them; and if any other happened to enter the
+cottage, their harsh manners and rude gait only enhanced to me the
+superior accomplishments of my friends. The old man, I could perceive,
+often endeavoured to encourage his children, as sometimes I found that
+he called them, to cast off their melancholy. He would talk in a
+cheerful accent, with an expression of goodness that bestowed pleasure
+even upon me. Agatha listened with respect, her eyes sometimes filled
+with tears, which she endeavoured to wipe away unperceived; but I
+generally found that her countenance and tone were more cheerful after
+having listened to the exhortations of her father. It was not thus with
+Felix. He was always the saddest of the groupe; and, even to my
+unpractised senses, he appeared to have suffered more deeply than his
+friends. But if his countenance was more sorrowful, his voice was more
+cheerful than that of his sister, especially when he addressed the old
+man.
+
+“I could mention innumerable instances, which, although slight, marked
+the dispositions of these amiable cottagers. In the midst of poverty and
+want, Felix carried with pleasure to his sister the first little white
+flower that peeped out from beneath the snowy ground. Early in the
+morning before she had risen, he cleared away the snow that obstructed
+her path to the milk-house, drew water from the well, and brought the
+wood from the out-house, where, to his perpetual astonishment, he found
+his store always replenished by an invisible hand. In the day, I
+believe, he worked sometimes for a neighbouring farmer, because he often
+went forth, and did not return until dinner, yet brought no wood with
+him. At other times he worked in the garden; but, as there was little to
+do in the frosty season, he read to the old man and Agatha.
+
+“This reading had puzzled me extremely at first; but, by degrees, I
+discovered that he uttered many of the same sounds when he read as when
+he talked. I conjectured, therefore, that he found on the paper signs
+for speech which he understood, and I ardently longed to comprehend
+these also; but how was that possible, when I did not even understand
+the sounds for which they stood as signs? I improved, however, sensibly
+in this science, but not sufficiently to follow up any kind of
+conversation, although I applied my whole mind to the endeavour: for I
+easily perceived that, although I eagerly longed to discover myself to
+the cottagers, I ought not to make the attempt until I had first become
+master of their language; which knowledge might enable me to make them
+overlook the deformity of my figure; for with this also the contrast
+perpetually presented to my eyes had made me acquainted.
+
+“I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers—their grace, beauty,
+and delicate complexions: but how was I terrified, when I viewed myself
+in a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that
+it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully
+convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with
+the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas! I did
+not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity.
+
+“As the sun became warmer, and the light of day longer, the snow
+vanished, and I beheld the bare trees and the black earth. From this
+time Felix was more employed; and the heart-moving indications of
+impending famine disappeared. Their food, as I afterwards found, was
+coarse, but it was wholesome; and they procured a sufficiency of it.
+Several new kinds of plants sprung up in the garden, which they dressed;
+and these signs of comfort increased daily as the season advanced.
+
+“The old man, leaning on his son, walked each day at noon, when it did
+not rain, as I found it was called when the heavens poured forth its
+waters. This frequently took place; but a high wind quickly dried the
+earth, and the season became far more pleasant than it had been.
+
+“My mode of life in my hovel was uniform. During the morning I attended
+the motions of the cottagers; and when they were dispersed in various
+occupations, I slept: the remainder of the day was spent in observing my
+friends. When they had retired to rest, if there was any moon, or the
+night was star-light, I went into the woods, and collected my own food
+and fuel for the cottage. When I returned, as often as it was necessary,
+I cleared their path from the snow, and performed those offices that I
+had seen done by Felix. I afterwards found that these labours, performed
+by an invisible hand, greatly astonished them; and once or twice I heard
+them, on these occasions, utter the words _good spirit_, _wonderful_;
+but I did not then understand the signification of these terms.
+
+“My thoughts now became more active, and I longed to discover the
+motives and feelings of these lovely creatures; I was inquisitive to
+know why Felix appeared so miserable, and Agatha so sad. I thought
+(foolish wretch!) that it might be in my power to restore happiness to
+these deserving people. When I slept, or was absent, the forms of the
+venerable blind father, the gentle Agatha, and the excellent Felix,
+flitted before me. I looked upon them as superior beings, who would be
+the arbiters of my future destiny. I formed in my imagination a thousand
+pictures of presenting myself to them, and their reception of me. I
+imagined that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle demeanour and
+conciliating words, I should first win their favour, and afterwards
+their love.
+
+“These thoughts exhilarated me, and led me to apply with fresh ardour to
+the acquiring the art of language. My organs were indeed harsh, but
+supple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their
+tones, yet I pronounced such words as I understood with tolerable ease.
+It was as the ass and the lap-dog; yet surely the gentle ass, whose
+intentions were affectionate, although his manners were rude, deserved
+better treatment than blows and execration.
+
+“The pleasant showers and genial warmth of spring greatly altered the
+aspect of the earth. Men, who before this change seemed to have been hid
+in caves, dispersed themselves, and were employed in various arts of
+cultivation. The birds sang in more cheerful notes, and the leaves
+began to bud forth on the trees. Happy, happy earth! fit habitation for
+gods, which, so short a time before, was bleak, damp, and unwholesome.
+My spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the
+past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the
+future gilded by bright rays of hope, and anticipations of joy.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+“I now hasten to the more moving part of my story. I shall relate events
+that impressed me with feelings which, from what I was, have made me
+what I am.
+
+“Spring advanced rapidly; the weather became fine, and the skies
+cloudless. It surprised me, that what before was desert and gloomy
+should now bloom with the most beautiful flowers and verdure. My senses
+were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight, and a
+thousand sights of beauty.
+
+“It was on one of these days, when my cottagers periodically rested from
+labour—the old man played on his guitar, and the children listened to
+him—I observed that the countenance of Felix was melancholy beyond
+expression: he sighed frequently; and once his father paused in his
+music, and I conjectured by his manner that he inquired the cause of his
+son’s sorrow. Felix replied in a cheerful accent, and the old man was
+recommencing his music, when some one tapped at the door.
+
+“It was a lady on horseback, accompanied by a countryman as a guide. The
+lady was dressed in a dark suit, and covered with a thick black veil.
+Agatha asked a question; to which the stranger only replied by
+pronouncing, in a sweet accent, the name of Felix. Her voice was
+musical, but unlike that of either of my friends. On hearing this word,
+Felix came up hastily to the lady; who, when she saw him, threw up her
+veil, and I beheld a countenance of angelic beauty and expression. Her
+hair of a shining raven black, and curiously braided; her eyes were
+dark, but gentle, although animated; her features of a regular
+proportion, and her complexion wondrously fair, each cheek tinged with a
+lovely pink.
+
+“Felix seemed ravished with delight when he saw her, every trait of
+sorrow vanished from his face, and it instantly expressed a degree of
+ecstatic joy, of which I could hardly have believed it capable; his eyes
+sparkled, as his cheek flushed with pleasure; and at that moment I
+thought him as beautiful as the stranger. She appeared affected by
+different feelings; wiping a few tears from her lovely eyes, she held
+out her hand to Felix, who kissed it rapturously, and called her, as
+well as I could distinguish, his sweet Arabian. She did not appear to
+understand him, but smiled. He assisted her to dismount, and, dismissing
+her guide, conducted her into the cottage. Some conversation took place
+between him and his father; and the young stranger knelt at the old
+man’s feet, and would have kissed his hand, but he raised her, and
+embraced her affectionately.
+
+“I soon perceived, that although the stranger uttered articulate sounds,
+and appeared to have a language of her own, she was neither understood
+by, or herself understood, the cottagers. They made many signs which I
+did not comprehend; but I saw that her presence diffused gladness
+through the cottage, dispelling their sorrow as the sun dissipates the
+morning mists. Felix seemed peculiarly happy, and with smiles of delight
+welcomed his Arabian. Agatha, the ever-gentle Agatha, kissed the hands
+of the lovely stranger; and, pointing to her brother, made signs which
+appeared to me to mean that he had been sorrowful until she came. Some
+hours passed thus, while they, by their countenances, expressed joy, the
+cause of which I did not comprehend. Presently I found, by the frequent
+recurrence of one sound which the stranger repeated after them, that she
+was endeavouring to learn their language; and the idea instantly
+occurred to me, that I should make use of the same instructions to the
+same end. The stranger learned about twenty words at the first lesson,
+most of them indeed were those which I had before understood, but I
+profited by the others.
+
+“As night came on, Agatha and the Arabian retired early. When they
+separated, Felix kissed the hand of the stranger, and said, ‘Good night,
+sweet Safie.’ He sat up much longer, conversing with his father; and, by
+the frequent repetition of her name, I conjectured that their lovely
+guest was the subject of their conversation. I ardently desired to
+understand them, and bent every faculty towards that purpose, but found
+it utterly impossible.
+
+“The next morning Felix went out to his work; and, after the usual
+occupations of Agatha were finished, the Arabian sat at the feet of the
+old man, and, taking his guitar, played some airs so entrancingly
+beautiful, that they at once drew tears of sorrow and delight from my
+eyes. She sang, and her voice flowed in a rich cadence, swelling or
+dying away, like a nightingale of the woods.
+
+“When she had finished, she gave the guitar to Agatha, who at first
+declined it. She played a simple air, and her voice accompanied it in
+sweet accents, but unlike the wondrous strain of the stranger. The old
+man appeared enraptured, and said some words, which Agatha endeavoured
+to explain to Safie, and by which he appeared to wish to express that
+she bestowed on him the greatest delight by her music.
+
+“The days now passed as peaceably as before, with the sole alteration,
+that joy had taken place of sadness in the countenances of my friends.
+Safie was always gay and happy; she and I improved rapidly in the
+knowledge of language, so that in two months I began to comprehend most
+of the words uttered by my protectors.
+
+“In the meanwhile also the black ground was covered with herbage, and
+the green banks interspersed with innumerable flowers, sweet to the
+scent and the eyes, stars of pale radiance among the moonlight woods;
+the sun became warmer, the nights clear and balmy; and my nocturnal
+rambles were an extreme pleasure to me, although they were considerably
+shortened by the late setting and early rising of the sun; for I never
+ventured abroad during daylight, fearful of meeting with the same
+treatment as I had formerly endured in the first village which I
+entered.
+
+“My days were spent in close attention, that I might more speedily
+master the language; and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than
+the Arabian, who understood very little, and conversed in broken
+accents, whilst I comprehended and could imitate almost every word that
+was spoken.
+
+“While I improved in speech, I also learned the science of letters, as it
+was taught to the stranger; and this opened before me a wide field for
+wonder and delight.
+
+“The book from which Felix instructed Safie was Volney’s _Ruins of
+Empires_. I should not have understood the purport of this book, had not
+Felix, in reading it, given very minute explanations. He had chosen this
+work, he said, because the declamatory style was framed in imitation of
+the eastern authors. Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of
+history, and a view of the several empires at present existing in the
+world; it gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and
+religions of the different nations of the earth. I heard of the slothful
+Asiatics; of the stupendous genius and mental activity of the Grecians;
+of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans—of their
+subsequent degeneration—of the decline of that mighty empire; of
+chivalry, Christianity, and kings. I heard of the discovery of the
+American hemisphere, and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its
+original inhabitants.
+
+“These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man,
+indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so
+vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil
+principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and
+godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that
+can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record
+have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than
+that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not
+conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why
+there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and
+bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and
+loathing.
+
+“Every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to me. While
+I listened to the instructions which Felix bestowed upon the Arabian,
+the strange system of human society was explained to me. I heard of the
+division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty; of rank,
+descent, and noble blood.
+
+“The words induced me to turn towards myself. I learned that the
+possessions most esteemed by your fellow-creatures were, high and
+unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only
+one of these acquisitions; but without either he was considered, except
+in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his
+powers for the profit of the chosen few. And what was I? Of my creation
+and creator I was absolutely ignorant; but I knew that I possessed no
+money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endowed with a
+figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same
+nature as man. I was more agile than they, and could subsist upon
+coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to
+my frame; my stature far exceeded their’s. When I looked around, I saw
+and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth,
+from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?
+
+“I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted
+upon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with
+knowledge. Oh, that I had for ever remained in my native wood, nor known
+or felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat!
+
+“Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it
+has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to
+shake off all thought and feeling; but I learned that there was but one
+means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death—a state
+which I feared yet did not understand. I admired virtue and good
+feelings, and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my
+cottagers; but I was shut out from intercourse with them, except through
+means which I obtained by stealth, when I was unseen and unknown, and
+which rather increased than satisfied the desire I had of becoming one
+among my fellows. The gentle words of Agatha, and the animated smiles of
+the charming Arabian, were not for me. The mild exhortations of the old
+man, and the lively conversation of the loved Felix, were not for me.
+Miserable, unhappy wretch!
+
+“Other lessons were impressed upon me even more deeply. I heard of the
+difference of sexes; of the birth and growth of children; how the father
+doated on the smiles of the infant, and the lively sallies of the older
+child; how all the life and cares of the mother were wrapt up in the
+precious charge; how the mind of youth expanded and gained knowledge; of
+brother, sister, and all the various relationships which bind one human
+being to another in mutual bonds.
+
+“But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my
+infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if
+they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I
+distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then
+was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling
+me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question
+again recurred, to be answered only with groans.
+
+“I will soon explain to what these feelings tended; but allow me now to
+return to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various feelings
+of indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated in
+additional love and reverence for my protectors (for so I loved, in an
+innocent, half painful self-deceit, to call them).”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+“Some time elapsed before I learned the history of my friends. It was
+one which could not fail to impress itself deeply on my mind, unfolding
+as it did a number of circumstances each interesting and wonderful to
+one so utterly inexperienced as I was.
+
+“The name of the old man was De Lacey. He was descended from a good
+family in France, where he had lived for many years in affluence,
+respected by his superiors, and beloved by his equals. His son was bred
+in the service of his country; and Agatha had ranked with ladies of the
+highest distinction. A few months before my arrival, they had lived in a
+large and luxurious city, called Paris, surrounded by friends, and
+possessed of every enjoyment which virtue, refinement of intellect, or
+taste, accompanied by a moderate fortune, could afford.
+
+“The father of Safie had been the cause of their ruin. He was a Turkish
+merchant, and had inhabited Paris for many years, when, for some reason
+which I could not learn, he became obnoxious to the government. He was
+seized and cast into prison the very day that Safie arrived from
+Constantinople to join him. He was tried, and condemned to death. The
+injustice of his sentence was very flagrant; all Paris was indignant;
+and it was judged that his religion and wealth, rather than the crime
+alleged against him, had been the cause of his condemnation.
+
+“Felix had been present at the trial; his horror and indignation were
+uncontrollable, when he heard the decision of the court. He made, at
+that moment, a solemn vow to deliver him, and then looked around for the
+means. After many fruitless attempts to gain admittance to the prison,
+he found a strongly grated window in an unguarded part of the building,
+which lighted the dungeon of the unfortunate Mahometan; who, loaded with
+chains, waited in despair the execution of the barbarous sentence. Felix
+visited the grate at night, and made known to the prisoner his
+intentions in his favour. The Turk, amazed and delighted, endeavoured to
+kindle the zeal of his deliverer by promises of reward and wealth. Felix
+rejected his offers with contempt; yet when he saw the lovely Safie, who
+was allowed to visit her father, and who, by her gestures, expressed her
+lively gratitude, the youth could not help owning to his own mind, that
+the captive possessed a treasure which would fully reward his toil and
+hazard.
+
+“The Turk quickly perceived the impression that his daughter had made on
+the heart of Felix, and endeavoured to secure him more entirely in his
+interests by the promise of her hand in marriage, so soon as he should
+be conveyed to a place of safety. Felix was too delicate to accept this
+offer; yet he looked forward to the probability of that event as to the
+consummation of his happiness.
+
+“During the ensuing days, while the preparations were going forward for
+the escape of the merchant, the zeal of Felix was warmed by several
+letters that he received from this lovely girl, who found means to
+express her thoughts in the language of her lover by the aid of an old
+man, a servant of her father’s, who understood French. She thanked him
+in the most ardent terms for his intended services towards her father;
+and at the same time she gently deplored her own fate.
+
+“I have copies of these letters; for I found means, during my residence
+in the hovel, to procure the implements of writing; and the letters were
+often in the hands of Felix or Agatha. Before I depart, I will give them
+to you, they will prove the truth of my tale; but at present, as the
+sun is already far declined, I shall only have time to repeat the
+substance of them to you.
+
+“Safie related, that her mother was a Christian Arab, seized and made a
+slave by the Turks; recommended by her beauty, she had won the heart of
+the father of Safie, who married her. The young girl spoke in high and
+enthusiastic terms of her mother, who, born in freedom spurned the
+bondage to which she was now reduced. She instructed her daughter in the
+tenets of her religion, and taught her to aspire to higher powers of
+intellect, and an independence of spirit, forbidden to the female
+followers of Mahomet. This lady died; but her lessons were indelibly
+impressed on the mind of Safie, who sickened at the prospect of again
+returning to Asia, and the being immured within the walls of a harem,
+allowed only to occupy herself with puerile amusements, ill suited to
+the temper of her soul, now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble
+emulation for virtue. The prospect of marrying a Christian, and
+remaining in a country where women were allowed to take a rank in
+society, was enchanting to her.
+
+“The day for the execution of the Turk was fixed; but, on the night
+previous to it, he had quitted prison, and before morning was distant
+many leagues from Paris. Felix had procured passports in the name of his
+father, sister, and himself. He had previously communicated his plan to
+the former, who aided the deceit by quitting his house, under the
+pretence of a journey, and concealed himself, with his daughter, in an
+obscure part of Paris.
+
+“Felix conducted the fugitives through France to Lyons, and across Mont
+Cenis to Leghorn, where the merchant had decided to wait a favourable
+opportunity of passing into some part of the Turkish dominions.
+
+“Safie resolved to remain with her father until the moment of his
+departure, before which time the Turk renewed his promise that she
+should be united to his deliverer; and Felix remained with them in
+expectation of that event; and in the mean time he enjoyed the society
+of the Arabian, who exhibited towards him the simplest and tenderest
+affection. They conversed with one another through the means of an
+interpreter, and sometimes with the interpretation of looks; and Safie
+sang to him the divine airs of her native country.
+
+“The Turk allowed this intimacy to take place, and encouraged the hopes
+of the youthful lovers, while in his heart he had formed far other
+plans. He loathed the idea that his daughter should be united to a
+Christian; but he feared the resentment of Felix if he should appear
+lukewarm; for he knew that he was still in the power of his deliverer,
+if he should choose to betray him to the Italian state which they
+inhabited. He revolved a thousand plans by which he should be enabled to
+prolong the deceit until it might be no longer necessary, and secretly
+to take his daughter with him when he departed. His plans were greatly
+facilitated by the news which arrived from Paris.
+
+“The government of France were greatly enraged at the escape of their
+victim, and spared no pains to detect and punish his deliverer. The plot
+of Felix was quickly discovered, and De Lacey and Agatha were thrown
+into prison. The news reached Felix, and roused him from his dream of
+pleasure. His blind and aged father, and his gentle sister, lay in a
+noisome dungeon, while he enjoyed the free air, and the society of her
+whom he loved. This idea was torture to him. He quickly arranged with
+the Turk, that if the latter should find a favourable opportunity for
+escape before Felix could return to Italy, Safie should remain as a
+boarder at a convent at Leghorn; and then, quitting the lovely Arabian,
+he hastened to Paris, and delivered himself up to the vengeance of the
+law, hoping to free De Lacey and Agatha by this proceeding.
+
+“He did not succeed. They remained confined for five months before the
+trial took place; the result of which deprived them of their fortune,
+and condemned them to a perpetual exile from their native country.
+
+“They found a miserable asylum in the cottage in Germany, where I
+discovered them. Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for whom
+he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering
+that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and impotence, became a
+traitor to good feeling and honour, and had quitted Italy with his
+daughter, insultingly sending Felix a pittance of money to aid him, as
+he said, in some plan of future maintenance.
+
+“Such were the events that preyed on the heart of Felix, and rendered
+him, when I first saw him, the most miserable of his family. He could
+have endured poverty, and when this distress had been the meed of his
+virtue, he would have gloried in it: but the ingratitude of the Turk,
+and the loss of his beloved Safie, were misfortunes more bitter and
+irreparable. The arrival of the Arabian now infused new life into his
+soul.
+
+“When the news reached Leghorn, that Felix was deprived of his wealth
+and rank, the merchant commanded his daughter to think no more of her
+lover, but to prepare to return with him to her native country. The
+generous nature of Safie was outraged by this command; she attempted to
+expostulate with her father, but he left her angrily, reiterating his
+tyrannical mandate.
+
+“A few days after, the Turk entered his daughter’s apartment, and told
+her hastily, that he had reason to believe that his residence at Leghorn
+had been divulged, and that he should speedily be delivered up to the
+French government; he had, consequently, hired a vessel to convey him
+to Constantinople, for which city he should sail in a few hours. He
+intended to leave his daughter under the care of a confidential servant,
+to follow at her leisure with the greater part of his property, which
+had not yet arrived at Leghorn.
+
+“When alone, Safie resolved in her own mind the plan of conduct that it
+would become her to pursue in this emergency. A residence in Turkey was
+abhorrent to her; her religion and feelings were alike adverse to it. By
+some papers of her father’s, which fell into her hands, she heard of the
+exile of her lover, and learnt the name of the spot where he then
+resided. She hesitated some time, but at length she formed her
+determination. Taking with her some jewels that belonged to her, and a
+small sum of money, she quitted Italy, with an attendant, a native of
+Leghorn, but who understood the common language of Turkey, and departed
+for Germany.
+
+“She arrived in safety at a town about twenty leagues from the cottage
+of De Lacey, when her attendant fell dangerously ill. Safie nursed her
+with the most devoted affection; but the poor girl died, and the Arabian
+was left alone, unacquainted with the language of the country, and
+utterly ignorant of the customs of the world. She fell, however, into
+good hands. The Italian had mentioned the name of the spot for which
+they were bound; and, after her death, the woman of the house in which
+they had lived took care that Safie should arrive in safety at the
+cottage of her lover.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+“Such was the history of my beloved cottagers. It impressed me deeply. I
+learned, from the views of social life which it developed, to admire
+their virtues, and to deprecate the vices of mankind.
+
+“As yet I looked upon crime as a distant evil; benevolence and
+generosity were ever present before me, inciting within me a desire to
+become an actor in the busy scene where so many admirable qualities were
+called forth and displayed. But, in giving an account of the progress of
+my intellect, I must not omit a circumstance which occurred in the
+beginning of the month of August of the same year.
+
+“One night, during my accustomed visit to the neighbouring wood, where I
+collected my own food, and brought home firing for my protectors, I
+found on the ground a leathern portmanteau, containing several articles
+of dress and some books. I eagerly seized the prize, and returned with
+it to my hovel. Fortunately the books were written in the language the
+elements of which I had acquired at the cottage; they consisted of
+_Paradise Lost_, a volume of _Plutarch’s Lives_, and the _Sorrows of
+Werter_. The possession of these treasures gave me extreme delight; I
+now continually studied and exercised my mind upon these histories,
+whilst my friends were employed in their ordinary occupations.
+
+“I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They produced
+in me an infinity of new images and feelings, that sometimes raised me
+to ecstacy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection. In
+the _Sorrows of Werter_, besides the interest of its simple and
+affecting story, so many opinions are canvassed, and so many lights
+thrown upon what had hitherto been to me obscure subjects, that I found
+in it a never-ending source of speculation and astonishment. The gentle
+and domestic manners it described, combined with lofty sentiments and
+feelings, which had for their object something out of self, accorded
+well with my experience among my protectors, and with the wants which
+were for ever alive in my own bosom. But I thought Werter himself a more
+divine being than I had ever beheld or imagined; his character contained
+no pretension, but it sunk deep. The disquisitions upon death and
+suicide were calculated to fill me with wonder. I did not pretend to
+enter into the merits of the case, yet I inclined towards the opinions
+of the hero, whose extinction I wept, without precisely understanding
+it.
+
+“As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and
+condition. I found myself similar, yet at the same time strangely unlike
+the beings concerning whom I read, and to whose conversation I was a
+listener. I sympathized with, and partly understood them, but I was
+unformed in mind; I was dependent on none, and related to none. ‘The
+path of my departure was free;’ and there was none to lament my
+annihilation. My person was hideous, and my stature gigantic: what did
+this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my
+destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to
+solve them.
+
+“The volume of _Plutarch’s Lives_ which I possessed, contained the
+histories of the first founders of the ancient republics. This book had
+a far different effect upon me from the _Sorrows of Werter_. I learned
+from Werter’s imaginations despondency and gloom: but Plutarch taught me
+high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own
+reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many things I
+read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very confused
+knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and
+boundless seas. But I was perfectly unacquainted with towns, and large
+assemblages of men. The cottage of my protectors had been the only
+school in which I had studied human nature; but this book developed new
+and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned in public affairs
+governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for
+virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice, as far as I understood
+the signification of those terms, relative as they were, as I applied
+them, to pleasure and pain alone. Induced by these feelings, I was of
+course led to admire peaceable law-givers, Numa, Solon, and Lycurgus,
+in preference to Romulus and Theseus. The patriarchal lives of my
+protectors caused these impressions to take a firm hold on my mind;
+perhaps, if my first introduction to humanity had been made by a young
+soldier, burning for glory and slaughter, I should have been imbued with
+different sensations.
+
+“But _Paradise Lost_ excited different and far deeper emotions. I read
+it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a
+true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe, that the picture
+of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting.
+I often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck me,
+to my own. Like Adam, I was created apparently united by no link to any
+other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in
+every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect
+creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his
+Creator; he was allowed to converse with, and acquire knowledge from
+beings of a superior nature: but I was wretched, helpless, and alone.
+Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition; for
+often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter
+gall of envy rose within me.
+
+“Another circumstance strengthened and confirmed these feelings. Soon
+after my arrival in the hovel, I discovered some papers in the pocket of
+the dress which I had taken from your laboratory. At first I had
+neglected them; but now that I was able to decypher the characters in
+which they were written, I began to study them with diligence. It was
+your journal of the four months that preceded my creation. You minutely
+described in these papers every step you took in the progress of your
+work; this history was mingled with accounts of domestic occurrences.
+You, doubtless, recollect these papers. Here they are. Every thing is
+related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole
+detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is
+set in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person
+is given, in language which painted your own horrors, and rendered mine
+ineffaceable. I sickened as I read. ‘Hateful day when I received life!’
+I exclaimed in agony. ‘Cursed creator! Why did you form a monster so
+hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God in pity made man
+beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy
+type of your’s, more horrid from its very resemblance. Satan had his
+companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am
+solitary and detested.’
+
+“These were the reflections of my hours of despondency and solitude; but
+when I contemplated the virtues of the cottagers, their amiable and
+benevolent dispositions, I persuaded myself that when they should become
+acquainted with my admiration of their virtues, they would compassionate
+me, and overlook my personal deformity. Could they turn from their door
+one, however monstrous, who solicited their compassion and friendship?
+I resolved, at least, not to despair, but in every way to fit myself for
+an interview with them which would decide my fate. I postponed this
+attempt for some months longer; for the importance attached to its
+success inspired me with a dread lest I should fail. Besides, I found
+that my understanding improved so much with every day’s experience, that
+I was unwilling to commence this undertaking until a few more months
+should have added to my wisdom.
+
+“Several changes, in the mean time, took place in the cottage. The
+presence of Safie diffused happiness among its inhabitants; and I also
+found that a greater degree of plenty reigned there. Felix and Agatha
+spent more time in amusement and conversation, and were assisted in
+their labours by servants. They did not appear rich, but they were
+contented and happy; their feelings were serene and peaceful, while mine
+became every day more tumultuous. Increase of knowledge only discovered
+to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was. I cherished hope, it
+is true; but it vanished, when I beheld my person reflected in water, or
+my shadow in the moon-shine, even as that frail image and that
+inconstant shade.
+
+“I endeavoured to crush these fears, and to fortify myself for the trial
+which in a few months I resolved to undergo; and sometimes I allowed my
+thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of Paradise, and
+dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathizing with my
+feelings and cheering my gloom; their angelic countenances breathed
+smiles of consolation. But it was all a dream: no Eve soothed my
+sorrows, or shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam’s
+supplication to his Creator; but where was mine? he had abandoned me,
+and, in the bitterness of my heart, I cursed him.
+
+“Autumn passed thus. I saw, with surprise and grief, the leaves decay
+and fall, and nature again assume the barren and bleak appearance it had
+worn when I first beheld the woods and the lovely moon. Yet I did not
+heed the bleakness of the weather; I was better fitted by my
+conformation for the endurance of cold than heat. But my chief delights
+were the sight of the flowers, the birds, and all the gay apparel of
+summer; when those deserted me, I turned with more attention towards the
+cottagers. Their happiness was not decreased by the absence of summer.
+They loved, and sympathized with one another; and their joys, depending
+on each other, were not interrupted by the casualties that took place
+around them. The more I saw of them, the greater became my desire to
+claim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and
+loved by these amiable creatures: to see their sweet looks turned
+towards me with affection, was the utmost limit of my ambition. I dared
+not think that they would turn them from me with disdain and horror. The
+poor that stopped at their door were never driven away. I asked, it is
+true, for greater treasures than a little food or rest; I required
+kindness and sympathy; but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of
+it.
+
+“The winter advanced, and an entire revolution of the seasons had taken
+place since I awoke into life. My attention, at this time, was solely
+directed towards my plan of introducing myself into the cottage of my
+protectors. I revolved many projects; but that on which I finally fixed
+was, to enter the dwelling when the blind old man should be alone. I had
+sagacity enough to discover, that the unnatural hideousness of my person
+was the chief object of horror with those who had formerly beheld me. My
+voice, although harsh, had nothing terrible in it; I thought, therefore,
+that if, in the absence of his children, I could gain the good-will and
+mediation of the old De Lacy, I might, by his means, be tolerated by my
+younger protectors.
+
+“One day, when the sun shone on the red leaves that strewed the ground,
+and diffused cheerfulness, although it denied warmth, Safie, Agatha, and
+Felix, departed on a long country walk, and the old man, at his own
+desire, was left alone in the cottage. When his children had departed,
+he took up his guitar, and played several mournful, but sweet airs, more
+sweet and mournful than I had ever heard him play before. At first his
+countenance was illuminated with pleasure, but, as he continued,
+thoughtfulness and sadness succeeded; at length, laying aside the
+instrument, he sat absorbed in reflection.
+
+“My heart beat quick; this was the hour and moment of trial, which
+would decide my hopes, or realize my fears. The servants were gone to a
+neighbouring fair. All was silent in and around the cottage: it was an
+excellent opportunity; yet, when I proceeded to execute my plan, my
+limbs failed me, and I sunk to the ground. Again I rose; and, exerting
+all the firmness of which I was master, removed the planks which I had
+placed before my hovel to conceal my retreat. The fresh air revived me,
+and, with renewed determination, I approached the door of their cottage.
+
+“I knocked. ‘Who is there?’ said the old man—‘Come in.’
+
+“I entered; ‘Pardon this intrusion,’ said I, ‘I am a traveller in want
+of a little rest; you would greatly oblige me, if you would allow me to
+remain a few minutes before the fire.’
+
+“‘Enter,’ said De Lacy; ‘and I will try in what manner I can relieve
+your wants; but, unfortunately, my children are from home, and, as I am
+blind, I am afraid I shall find it difficult to procure food for you.’
+
+“‘Do not trouble yourself, my kind host, I have food; it is warmth and
+rest only that I need.’
+
+“I sat down, and a silence ensued. I knew that every minute was precious
+to me, yet I remained irresolute in what manner to commence the
+interview; when the old man addressed me—
+
+“‘By your language, stranger, I suppose you are my countryman;—are you
+French?’
+
+“‘No; but I was educated by a French family, and understand that
+language only. I am now going to claim the protection of some friends,
+whom I sincerely love, and of whose favour I have some hopes.’
+
+“‘Are these Germans?’
+
+“‘No, they are French. But let us change the subject. I am an
+unfortunate and deserted creature; I look around, and I have no relation
+or friend upon earth. These amiable people to whom I go have never seen
+me, and know little of me. I am full of fears; for if I fail there, I am
+an outcast in the world for ever.’
+
+“‘Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate; but the
+hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full
+of brotherly love and charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes; and if
+these friends are good and amiable, do not despair.’
+
+“‘They are kind—they are the most excellent creatures in the world;
+but, unfortunately, they are prejudiced against me. I have good
+dispositions; my life has been hitherto harmless, and, in some degree,
+beneficial; but a fatal prejudice clouds their eyes, and where they
+ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold only a detestable
+monster.’
+
+“‘That is indeed unfortunate; but if you are really blameless, cannot
+you undeceive them?’
+
+“‘I am about to undertake that task; and it is on that account that I
+feel so many overwhelming terrors. I tenderly love these friends; I
+have, unknown to them, been for many months in the habits of daily
+kindness towards them; but they believe that I wish to injure them, and
+it is that prejudice which I wish to overcome.’
+
+“‘Where do these friends reside?’
+
+“‘Near this spot.’
+
+“The old man paused, and then continued, ‘If you will unreservedly
+confide to me the particulars of your tale, I perhaps may be of use in
+undeceiving them. I am blind, and cannot judge of your countenance, but
+there is something in your words which persuades me that you are
+sincere. I am poor, and an exile; but it will afford me true pleasure to
+be in any way serviceable to a human creature.’
+
+“‘Excellent man! I thank you, and accept your generous offer. You raise
+me from the dust by this kindness; and I trust that, by your aid, I
+shall not be driven from the society and sympathy of your
+fellow-creatures.’
+
+“‘Heaven forbid! even if you were really criminal; for that can only
+drive you to desperation, and not instigate you to virtue. I also am
+unfortunate; I and my family have been condemned, although innocent:
+judge, therefore, if I do not feel for your misfortunes.’
+
+“‘How can I thank you, my best and only benefactor? from your lips first
+have I heard the voice of kindness directed towards me; I shall be for
+ever grateful; and your present humanity assures me of success with
+those friends whom I am on the point of meeting.’
+
+“‘May I know the names and residence of those friends?’
+
+“I paused. This, I thought, was the moment of decision, which was to rob
+me of, or bestow happiness on me for ever. I struggled vainly for
+firmness sufficient to answer him, but the effort destroyed all my
+remaining strength; I sank on the chair, and sobbed aloud. At that
+moment I heard the steps of my younger protectors. I had not a moment to
+lose; but, seizing the hand of the old man, I cried, ‘Now is the
+time!—save and protect me! You and your family are the friends whom I
+seek. Do not you desert me in the hour of trial!’
+
+“‘Great God!’ exclaimed the old man, ‘who are you?’
+
+“At that instant the cottage door was opened, and Felix, Safie, and
+Agatha entered. Who can describe their horror and consternation on
+beholding me? Agatha fainted; and Safie, unable to attend to her friend,
+rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, and with supernatural
+force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung: in a transport of
+fury, he dashed me to the ground, and struck me violently with a stick.
+I could have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope.
+But my heart sunk within me as with bitter sickness, and I refrained. I
+saw him on the point of repeating his blow, when, overcome by pain and
+anguish, I quitted the cottage, and in the general tumult escaped
+unperceived to my hovel.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+“Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not
+extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I
+know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were
+those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the
+cottage and its inhabitants, and have glutted myself with their shrieks
+and misery.
+
+“When night came, I quitted my retreat, and wandered in the wood; and
+now, no longer restrained by the fear of discovery, I gave vent to my
+anguish in fearful howlings. I was like a wild beast that had broken the
+toils; destroying the objects that obstructed me, and ranging through
+the wood with a stag-like swiftness. Oh! what a miserable night I
+passed! the cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their
+branches above me: now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth
+amidst the universal stillness. All, save I, were at rest or in
+enjoyment: I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me; and, finding
+myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and
+destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.
+
+“But this was a luxury of sensation that could not endure; I became
+fatigued with excess of bodily exertion, and sank on the damp grass in
+the sick impotence of despair. There was none among the myriads of men
+that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness
+towards my enemies? No: from that moment I declared everlasting war
+against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me,
+and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.
+
+“The sun rose; I heard the voices of men, and knew that it was
+impossible to return to my retreat during that day. Accordingly I hid
+myself in some thick underwood, determining to devote the ensuing hours
+to reflection on my situation.
+
+“The pleasant sunshine, and the pure air of day, restored me to some
+degree of tranquillity; and when I considered what had passed at the
+cottage, I could not help believing that I had been too hasty in my
+conclusions. I had certainly acted imprudently. It was apparent that my
+conversation had interested the father in my behalf, and I was a fool in
+having exposed my person to the horror of his children. I ought to have
+familiarized the old De Lacy to me, and by degrees have discovered
+myself to the rest of his family, when they should have been prepared
+for my approach. But I did not believe my errors to be irretrievable;
+and, after much consideration, I resolved to return to the cottage, seek
+the old man, and by my representations win him to my party.
+
+“These thoughts calmed me, and in the afternoon I sank into a profound
+sleep; but the fever of my blood did not allow me to be visited by
+peaceful dreams. The horrible scene of the preceding day was for ever
+acting before my eyes; the females were flying, and the enraged Felix
+tearing me from his father’s feet. I awoke exhausted; and, finding that
+it was already night, I crept forth from my hiding-place, and went in
+search of food.
+
+“When my hunger was appeased, I directed my steps towards the well-known
+path that conducted to the cottage. All there was at peace. I crept into
+my hovel, and remained in silent expectation of the accustomed hour when
+the family arose. That hour past, the sun mounted high in the heavens,
+but the cottagers did not appear. I trembled violently, apprehending
+some dreadful misfortune. The inside of the cottage was dark, and I
+heard no motion; I cannot describe the agony of this suspence.
+
+“Presently two countrymen passed by; but, pausing near the cottage, they
+entered into conversation, using violent gesticulations; but I did not
+understand what they said, as they spoke the language of the country,
+which differed from that of my protectors. Soon after, however, Felix
+approached with another man: I was surprised, as I knew that he had not
+quitted the cottage that morning, and waited anxiously to discover, from
+his discourse, the meaning of these unusual appearances.
+
+“‘Do you consider,’ said his companion to him, ‘that you will be obliged
+to pay three months’ rent, and to lose the produce of your garden? I do
+not wish to take any unfair advantage, and I beg therefore that you will
+take some days to consider of your determination.’
+
+“‘It is utterly useless,’ replied Felix, ‘we can never again inhabit
+your cottage. The life of my father is in the greatest danger, owing to
+the dreadful circumstance that I have related. My wife and my sister
+will never recover their horror. I entreat you not to reason with me any
+more. Take possession of your tenement, and let me fly from this place.’
+
+“Felix trembled violently as he said this. He and his companion entered
+the cottage, in which they remained for a few minutes, and then
+departed. I never saw any of the family of De Lacy more.
+
+“I continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of
+utter and stupid despair. My protectors had departed, and had broken the
+only link that held me to the world. For the first time the feelings of
+revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to controul
+them; but, allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I bent my
+mind towards injury and death. When I thought of my friends, of the mild
+voice of De Lacy, the gentle eyes of Agatha, and the exquisite beauty of
+the Arabian, these thoughts vanished, and a gush of tears somewhat
+soothed me. But again, when I reflected that they had spurned and
+deserted me, anger returned, a rage of anger; and, unable to injure any
+thing human, I turned my fury towards inanimate objects. As night
+advanced, I placed a variety of combustibles around the cottage; and,
+after having destroyed every vestige of cultivation in the garden, I
+waited with forced impatience until the moon had sunk to commence my
+operations.
+
+“As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods, and quickly
+dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens: the blast tore
+along like a mighty avalanche, and produced a kind of insanity in my
+spirits, that burst all bounds of reason and reflection. I lighted the
+dry branch of a tree, and danced with fury around the devoted cottage,
+my eyes still fixed on the western horizon, the edge of which the moon
+nearly touched. A part of its orb was at length hid, and I waved my
+brand; it sunk, and, with a loud scream, I fired the straw, and heath,
+and bushes, which I had collected. The wind fanned the fire, and the
+cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it, and
+licked it with their forked and destroying tongues.
+
+“As soon as I was convinced that no assistance could save any part of
+the habitation, I quitted the scene, and sought for refuge in the woods.
+
+“And now, with the world before me, whither should I bend my steps? I
+resolved to fly far from the scene of my misfortunes; but to me, hated
+and despised, every country must be equally horrible. At length the
+thought of you crossed my mind. I learned from your papers that you were
+my father, my creator; and to whom could I apply with more fitness than
+to him who had given me life? Among the lessons that Felix had bestowed
+upon Safie geography had not been omitted: I had learned from these the
+relative situations of the different countries of the earth. You had
+mentioned Geneva as the name of your native town; and towards this place
+I resolved to proceed.
+
+“But how was I to direct myself? I knew that I must travel in a
+south-westerly direction to reach my destination; but the sun was my
+only guide. I did not know the names of the towns that I was to pass
+through, nor could I ask information from a single human being; but I
+did not despair. From you only could I hope for succour, although
+towards you I felt no sentiment but that of hatred. Unfeeling, heartless
+creator! you had endowed me with perceptions and passions, and then cast
+me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind. But on you only
+had I any claim for pity and redress, and from you I determined to seek
+that justice which I vainly attempted to gain from any other being that
+wore the human form.
+
+“My travels were long, and the sufferings I endured intense. It was late
+in autumn when I quitted the district where I had so long resided. I
+travelled only at night, fearful of encountering the visage of a human
+being. Nature decayed around me, and the sun became heatless; rain and
+snow poured around me; mighty rivers were frozen; the surface of the
+earth was hard, and chill, and bare, and I found no shelter. Oh, earth!
+how often did I imprecate curses on the cause of my being! The mildness
+of my nature had fled, and all within me was turned to gall and
+bitterness. The nearer I approached to your habitation, the more deeply
+did I feel the spirit of revenge enkindled in my heart. Snow fell, and
+the waters were hardened, but I rested not. A few incidents now and then
+directed me, and I possessed a map of the country; but I often wandered
+wide from my path. The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite: no
+incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its
+food; but a circumstance that happened when I arrived on the confines of
+Switzerland, when the sun had recovered its warmth, and the earth again
+began to look green, confirmed in an especial manner the bitterness and
+horror of my feelings.
+
+“I generally rested during the day, and travelled only when I was
+secured by night from the view of man. One morning, however, finding
+that my path lay through a deep wood, I ventured to continue my journey
+after the sun had risen; the day, which was one of the first of spring,
+cheered even me by the loveliness of its sunshine and the balminess of
+the air. I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long
+appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these
+sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them; and, forgetting
+my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy. Soft tears again bedewed
+my cheeks, and I even raised my humid eyes with thankfulness towards the
+blessed sun which bestowed such joy upon me.
+
+“I continued to wind among the paths of the wood, until I came to its
+boundary, which was skirted by a deep and rapid river, into which many
+of the trees bent their branches, now budding with the fresh spring.
+Here I paused, not exactly knowing what path to pursue, when I heard the
+sound of voices, that induced me to conceal myself under the shade of a
+cypress. I was scarcely hid, when a young girl came running towards the
+spot where I was concealed, laughing as if she ran from some one in
+sport. She continued her course along the precipitous sides of the
+river, when suddenly her foot slipt, and she fell into the rapid stream.
+I rushed from my hiding-place, and, with extreme labour from the force
+of the current, saved her, and dragged her to shore. She was senseless;
+and I endeavoured, by every means in my power, to restore animation,
+when I was suddenly interrupted by the approach of a rustic, who was
+probably the person from whom she had playfully fled. On seeing me, he
+darted towards me, and, tearing the girl from my arms, hastened towards
+the deeper parts of the wood. I followed speedily, I hardly knew why;
+but when the man saw me draw near, he aimed a gun, which he carried, at
+my body, and fired. I sunk to the ground, and my injurer, with increased
+swiftness, escaped into the wood.
+
+“This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being
+from destruction, and, as a recompense, I now writhed under the
+miserable pain of a wound, which shattered the flesh and bone. The
+feelings of kindness and gentleness, which I had entertained but a few
+moments before, gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth.
+Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind.
+But the agony of my wound overcame me; my pulses paused, and I fainted.
+
+“For some weeks I led a miserable life in the woods, endeavouring to
+cure the wound which I had received. The ball had entered my shoulder,
+and I knew not whether it had remained there or passed through; at any
+rate I had no means of extracting it. My sufferings were augmented also
+by the oppressive sense of the injustice and ingratitude of their
+infliction. My daily vows rose for revenge—a deep and deadly revenge,
+such as would alone compensate for the outrages and anguish I had
+endured.
+
+“After some weeks my wound healed, and I continued my journey. The
+labours I endured were no longer to be alleviated by the bright sun or
+gentle breezes of spring; all joy was but a mockery, which insulted my
+desolate state, and made me feel more painfully that I was not made for
+the enjoyment of pleasure.
+
+“But my toils now drew near a close; and, two months from this time, I
+reached the environs of Geneva.
+
+“It was evening when I arrived, and I retired to a hiding-place among
+the fields that surround it, to meditate in what manner I should apply
+to you. I was oppressed by fatigue and hunger, and far too unhappy to
+enjoy the gentle breezes of evening, or the prospect of the sun setting
+behind the stupendous mountains of Jura.
+
+“At this time a slight sleep relieved me from the pain of reflection,
+which was disturbed by the approach of a beautiful child, who came
+running into the recess I had chosen with all the sportiveness of
+infancy. Suddenly, as I gazed on him, an idea seized me, that this
+little creature was unprejudiced, and had lived too short a time to have
+imbibed a horror of deformity. If, therefore, I could seize him, and
+educate him as my companion and friend, I should not be so desolate in
+this peopled earth.
+
+“Urged by this impulse, I seized on the boy as he passed, and drew him
+towards me. As soon as he beheld my form, he placed his hands before his
+eyes, and uttered a shrill scream: I drew his hand forcibly from his
+face, and said, ‘Child, what is the meaning of this? I do not intend to
+hurt you; listen to me.’
+
+“He struggled violently; ‘Let me go,’ he cried; ‘monster! ugly wretch!
+you wish to eat me, and tear me to pieces—You are an ogre—Let me go,
+or I will tell my papa.’
+
+“‘Boy, you will never see your father again; you must come with me.’
+
+“‘Hideous monster! let me go; My papa is a Syndic—he is M.
+Frankenstein—he would punish you. You dare not keep me.’
+
+“‘Frankenstein! you belong then to my enemy—to him towards whom I have
+sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.’
+
+“The child still struggled, and loaded me with epithets which carried
+despair to my heart: I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a
+moment he lay dead at my feet.
+
+“I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish
+triumph: clapping my hands, I exclaimed, ‘I, too, can create desolation;
+my enemy is not impregnable; this death will carry despair to him, and a
+thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.’
+
+“As I fixed my eyes on the child, I saw something glittering on his
+breast. I took it; it was a portrait of a most lovely woman. In spite of
+my malignity, it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I gazed
+with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely
+lips; but presently my rage returned: I remembered that I was for ever
+deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow; and
+that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have
+changed that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust and
+affright.
+
+“Can you wonder that such thoughts transported me with rage? I only
+wonder that at that moment, instead of venting my sensations in
+exclamations and agony, I did not rush among mankind, and perish in the
+attempt to destroy them.
+
+“While I was overcome by these feelings, I left the spot where I had
+committed the murder, and was seeking a more secluded hiding-place, when
+I perceived a woman passing near me. She was young, not indeed so
+beautiful as her whose portrait I held, but of an agreeable aspect, and
+blooming in the loveliness of youth and health. Here, I thought, is one
+of those whose smiles are bestowed on all but me; she shall not escape:
+thanks to the lessons of Felix, and the sanguinary laws of man, I have
+learned how to work mischief. I approached her unperceived, and placed
+the portrait securely in one of the folds of her dress.
+
+“For some days I haunted the spot where these scenes had taken place;
+sometimes wishing to see you, sometimes resolved to quit the world and
+its miseries for ever. At length I wandered towards these mountains, and
+have ranged through their immense recesses, consumed by a burning
+passion which you alone can gratify. We may not part until you have
+promised to comply with my requisition. I am alone, and miserable; man
+will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself
+would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species,
+and have the same defects. This being you must create.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The being finished speaking, and fixed his looks upon me in expectation
+of a reply. But I was bewildered, perplexed, and unable to arrange my
+ideas sufficiently to understand the full extent of his proposition. He
+continued—
+
+“You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the
+interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone
+can do; and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse.”
+
+The latter part of his tale had kindled anew in me the anger that had
+died away while he narrated his peaceful life among the cottagers, and,
+as he said this, I could no longer suppress the rage that burned within
+me.
+
+“I do refuse it,” I replied; “and no torture shall ever extort a consent
+from me. You may render me the most miserable of men, but you shall
+never make me base in my own eyes. Shall I create another like yourself,
+whose joint wickedness might desolate the world. Begone! I have answered
+you; you may torture me, but I will never consent.”
+
+“You are in the wrong,” replied the fiend; “and, instead of threatening,
+I am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable;
+am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear
+me to pieces, and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity
+man more than he pities me? You would not call it murder, if you could
+precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts, and destroy my frame, the
+work of your own hands. Shall I respect man, when he contemns me? Let
+him live with me in the interchange of kindness, and, instead of injury,
+I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his
+acceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable
+barriers to our union. Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject
+slavery. I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will
+cause fear; and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator,
+do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care: I will work at your
+destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you curse
+the hour of your birth.”
+
+A fiendish rage animated him as he said this; his face was wrinkled into
+contortions too horrible for human eyes to behold; but presently he
+calmed himself, and proceeded—
+
+“I intended to reason. This passion is detrimental to me; for you do not
+reflect that you are the cause of its excess. If any being felt emotions
+of benevolence towards me, I should return them an hundred and an
+hundred fold; for that one creature’s sake, I would make peace with the
+whole kind! But I now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be
+realized. What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a
+creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself: the gratification is
+small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is
+true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that
+account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be
+happy, but they will be harmless, and free from the misery I now feel.
+Oh! my creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one
+benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing;
+do not deny me my request!”
+
+I was moved. I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences of
+my consent; but I felt that there was some justice in his argument. His
+tale, and the feelings he now expressed, proved him to be a creature of
+fine sensations; and did I not, as his maker, owe him all the portion of
+happiness that it was in my power to bestow? He saw my change of
+feeling, and continued—
+
+“If you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us
+again: I will go to the vast wilds of South America. My food is not that
+of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid, to glut my appetite;
+acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will
+be of the same nature as myself, and will be content with the same fare.
+We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on
+man, and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful
+and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the
+wantonness of power and cruelty. Pitiless as you have been towards me, I
+now see compassion in your eyes: let me seize the favourable moment, and
+persuade you to promise what I so ardently desire.”
+
+“You propose,” replied I, “to fly from the habitations of man, to dwell
+in those wilds where the beasts of the field will be your only
+companions. How can you, who long for the love and sympathy of man,
+persevere in this exile? You will return, and again seek their kindness,
+and you will meet with their detestation; your evil passions will be
+renewed, and you will then have a companion to aid you in the task of
+destruction. This may not be; cease to argue the point, for I cannot
+consent.”
+
+“How inconstant are your feelings! but a moment ago you were moved by my
+representations, and why do you again harden yourself to my complaints?
+I swear to you, by the earth which I inhabit, and by you that made me,
+that, with the companion you bestow, I will quit the neighbourhood of
+man, and dwell, as it may chance, in the most savage of places. My evil
+passions will have fled, for I shall meet with sympathy; my life will
+flow quietly away, and, in my dying moments, I shall not curse my
+maker.”
+
+His words had a strange effect upon me. I compassionated him, and
+sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked upon him, when I
+saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened, and my
+feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred. I tried to stifle
+these sensations; I thought, that as I could not sympathize with him, I
+had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which
+was yet in my power to bestow.
+
+“You swear,” I said, “to be harmless; but have you not already shewn a
+degree of malice that should reasonably make me distrust you? May not
+even this be a feint that will increase your triumph by affording a
+wider scope for your revenge?”
+
+“How is this? I thought I had moved your compassion, and yet you still
+refuse to bestow on me the only benefit that can soften my heart, and
+render me harmless. If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice
+must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my
+crimes, and I shall become a thing, of whose existence every one will be
+ignorant. My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor;
+and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an
+equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become
+linked to the chain of existence and events, from which I am now
+excluded.”
+
+I paused some time to reflect on all he had related, and the various
+arguments which he had employed. I thought of the promise of virtues
+which he had displayed on the opening of his existence, and the
+subsequent blight of all kindly feeling by the loathing and scorn which
+his protectors had manifested towards him. His power and threats were
+not omitted in my calculations: a creature who could exist in the ice
+caves of the glaciers, and hide himself from pursuit among the ridges of
+inaccessible precipices, was a being possessing faculties it would be
+vain to cope with. After a long pause of reflection, I concluded, that
+the justice due both to him and my fellow-creatures demanded of me that
+I should comply with his request. Turning to him, therefore, I said—
+
+“I consent to your demand, on your solemn oath to quit Europe for ever,
+and every other place in the neighbourhood of man, as soon as I shall
+deliver into your hands a female who will accompany you in your exile.”
+
+“I swear,” he cried, “by the sun, and by the blue sky of heaven, that if
+you grant my prayer, while they exist you shall never behold me again.
+Depart to your home, and commence your labours: I shall watch their
+progress with unutterable anxiety; and fear not but that when you are
+ready I shall appear.”
+
+Saying this, he suddenly quitted me, fearful, perhaps, of any change in
+my sentiments. I saw him descend the mountain with greater speed than
+the flight of an eagle, and quickly lost him among the undulations of
+the sea of ice.
+
+His tale had occupied the whole day; and the sun was upon the verge of
+the horizon when he departed. I knew that I ought to hasten my descent
+towards the valley, as I should soon be encompassed in darkness; but my
+heart was heavy, and my steps slow. The labour of winding among the
+little paths of the mountains, and fixing my feet firmly as I advanced,
+perplexed me, occupied as I was by the emotions which the occurrences of
+the day had produced. Night was far advanced, when I came to the
+half-way resting-place, and seated myself beside the fountain. The stars
+shone at intervals, as the clouds passed from over them; the dark pines
+rose before me, and every here and there a broken tree lay on the
+ground: it was a scene of wonderful solemnity, and stirred strange
+thoughts within me. I wept bitterly; and, clasping my hands in agony, I
+exclaimed, “Oh! stars, and clouds, and winds, ye are all about to mock
+me: if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as
+nought; but if not, depart, depart and leave me in darkness.”
+
+These were wild and miserable thoughts; but I cannot describe to you how
+the eternal twinkling of the stars weighed upon me, and how I listened
+to every blast of wind, as if it were a dull ugly siroc on its way to
+consume me.
+
+Morning dawned before I arrived at the village of Chamounix; but my
+presence, so haggard and strange, hardly calmed the fears of my family,
+who had waited the whole night in anxious expectation of my return.
+
+The following day we returned to Geneva. The intention of my father in
+coming had been to divert my mind, and to restore me to my lost
+tranquillity; but the medicine had been fatal. And, unable to account
+for the excess of misery I appeared to suffer, he hastened to return
+home, hoping the quiet and monotony of a domestic life would by degrees
+alleviate my sufferings from whatsoever cause they might spring.
+
+For myself, I was passive in all their arrangements; and the gentle
+affection of my beloved Elizabeth was inadequate to draw me from the
+depth of my despair. The promise I had made to the dæmon weighed upon my
+mind, like Dante’s iron cowl on the heads of the hellish hypocrites. All
+pleasures of earth and sky passed before me like a dream, and that
+thought only had to me the reality of life. Can you wonder, that
+sometimes a kind of insanity possessed me, or that I saw continually
+about me a multitude of filthy animals inflicting on me incessant
+torture, that often extorted screams and bitter groans?
+
+By degrees, however, these feelings became calmed. I entered again into
+the every-day scene of life, if not with interest, at least with some
+degree of tranquillity.
+
+
+END OF VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+FRANKENSTEIN;
+
+OR,
+
+THE MODERN PROMETHEUS.
+
+
+    IN THREE VOLUMES.
+    VOL. III.
+
+    London:
+
+    _PRINTED FOR_
+    LACKINGTON, HUGHES, HARDING, MAVOR, & JONES,
+    FINSBURY SQUARE.
+
+    1818.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
+    To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
+    From darkness to promote me?——
+
+    Paradise Lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Day after day, week after week, passed away on my return to Geneva; and
+I could not collect the courage to recommence my work. I feared the
+vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my
+repugnance to the task which was enjoined me. I found that I could not
+compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study
+and laborious disquisition. I had heard of some discoveries having been
+made by an English philosopher, the knowledge of which was material to
+my success, and I sometimes thought of obtaining my father’s consent to
+visit England for this purpose; but I clung to every pretence of delay,
+and could not resolve to interrupt my returning tranquillity. My health,
+which had hitherto declined, was now much restored; and my spirits, when
+unchecked by the memory of my unhappy promise, rose proportionably. My
+father saw this change with pleasure, and he turned his thoughts towards
+the best method of eradicating the remains of my melancholy, which
+every now and then would return by fits, and with a devouring blackness
+overcast the approaching sunshine. At these moments I took refuge in the
+most perfect solitude. I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little
+boat, watching the clouds, and listening to the rippling of the waves,
+silent and listless. But the fresh air and bright sun seldom failed to
+restore me to some degree of composure; and, on my return, I met the
+salutations of my friends with a readier smile and a more cheerful
+heart.
+
+It was after my return from one of these rambles that my father, calling
+me aside, thus addressed me:—
+
+“I am happy to remark, my dear son, that you have resumed your former
+pleasures, and seem to be returning to yourself. And yet you are still
+unhappy, and still avoid our society. For some time I was lost in
+conjecture as to the cause of this; but yesterday an idea struck me, and
+if it is well founded, I conjure you to avow it. Reserve on such a point
+would be not only useless, but draw down treble misery on us all.”
+
+I trembled violently at this exordium, and my father continued—
+
+“I confess, my son, that I have always looked forward to your marriage
+with your cousin as the tie of our domestic comfort, and the stay of my
+declining years. You were attached to each other from your earliest
+infancy; you studied together, and appeared, in dispositions and tastes,
+entirely suited to one another. But so blind is the experience of man,
+that what I conceived to be the best assistants to my plan may have
+entirely destroyed it. You, perhaps, regard her as your sister, without
+any wish that she might become your wife. Nay, you may have met with
+another whom you may love; and, considering yourself as bound in honour
+to your cousin, this struggle may occasion the poignant misery which you
+appear to feel.”
+
+“My dear father, re-assure yourself. I love my cousin tenderly and
+sincerely. I never saw any woman who excited, as Elizabeth does, my
+warmest admiration and affection. My future hopes and prospects are
+entirely bound up in the expectation of our union.”
+
+“The expression of your sentiments on this subject, my dear Victor,
+gives me more pleasure than I have for some time experienced. If you
+feel thus, we shall assuredly be happy, however present events may cast
+a gloom over us. But it is this gloom, which appears to have taken so
+strong a hold of your mind, that I wish to dissipate. Tell me,
+therefore, whether you object to an immediate solemnization of the
+marriage. We have been unfortunate, and recent events have drawn us from
+that every-day tranquillity befitting my years and infirmities. You are
+younger; yet I do not suppose, possessed as you are of a competent
+fortune, that an early marriage would at all interfere with any future
+plans of honour and utility that you may have formed. Do not suppose,
+however, that I wish to dictate happiness to you, or that a delay on
+your part would cause me any serious uneasiness. Interpret my words
+with candour, and answer me, I conjure you, with confidence and
+sincerity.”
+
+I listened to my father in silence, and remained for some time incapable
+of offering any reply. I revolved rapidly in my mind a multitude of
+thoughts, and endeavoured to arrive at some conclusion. Alas! to me the
+idea of an immediate union with my cousin was one of horror and dismay.
+I was bound by a solemn promise, which I had not yet fulfilled, and
+dared not break; or, if I did, what manifold miseries might not impend
+over me and my devoted family! Could I enter into a festival with this
+deadly weight yet hanging round my neck, and bowing me to the ground. I
+must perform my engagement, and let the monster depart with his mate,
+before I allowed myself to enjoy the delight of an union from which I
+expected peace.
+
+I remembered also the necessity imposed upon me of either journeying to
+England, or entering into a long correspondence with those philosophers
+of that country, whose knowledge and discoveries were of indispensable
+use to me in my present undertaking. The latter method of obtaining the
+desired intelligence was dilatory and unsatisfactory: besides, any
+variation was agreeable to me, and I was delighted with the idea of
+spending a year or two in change of scene and variety of occupation, in
+absence from my family; during which period some event might happen
+which would restore me to them in peace and happiness: my promise might
+be fulfilled, and the monster have departed; or some accident might
+occur to destroy him, and put an end to my slavery for ever.
+
+These feelings dictated my answer to my father. I expressed a wish to
+visit England; but, concealing the true reasons of this request, I
+clothed my desires under the guise of wishing to travel and see the
+world before I sat down for life within the walls of my native town.
+
+I urged my entreaty with earnestness, and my father was easily induced
+to comply; for a more indulgent and less dictatorial parent did not
+exist upon earth. Our plan was soon arranged. I should travel to
+Strasburgh, where Clerval would join me. Some short time would be spent
+in the towns of Holland, and our principal stay would be in England. We
+should return by France; and it was agreed that the tour should occupy
+the space of two years.
+
+My father pleased himself with the reflection, that my union with
+Elizabeth should take place immediately on my return to Geneva. “These
+two years,” said he, “will pass swiftly, and it will be the last delay
+that will oppose itself to your happiness. And, indeed, I earnestly
+desire that period to arrive, when we shall all be united, and neither
+hopes or fears arise to disturb our domestic calm.”
+
+“I am content,” I replied, “with your arrangement. By that time we shall
+both have become wiser, and I hope happier, than we at present are.” I
+sighed; but my father kindly forbore to question me further concerning
+the cause of my dejection. He hoped that new scenes, and the amusement
+of travelling, would restore my tranquillity.
+
+I now made arrangements for my journey; but one feeling haunted me,
+which filled me with fear and agitation. During my absence I should
+leave my friends unconscious of the existence of their enemy, and
+unprotected from his attacks, exasperated as he might be by my
+departure. But he had promised to follow me wherever I might go; and
+would he not accompany me to England? This imagination was dreadful in
+itself, but soothing, inasmuch as it supposed the safety of my friends.
+I was agonized with the idea of the possibility that the reverse of this
+might happen. But through the whole period during which I was the slave
+of my creature, I allowed myself to be governed by the impulses of the
+moment; and my present sensations strongly intimated that the fiend
+would follow me, and exempt my family from the danger of his
+machinations.
+
+It was in the latter end of August that I departed, to pass two years of
+exile. Elizabeth approved of the reasons of my departure, and only
+regretted that she had not the same opportunities of enlarging her
+experience, and cultivating her understanding. She wept, however, as she
+bade me farewell, and entreated me to return happy and tranquil. “We
+all,” said she, “depend upon you; and if you are miserable, what must be
+our feelings?”
+
+I threw myself into the carriage that was to convey me away, hardly
+knowing whither I was going, and careless of what was passing around. I
+remembered only, and it was with a bitter anguish that I reflected on
+it, to order that my chemical instruments should be packed to go with
+me: for I resolved to fulfil my promise while abroad, and return, if
+possible, a free man. Filled with dreary imaginations, I passed through
+many beautiful and majestic scenes; but my eyes were fixed and
+unobserving. I could only think of the bourne of my travels, and the
+work which was to occupy me whilst they endured.
+
+After some days spent in listless indolence, during which I traversed
+many leagues, I arrived at Strasburgh, where I waited two days for
+Clerval. He came. Alas, how great was the contrast between us! He was
+alive to every new scene; joyful when he saw the beauties of the setting
+sun, and more happy when he beheld it rise, and recommence a new day. He
+pointed out to me the shifting colours of the landscape, and the
+appearances of the sky. “This is what it is to live;” he cried, “now I
+enjoy existence! But you, my dear Frankenstein, wherefore are you
+desponding and sorrowful?” In truth, I was occupied by gloomy thoughts,
+and neither saw the descent of the evening star, nor the golden sun-rise
+reflected in the Rhine.—And you, my friend, would be far more amused
+with the journal of Clerval, who observed the scenery with an eye of
+feeling and delight, than to listen to my reflections. I, a miserable
+wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment.
+
+We had agreed to descend the Rhine in a boat from Strasburgh to
+Rotterdam, whence we might take shipping for London. During this voyage,
+we passed by many willowy islands, and saw several beautiful towns. We
+staid a day at Manheim, and, on the fifth from our departure from
+Strasburgh, arrived at Mayence. The course of the Rhine below Mayence
+becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly, and winds
+between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many
+ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black
+woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a
+singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills,
+ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine
+rushing beneath; and, on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing
+vineyards, with green sloping banks, and a meandering river, and
+populous towns, occupy the scene.
+
+We travelled at the time of the vintage, and heard the song of the
+labourers, as we glided down the stream. Even I, depressed in mind, and
+my spirits continually agitated by gloomy feelings, even I was pleased.
+I lay at the bottom of the boat, and, as I gazed on the cloudless blue
+sky, I seemed to drink in a tranquillity to which I had long been a
+stranger. And if these were my sensations, who can describe those of
+Henry? He felt as if he had been transported to Fairy-land, and enjoyed
+a happiness seldom tasted by man. “I have seen,” he said, “the most
+beautiful scenes of my own country; I have visited the lakes of Lucerne
+and Uri, where the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the
+water, casting black and impenetrable shades, which would cause a gloomy
+and mournful appearance, were it not for the most verdant islands that
+relieve the eye by their gay appearance; I have seen this lake agitated
+by a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water, and gave you an
+idea of what the water-spout must be on the great ocean, and the waves
+dash with fury the base of the mountain, where the priest and his
+mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche, and where their dying voices
+are still said to be heard amid the pauses of the nightly wind; I have
+seen the mountains of La Valais, and the Pays de Vaud: but this country,
+Victor, pleases me more than all those wonders. The mountains of
+Switzerland are more majestic and strange; but there is a charm in the
+banks of this divine river, that I never before saw equalled. Look at
+that castle which overhangs yon precipice; and that also on the island,
+almost concealed amongst the foliage of those lovely trees; and now that
+group of labourers coming from among their vines; and that village
+half-hid in the recess of the mountain. Oh, surely, the spirit that
+inhabits and guards this place has a soul more in harmony with man, than
+those who pile the glacier, or retire to the inaccessible peaks of the
+mountains of our own country.”
+
+Clerval! beloved friend! even now it delights me to record your words,
+and to dwell on the praise of which you are so eminently deserving. He
+was a being formed in the “very poetry of nature.” His wild and
+enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart.
+His soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of
+that devoted and wondrous nature that the worldly-minded teach us to
+look for only in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not
+sufficient to satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature,
+which others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour:
+
+    —— ——“The sounding cataract
+    Haunted _him_ like a passion: the tall rock,
+    The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
+    Their colours and their forms, were then to him
+    An appetite; a feeling, and a love,
+    That had no need of a remoter charm,
+    By thought supplied, or any interest
+    Unborrowed from the eye.”
+
+And where does he now exist? Is this gentle and lovely being lost for
+ever? Has this mind so replete with ideas, imaginations fanciful and
+magnificent, which formed a world, whose existence depended on the life
+of its creator; has this mind perished? Does it now only exist in my
+memory? No, it is not thus; your form so divinely wrought, and beaming
+with beauty, has decayed, but your spirit still visits and consoles your
+unhappy friend.
+
+Pardon this gush of sorrow; these ineffectual words are but a slight
+tribute to the unexampled worth of Henry, but they soothe my heart,
+overflowing with the anguish which his remembrance creates. I will
+proceed with my tale.
+
+Beyond Cologne we descended to the plains of Holland; and we resolved to
+post the remainder of our way; for the wind was contrary, and the stream
+of the river was too gentle to aid us.
+
+Our journey here lost the interest arising from beautiful scenery; but
+we arrived in a few days at Rotterdam, whence we proceeded by sea to
+England. It was on a clear morning, in the latter days of December, that
+I first saw the white cliffs of Britain. The banks of the Thames
+presented a new scene; they were flat, but fertile, and almost every
+town was marked by the remembrance of some story. We saw Tilbury Fort,
+and remembered the Spanish armada; Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich,
+places which I had heard of even in my country.
+
+At length we saw the numerous steeples of London, St. Paul’s towering
+above all, and the Tower famed in English history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+London was our present point of rest; we determined to remain several
+months in this wonderful and celebrated city. Clerval desired the
+intercourse of the men of genius and talent who flourished at this time;
+but this was with me a secondary object; I was principally occupied with
+the means of obtaining the information necessary for the completion of
+my promise, and quickly availed myself of the letters of introduction
+that I had brought with me, addressed to the most distinguished natural
+philosophers.
+
+If this journey had taken place during my days of study and happiness,
+it would have afforded me inexpressible pleasure. But a blight had come
+over my existence, and I only visited these people for the sake of the
+information they might give me on the subject in which my interest was
+so terribly profound. Company was irksome to me; when alone, I could
+fill my mind with the sights of heaven and earth; the voice of Henry
+soothed me, and I could thus cheat myself into a transitory peace. But
+busy uninteresting joyous faces brought back despair to my heart. I saw
+an insurmountable barrier placed between me and my fellow-men; this
+barrier was sealed with the blood of William and Justine; and to reflect
+on the events connected with those names filled my soul with anguish.
+
+But in Clerval I saw the image of my former self; he was inquisitive,
+and anxious to gain experience and instruction. The difference of
+manners which he observed was to him an inexhaustible source of
+instruction and amusement. He was for ever busy; and the only check to
+his enjoyments was my sorrowful and dejected mien. I tried to conceal
+this as much as possible, that I might not debar him from the pleasures
+natural to one who was entering on a new scene of life, undisturbed by
+any care or bitter recollection. I often refused to accompany him,
+alleging another engagement, that I might remain alone. I now also began
+to collect the materials necessary for my new creation, and this was to
+me like the torture of single drops of water continually falling on the
+head. Every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme anguish, and
+every word that I spoke in allusion to it caused my lips to quiver, and
+my heart to palpitate.
+
+After passing some months in London, we received a letter from a person
+in Scotland, who had formerly been our visitor at Geneva. He mentioned
+the beauties of his native country, and asked us if those were not
+sufficient allurements to induce us to prolong our journey as far north
+as Perth, where he resided. Clerval eagerly desired to accept this
+invitation; and I, although I abhorred society, wished to view again
+mountains and streams, and all the wondrous works with which Nature
+adorns her chosen dwelling-places.
+
+We had arrived in England at the beginning of October, and it was now
+February. We accordingly determined to commence our journey towards the
+north at the expiration of another month. In this expedition we did not
+intend to follow the great road to Edinburgh, but to visit Windsor,
+Oxford, Matlock, and the Cumberland lakes, resolving to arrive at the
+completion of this tour about the end of July. I packed my chemical
+instruments, and the materials I had collected, resolving to finish my
+labours in some obscure nook in the northern highlands of Scotland.
+
+We quitted London on the 27th of March, and remained a few days at
+Windsor, rambling in its beautiful forest. This was a new scene to us
+mountaineers; the majestic oaks, the quantity of game, and the herds of
+stately deer, were all novelties to us.
+
+From thence we proceeded to Oxford. As we entered this city, our minds
+were filled with the remembrance of the events that had been transacted
+there more than a century and a half before. It was here that Charles I.
+had collected his forces. This city had remained faithful to him, after
+the whole nation had forsaken his cause to join the standard of
+parliament and liberty. The memory of that unfortunate king, and his
+companions, the amiable Falkland, the insolent Gower, his queen, and
+son, gave a peculiar interest to every part of the city, which they
+might be supposed to have inhabited. The spirit of elder days found a
+dwelling here, and we delighted to trace its footsteps. If these
+feelings had not found an imaginary gratification, the appearance of the
+city had yet in itself sufficient beauty to obtain our admiration. The
+colleges are ancient and picturesque; the streets are almost
+magnificent; and the lovely Isis, which flows beside it through meadows
+of exquisite verdure, is spread forth into a placid expanse of waters,
+which reflects its majestic assemblage of towers, and spires, and domes,
+embosomed among aged trees.
+
+I enjoyed this scene; and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the
+memory of the past, and the anticipation of the future. I was formed for
+peaceful happiness. During my youthful days discontent never visited my
+mind; and if I was ever overcome by _ennui_, the sight of what is
+beautiful in nature, or the study of what is excellent and sublime in
+the productions of man, could always interest my heart, and communicate
+elasticity to my spirits. But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered
+my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit, what I shall
+soon cease to be—a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to
+others, and abhorrent to myself.
+
+We passed a considerable period at Oxford, rambling among its environs,
+and endeavouring to identify every spot which might relate to the most
+animating epoch of English history. Our little voyages of discovery were
+often prolonged by the successive objects that presented themselves. We
+visited the tomb of the illustrious Hampden, and the field on which that
+patriot fell. For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and
+miserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and
+self-sacrifice, of which these sights were the monuments and the
+remembrancers. For an instant I dared to shake off my chains, and look
+around me with a free and lofty spirit; but the iron had eaten into my
+flesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self.
+
+We left Oxford with regret, and proceeded to Matlock, which was our next
+place of rest. The country in the neighbourhood of this village
+resembled, to a greater degree, the scenery of Switzerland; but every
+thing is on a lower scale, and the green hills want the crown of distant
+white Alps, which always attend on the piny mountains of my native
+country. We visited the wondrous cave, and the little cabinets of
+natural history, where the curiosities are disposed in the same manner
+as in the collections at Servox and Chamounix. The latter name made me
+tremble, when pronounced by Henry; and I hastened to quit Matlock, with
+which that terrible scene was thus associated.
+
+From Derby still journeying northward, we passed two months in
+Cumberland and Westmoreland. I could now almost fancy myself among the
+Swiss mountains. The little patches of snow which yet lingered on the
+northern sides of the mountains, the lakes, and the dashing of the rocky
+streams, were all familiar and dear sights to me. Here also we made some
+acquaintances, who almost contrived to cheat me into happiness. The
+delight of Clerval was proportionably greater than mine; his mind
+expanded in the company of men of talent, and he found in his own nature
+greater capacities and resources than he could have imagined himself to
+have possessed while he associated with his inferiors. “I could pass my
+life here,” said he to me; “and among these mountains I should scarcely
+regret Switzerland and the Rhine.”
+
+But he found that a traveller’s life is one that includes much pain
+amidst its enjoyments. His feelings are for ever on the stretch; and
+when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit
+that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again
+engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties.
+
+We had scarcely visited the various lakes of Cumberland and
+Westmoreland, and conceived an affection for some of the inhabitants,
+when the period of our appointment with our Scotch friend approached,
+and we left them to travel on. For my own part I was not sorry. I had
+now neglected my promise for some time, and I feared the effects of the
+dæmon’s disappointment. He might remain in Switzerland, and wreak his
+vengeance on my relatives. This idea pursued me, and tormented me at
+every moment from which I might otherwise have snatched repose and
+peace. I waited for my letters with feverish impatience: if they were
+delayed, I was miserable, and overcome by a thousand fears; and when
+they arrived, and I saw the superscription of Elizabeth or my father, I
+hardly dared to read and ascertain my fate. Sometimes I thought that the
+fiend followed me, and might expedite my remissness by murdering my
+companion. When these thoughts possessed me, I would not quit Henry for
+a moment, but followed him as his shadow, to protect him from the
+fancied rage of his destroyer. I felt as if I had committed some great
+crime, the consciousness of which haunted me. I was guiltless, but I had
+indeed drawn down a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal as that of
+crime.
+
+I visited Edinburgh with languid eyes and mind; and yet that city might
+have interested the most unfortunate being. Clerval did not like it so
+well as Oxford; for the antiquity of the latter city was more pleasing
+to him. But the beauty and regularity of the new town of Edinburgh, its
+romantic castle, and its environs, the most delightful in the world,
+Arthur’s Seat, St. Bernard’s Well, and the Pentland Hills, compensated
+him for the change, and filled him with cheerfulness and admiration. But
+I was impatient to arrive at the termination of my journey.
+
+We left Edinburgh in a week, passing through Coupar, St. Andrews, and
+along the banks of the Tay, to Perth, where our friend expected us. But
+I was in no mood to laugh and talk with strangers, or enter into their
+feelings or plans with the good humour expected from a guest; and
+accordingly I told Clerval that I wished to make the tour of Scotland
+alone. “Do you,” said I, “enjoy yourself, and let this be our
+rendezvous. I may be absent a month or two; but do not interfere with my
+motions, I entreat you: leave me to peace and solitude for a short time;
+and when I return, I hope it will be with a lighter heart, more
+congenial to your own temper.”
+
+Henry wished to dissuade me; but, seeing me bent on this plan, ceased to
+remonstrate. He entreated me to write often. “I had rather be with you,”
+he said, “in your solitary rambles, than with these Scotch people, whom
+I do not know: hasten then, my dear friend, to return, that I may again
+feel myself somewhat at home, which I cannot do in your absence.”
+
+Having parted from my friend, I determined to visit some remote spot of
+Scotland, and finish my work in solitude. I did not doubt but that the
+monster followed me, and would discover himself to me when I should have
+finished, that he might receive his companion.
+
+With this resolution I traversed the northern highlands, and fixed on
+one of the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene labours. It was a place
+fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock, whose high sides
+were continually beaten upon by the waves. The soil was barren, scarcely
+affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its
+inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggy
+limbs gave tokens of their miserable fare. Vegetables and bread, when
+they indulged in such luxuries, and even fresh water, was to be procured
+from the main land, which was about five miles distant.
+
+On the whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one of
+these was vacant when I arrived. This I hired. It contained but two
+rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable
+penury. The thatch had fallen in, the walls were unplastered, and the
+door was off its hinges. I ordered it to be repaired, bought some
+furniture, and took possession; an incident which would, doubtless, have
+occasioned some surprise, had not all the senses of the cottagers been
+benumbed by want and squalid poverty. As it was, I lived ungazed at and
+unmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and clothes which I
+gave; so much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men.
+
+In this retreat I devoted the morning to labour; but in the evening,
+when the weather permitted, I walked on the stony beach of the sea, to
+listen to the waves as they roared, and dashed at my feet. It was a
+monotonous, yet ever-changing scene. I thought of Switzerland; it was
+far different from this desolate and appalling landscape. Its hills are
+covered with vines, and its cottages are scattered thickly in the
+plains. Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky; and, when troubled
+by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant, when
+compared to the roarings of the giant ocean.
+
+In this manner I distributed my occupations when I first arrived; but,
+as I proceeded in my labour, it became every day more horrible and
+irksome to me. Sometimes I could not prevail on myself to enter my
+laboratory for several days; and at other times I toiled day and night
+in order to complete my work. It was indeed a filthy process in which I
+was engaged. During my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy
+had blinded me to the horror of my employment; my mind was intently
+fixed on the sequel of my labour, and my eyes were shut to the horror of
+my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and my heart often
+sickened at the work of my hands.
+
+Thus situated, employed in the most detestable occupation, immersed in a
+solitude where nothing could for an instant call my attention from the
+actual scene in which I was engaged, my spirits became unequal; I grew
+restless and nervous. Every moment I feared to meet my persecutor.
+Sometimes I sat with my eyes fixed on the ground, fearing to raise them
+lest they should encounter the object which I so much dreaded to behold.
+I feared to wander from the sight of my fellow-creatures, lest when
+alone he should come to claim his companion.
+
+In the mean time I worked on, and my labour was already considerably
+advanced. I looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager
+hope, which I dared not trust myself to question, but which was
+intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil, that made my heart sicken
+in my bosom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+I sat one evening in my laboratory; the sun had set, and the moon was
+just rising from the sea; I had not sufficient light for my employment,
+and I remained idle, in a pause of consideration of whether I should
+leave my labour for the night, or hasten its conclusion by an
+unremitting attention to it. As I sat, a train of reflection occurred to
+me, which led me to consider the effects of what I was now doing. Three
+years before I was engaged in the same manner, and had created a fiend
+whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart, and filled it for
+ever with the bitterest remorse. I was now about to form another being,
+of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten
+thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own
+sake, in murder and wretchedness. He had sworn to quit the neighbourhood
+of man, and hide himself in deserts; but she had not; and she, who in
+all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might
+refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might
+even hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed his own
+deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for it when it
+came before his eyes in the female form? She also might turn with
+disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and
+he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being
+deserted by one of his own species.
+
+Even if they were to leave Europe, and inhabit the deserts of the new
+world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the
+dæmon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be
+propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the
+species of man a condition precarious and full of terror. Had I a right,
+for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?
+I had before been moved by the sophisms of the being I had created; I
+had been struck senseless by his fiendish threats: but now, for the
+first time, the wickedness of my promise burst upon me; I shuddered to
+think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness
+had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price perhaps of the
+existence of the whole human race.
+
+I trembled, and my heart failed within me; when, on looking up, I saw,
+by the light of the moon, the dæmon at the casement. A ghastly grin
+wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where I sat fulfilling the task
+which he had allotted to me. Yes, he had followed me in my travels; he
+had loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide
+and desert heaths; and he now came to mark my progress, and claim the
+fulfilment of my promise.
+
+As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of
+malice and treachery. I thought with a sensation of madness on my
+promise of creating another like to him, and, trembling with passion,
+tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. The wretch saw me
+destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for
+happiness, and, with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew.
+
+I left the room, and, locking the door, made a solemn vow in my own
+heart never to resume my labours; and then, with trembling steps, I
+sought my own apartment. I was alone; none were near me to dissipate the
+gloom, and relieve me from the sickening oppression of the most terrible
+reveries.
+
+Several hours past, and I remained near my window gazing on the sea; it
+was almost motionless, for the winds were hushed, and all nature reposed
+under the eye of the quiet moon. A few fishing vessels alone specked the
+water, and now and then the gentle breeze wafted the sound of voices, as
+the fishermen called to one another. I felt the silence, although I was
+hardly conscious of its extreme profundity until my ear was suddenly
+arrested by the paddling of oars near the shore, and a person landed
+close to my house.
+
+In a few minutes after, I heard the creaking of my door, as if some one
+endeavoured to open it softly. I trembled from head to foot; I felt a
+presentiment of who it was, and wished to rouse one of the peasants who
+dwelt in a cottage not far from mine; but I was overcome by the
+sensation of helplessness, so often felt in frightful dreams, when you
+in vain endeavour to fly from an impending danger, and was rooted to the
+spot.
+
+Presently I heard the sound of footsteps along the passage; the door
+opened, and the wretch whom I dreaded appeared. Shutting the door, he
+approached me, and said, in a smothered voice—
+
+“You have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you
+intend? Do you dare to break your promise? I have endured toil and
+misery: I left Switzerland with you; I crept along the shores of the
+Rhine, among its willow islands, and over the summits of its hills. I
+have dwelt many months in the heaths of England, and among the deserts
+of Scotland. I have endured incalculable fatigue, and cold, and hunger;
+do you dare destroy my hopes?”
+
+“Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create another like
+yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness.”
+
+“Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself
+unworthy of my condescension. Remember that I have power; you believe
+yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day
+will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your
+master;—obey!”
+
+“The hour of my weakness is past, and the period of your power is
+arrived. Your threats cannot move me to do an act of wickedness; but
+they confirm me in a resolution of not creating you a companion in vice.
+Shall I, in cool blood, set loose upon the earth a dæmon, whose delight
+is in death and wretchedness. Begone! I am firm, and your words will
+only exasperate my rage.”
+
+The monster saw my determination in my face, and gnashed his teeth in
+the impotence of anger. “Shall each man,” cried he, “find a wife for his
+bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had feelings of
+affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man, you may
+hate; but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the
+bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness for ever. Are
+you to be happy, while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? You
+can blast my other passions; but revenge remains—revenge, henceforth
+dearer than light or food! I may die; but first you, my tyrant and
+tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. Beware; for I
+am fearless, and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a
+snake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall repent of the
+injuries you inflict.”
+
+“Devil, cease; and do not poison the air with these sounds of malice. I
+have declared my resolution to you, and I am no coward to bend beneath
+words. Leave me; I am inexorable.”
+
+“It is well. I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your
+wedding-night.”
+
+I started forward, and exclaimed, “Villain! before you sign my
+death-warrant, be sure that you are yourself safe.”
+
+I would have seized him; but he eluded me, and quitted the house with
+precipitation: in a few moments I saw him in his boat, which shot across
+the waters with an arrowy swiftness, and was soon lost amidst the waves.
+
+All was again silent; but his words rung in my ears. I burned with rage
+to pursue the murderer of my peace, and precipitate him into the ocean.
+I walked up and down my room hastily and perturbed, while my imagination
+conjured up a thousand images to torment and sting me. Why had I not
+followed him, and closed with him in mortal strife? But I had suffered
+him to depart, and he had directed his course towards the main land. I
+shuddered to think who might be the next victim sacrificed to his
+insatiate revenge. And then I thought again of his words—“_I will be
+with you on your wedding-night._” That then was the period fixed for the
+fulfilment of my destiny. In that hour I should die, and at once satisfy
+and extinguish his malice. The prospect did not move me to fear; yet
+when I thought of my beloved Elizabeth,—of her tears and endless
+sorrow, when she should find her lover so barbarously snatched from
+her,—tears, the first I had shed for many months, streamed from my
+eyes, and I resolved not to fall before my enemy without a bitter
+struggle.
+
+The night passed away, and the sun rose from the ocean; my feelings
+became calmer, if it may be called calmness, when the violence of rage
+sinks into the depths of despair. I left the house, the horrid scene of
+the last night’s contention, and walked on the beach of the sea, which I
+almost regarded as an insuperable barrier between me and my
+fellow-creatures; nay, a wish that such should prove the fact stole
+across me. I desired that I might pass my life on that barren rock,
+wearily it is true, but uninterrupted by any sudden shock of misery. If
+I returned, it was to be sacrificed, or to see those whom I most loved
+die under the grasp of a dæmon whom I had myself created.
+
+I walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it
+loved, and miserable in the separation. When it became noon, and the sun
+rose higher, I lay down on the grass, and was overpowered by a deep
+sleep. I had been awake the whole of the preceding night, my nerves were
+agitated, and my eyes inflamed by watching and misery. The sleep into
+which I now sunk refreshed me; and when I awoke, I again felt as if I
+belonged to a race of human beings like myself, and I began to reflect
+upon what had passed with greater composure; yet still the words of the
+fiend rung in my ears like a death-knell, they appeared like a dream,
+yet distinct and oppressive as a reality.
+
+The sun had far descended, and I still sat on the shore, satisfying my
+appetite, which had become ravenous, with an oaten cake, when I saw a
+fishing-boat land close to me, and one of the men brought me a packet;
+it contained letters from Geneva, and one from Clerval, entreating me to
+join him. He said that nearly a year had elapsed since we had quitted
+Switzerland, and France was yet unvisited. He entreated me, therefore,
+to leave my solitary isle, and meet him at Perth, in a week from that
+time, when we might arrange the plan of our future proceedings. This
+letter in a degree recalled me to life, and I determined to quit my
+island at the expiration of two days.
+
+Yet, before I departed, there was a task to perform, on which I
+shuddered to reflect: I must pack my chemical instruments; and for that
+purpose I must enter the room which had been the scene of my odious
+work, and I must handle those utensils, the sight of which was sickening
+to me. The next morning, at day-break, I summoned sufficient courage,
+and unlocked the door of my laboratory. The remains of the half-finished
+creature, whom I had destroyed, lay scattered on the floor, and I almost
+felt as if I had mangled the living flesh of a human being. I paused to
+collect myself, and then entered the chamber. With trembling hand I
+conveyed the instruments out of the room; but I reflected that I ought
+not to leave the relics of my work to excite the horror and suspicion of
+the peasants, and I accordingly put them into a basket, with a great
+quantity of stones, and laying them up, determined to throw them into
+the sea that very night; and in the mean time I sat upon the beach,
+employed in cleaning and arranging my chemical apparatus.
+
+Nothing could be more complete than the alteration that had taken place
+in my feelings since the night of the appearance of the dæmon. I had
+before regarded my promise with a gloomy despair, as a thing that, with
+whatever consequences, must be fulfilled; but I now felt as if a film
+had been taken from before my eyes, and that I, for the first time, saw
+clearly. The idea of renewing my labours did not for one instant occur
+to me; the threat I had heard weighed on my thoughts, but I did not
+reflect that a voluntary act of mine could avert it. I had resolved in
+my own mind, that to create another like the fiend I had first made
+would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness; and I
+banished from my mind every thought that could lead to a different
+conclusion.
+
+Between two and three in the morning the moon rose; and I then, putting
+my basket aboard a little skiff, sailed out about four miles from the
+shore. The scene was perfectly solitary: a few boats were returning
+towards land, but I sailed away from them. I felt as if I was about the
+commission of a dreadful crime, and avoided with shuddering anxiety any
+encounter with my fellow-creatures. At one time the moon, which had
+before been clear, was suddenly overspread by a thick cloud, and I took
+advantage of the moment of darkness, and cast my basket into the sea; I
+listened to the gurgling sound as it sunk, and then sailed away from the
+spot. The sky became clouded; but the air was pure, although chilled by
+the north-east breeze that was then rising. But it refreshed me, and
+filled me with such agreeable sensations, that I resolved to prolong my
+stay on the water, and fixing the rudder in a direct position, stretched
+myself at the bottom of the boat. Clouds hid the moon, every thing was
+obscure, and I heard only the sound of the boat, as its keel cut through
+the waves; the murmur lulled me, and in a short time I slept soundly.
+
+I do not know how long I remained in this situation, but when I awoke I
+found that the sun had already mounted considerably. The wind was high,
+and the waves continually threatened the safety of my little skiff. I
+found that the wind was north-east, and must have driven me far from the
+coast from which I had embarked. I endeavoured to change my course, but
+quickly found that if I again made the attempt the boat would be
+instantly filled with water. Thus situated, my only resource was to
+drive before the wind. I confess that I felt a few sensations of terror.
+I had no compass with me, and was so little acquainted with the
+geography of this part of the world that the sun was of little benefit
+to me. I might be driven into the wide Atlantic, and feel all the
+tortures of starvation, or be swallowed up in the immeasurable waters
+that roared and buffeted around me. I had already been out many hours,
+and felt the torment of a burning thirst, a prelude to my other
+sufferings. I looked on the heavens, which were covered by clouds that
+flew before the wind only to be replaced by others: I looked upon the
+sea, it was to be my grave. “Fiend,” I exclaimed, “your task is already
+fulfilled!” I thought of Elizabeth, of my father, and of Clerval; and
+sunk into a reverie, so despairing and frightful, that even now, when
+the scene is on the point of closing before me for ever, I shudder to
+reflect on it.
+
+Some hours passed thus; but by degrees, as the sun declined towards the
+horizon, the wind died away into a gentle breeze, and the sea became
+free from breakers. But these gave place to a heavy swell; I felt sick,
+and hardly able to hold the rudder, when suddenly I saw a line of high
+land towards the south.
+
+Almost spent, as I was, by fatigue, and the dreadful suspense I endured
+for several hours, this sudden certainty of life rushed like a flood of
+warm joy to my heart, and tears gushed from my eyes.
+
+How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we
+have of life even in the excess of misery! I constructed another sail
+with a part of my dress, and eagerly steered my course towards the land.
+It had a wild and rocky appearance; but as I approached nearer, I easily
+perceived the traces of cultivation. I saw vessels near the shore, and
+found myself suddenly transported back to the neighbourhood of civilized
+man. I eagerly traced the windings of the land, and hailed a steeple
+which I at length saw issuing from behind a small promontory. As I was
+in a state of extreme debility, I resolved to sail directly towards the
+town as a place where I could most easily procure nourishment.
+Fortunately I had money with me. As I turned the promontory, I perceived
+a small neat town and a good harbour, which I entered, my heart bounding
+with joy at my unexpected escape.
+
+As I was occupied in fixing the boat and arranging the sails, several
+people crowded towards the spot. They seemed very much surprised at my
+appearance; but, instead of offering me any assistance, whispered
+together with gestures that at any other time might have produced in me
+a slight sensation of alarm. As it was, I merely remarked that they
+spoke English; and I therefore addressed them in that language: “My good
+friends,” said I, “will you be so kind as to tell me the name of this
+town, and inform me where I am?”
+
+“You will know that soon enough,” replied a man with a gruff voice. “May
+be you are come to a place that will not prove much to your taste; but
+you will not be consulted as to your quarters, I promise you.”
+
+I was exceedingly surprised on receiving so rude an answer from a
+stranger; and I was also disconcerted on perceiving the frowning and
+angry countenances of his companions. “Why do you answer me so roughly?”
+I replied: “surely it is not the custom of Englishmen to receive
+strangers so inhospitably.”
+
+“I do not know,” said the man, “what the custom of the English may be;
+but it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains.”
+
+While this strange dialogue continued, I perceived the crowd rapidly
+increase. Their faces expressed a mixture of curiosity and anger, which
+annoyed, and in some degree alarmed me. I inquired the way to the inn;
+but no one replied. I then moved forward, and a murmuring sound arose
+from the crowd as they followed and surrounded me; when an ill-looking
+man approaching, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Come, Sir, you
+must follow me to Mr. Kirwin’s, to give an account of yourself.”
+
+“Who is Mr. Kirwin? Why am I to give an account of myself? Is not this a
+free country?”
+
+“Aye, Sir, free enough for honest folks. Mr. Kirwin is a magistrate; and
+you are to give an account of the death of a gentleman who was found
+murdered here last night.”
+
+This answer startled me; but I presently recovered myself. I was
+innocent; that could easily be proved: accordingly I followed my
+conductor in silence, and was led to one of the best houses in the town.
+I was ready to sink from fatigue and hunger; but, being surrounded by a
+crowd, I thought it politic to rouse all my strength, that no physical
+debility might be construed into apprehension or conscious guilt. Little
+did I then expect the calamity that was in a few moments to overwhelm
+me, and extinguish in horror and despair all fear of ignominy or death.
+
+I must pause here; for it requires all my fortitude to recall the memory
+of the frightful events which I am about to relate, in proper detail, to
+my recollection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+I was soon introduced into the presence of the magistrate, an old
+benevolent man, with calm and mild manners. He looked upon me, however,
+with some degree of severity; and then, turning towards my conductors,
+he asked who appeared as witnesses on this occasion.
+
+About half a dozen men came forward; and one being selected by the
+magistrate, he deposed, that he had been out fishing the night before
+with his son and brother-in-law, Daniel Nugent, when, about ten o’clock,
+they observed a strong northerly blast rising, and they accordingly put
+in for port. It was a very dark night, as the moon had not yet risen;
+they did not land at the harbour, but, as they had been accustomed, at a
+creek about two miles below. He walked on first, carrying a part of the
+fishing tackle, and his companions followed him at some distance. As he
+was proceeding along the sands, he struck his foot against something,
+and fell all his length on the ground. His companions came up to assist
+him; and, by the light of their lantern, they found that he had fallen
+on the body of a man, who was to all appearance dead. Their first
+supposition was, that it was the corpse of some person who had been
+drowned, and was thrown on shore by the waves; but, upon examination,
+they found that the clothes were not wet, and even that the body was not
+then cold. They instantly carried it to the cottage of an old woman near
+the spot, and endeavoured, but in vain, to restore it to life. He
+appeared to be a handsome young man, about five and twenty years of age.
+He had apparently been strangled; for there was no sign of any violence,
+except the black mark of fingers on his neck.
+
+The first part of this deposition did not in the least interest me; but
+when the mark of the fingers was mentioned, I remembered the murder of
+my brother, and felt myself extremely agitated; my limbs trembled, and a
+mist came over my eyes, which obliged me to lean on a chair for support.
+The magistrate observed me with a keen eye, and of course drew an
+unfavourable augury from my manner.
+
+The son confirmed his father’s account: but when Daniel Nugent was
+called, he swore positively that, just before the fall of his companion,
+he saw a boat, with a single man in it, at a short distance from the
+shore; and, as far as he could judge by the light of a few stars, it was
+the same boat in which I had just landed.
+
+A woman deposed, that she lived near the beach, and was standing at the
+door of her cottage, waiting for the return of the fishermen, about an
+hour before she heard of the discovery of the body, when she saw a boat,
+with only one man in it, push off from that part of the shore where the
+corpse was afterwards found.
+
+Another woman confirmed the account of the fishermen having brought the
+body into her house; it was not cold. They put it into a bed, and rubbed
+it; and Daniel went to the town for an apothecary, but life was quite
+gone.
+
+Several other men were examined concerning my landing; and they agreed,
+that, with the strong north wind that had arisen during the night, it
+was very probable that I had beaten about for many hours, and had been
+obliged to return nearly to the same spot from which I had departed.
+Besides, they observed that it appeared that I had brought the body from
+another place, and it was likely, that as I did not appear to know the
+shore, I might have put into the harbour ignorant of the distance of the
+town of —— from the place where I had deposited the corpse.
+
+Mr. Kirwin, on hearing this evidence, desired that I should be taken
+into the room where the body lay for interment that it might be observed
+what effect the sight of it would produce upon me. This idea was
+probably suggested by the extreme agitation I had exhibited when the
+mode of the murder had been described. I was accordingly conducted, by
+the magistrate and several other persons, to the inn. I could not help
+being struck by the strange coincidences that had taken place during
+this eventful night; but, knowing that I had been conversing with
+several persons in the island I had inhabited about the time that the
+body had been found, I was perfectly tranquil as to the consequences of
+the affair.
+
+I entered the room where the corpse lay, and was led up to the coffin.
+How can I describe my sensations on beholding it? I feel yet parched
+with horror, nor can I reflect on that terrible moment without
+shuddering and agony, that faintly reminds me of the anguish of the
+recognition. The trial, the presence of the magistrate and witnesses,
+passed like a dream from my memory, when I saw the lifeless form of
+Henry Clerval stretched before me. I gasped for breath; and, throwing
+myself on the body, I exclaimed, “Have my murderous machinations
+deprived you also, my dearest Henry, of life? Two I have already
+destroyed; other victims await their destiny: but you, Clerval, my
+friend, my benefactor”——
+
+The human frame could no longer support the agonizing suffering that I
+endured, and I was carried out of the room in strong convulsions.
+
+A fever succeeded to this. I lay for two months on the point of death:
+my ravings, as I afterwards heard, were frightful; I called myself the
+murderer of William, of Justine, and of Clerval. Sometimes I entreated
+my attendants to assist me in the destruction of the fiend by whom I was
+tormented; and, at others, I felt the fingers of the monster already
+grasping my neck, and screamed aloud with agony and terror. Fortunately,
+as I spoke my native language, Mr. Kirwin alone understood me; but my
+gestures and bitter cries were sufficient to affright the other
+witnesses.
+
+Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I
+not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming
+children, the only hopes of their doating parents: how many brides and
+youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and
+the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what materials
+was I made, that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the
+turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture.
+
+But I was doomed to live; and, in two months, found myself as awaking
+from a dream, in a prison, stretched on a wretched bed, surrounded by
+gaolers, turnkeys, bolts, and all the miserable apparatus of a dungeon.
+It was morning, I remember, when I thus awoke to understanding: I had
+forgotten the particulars of what had happened, and only felt as if some
+great misfortune had suddenly overwhelmed me; but when I looked around,
+and saw the barred windows, and the squalidness of the room in which I
+was, all flashed across my memory, and I groaned bitterly.
+
+This sound disturbed an old woman who was sleeping in a chair beside me.
+She was a hired nurse, the wife of one of the turnkeys, and her
+countenance expressed all those bad qualities which often characterize
+that class. The lines of her face were hard and rude, like that of
+persons accustomed to see without sympathizing in sights of misery. Her
+tone expressed her entire indifference; she addressed me in English, and
+the voice struck me as one that I had heard during my sufferings:
+
+“Are you better now, Sir?” said she.
+
+I replied in the same language, with a feeble voice, “I believe I am;
+but if it be all true, if indeed I did not dream, I am sorry that I am
+still alive to feel this misery and horror.”
+
+“For that matter,” replied the old woman, “if you mean about the
+gentleman you murdered, I believe that it were better for you if you
+were dead, for I fancy it will go hard with you; but you will be hung
+when the next sessions come on. However, that’s none of my business, I
+am sent to nurse you, and get you well; I do my duty with a safe
+conscience, it were well if every body did the same.”
+
+I turned with loathing from the woman who could utter so unfeeling a
+speech to a person just saved, on the very edge of death; but I felt
+languid, and unable to reflect on all that had passed. The whole series
+of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it
+were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force
+of reality.
+
+As the images that floated before me became more distinct, I grew
+feverish; a darkness pressed around me; no one was near me who soothed
+me with the gentle voice of love; no dear hand supported me. The
+physician came and prescribed medicines, and the old woman prepared them
+for me; but utter carelessness was visible in the first, and the
+expression of brutality was strongly marked in the visage of the second.
+Who could be interested in the fate of a murderer, but the hangman who
+would gain his fee?
+
+These were my first reflections; but I soon learned that Mr. Kirwin had
+shewn me extreme kindness. He had caused the best room in the prison to
+be prepared for me (wretched indeed was the best); and it was he who had
+provided a physician and a nurse. It is true, he seldom came to see me;
+for, although he ardently desired to relieve the sufferings of every
+human creature, he did not wish to be present at the agonies and
+miserable ravings of a murderer. He came, therefore, sometimes to see
+that I was not neglected; but his visits were short, and at long
+intervals.
+
+One day, when I was gradually recovering, I was seated in a chair, my
+eyes half open, and my cheeks livid like those in death, I was overcome
+by gloom and misery, and often reflected I had better seek death than
+remain miserably pent up only to be let loose in a world replete with
+wretchedness. At one time I considered whether I should not declare
+myself guilty, and suffer the penalty of the law, less innocent than
+poor Justine had been. Such were my thoughts, when the door of my
+apartment was opened, and Mr. Kirwin entered. His countenance expressed
+sympathy and compassion; he drew a chair close to mine, and addressed me
+in French—
+
+“I fear that this place is very shocking to you; can I do any thing to
+make you more comfortable?”
+
+“I thank you; but all that you mention is nothing to me: on the whole
+earth there is no comfort which I am capable of receiving.”
+
+“I know that the sympathy of a stranger can be but of little relief to
+one borne down as you are by so strange a misfortune. But you will, I
+hope, soon quit this melancholy abode; for, doubtless, evidence can
+easily be brought to free you from the criminal charge.”
+
+“That is my least concern: I am, by a course of strange events, become
+the most miserable of mortals. Persecuted and tortured as I am and have
+been, can death be any evil to me?”
+
+“Nothing indeed could be more unfortunate and agonizing than the strange
+chances that have lately occurred. You were thrown, by some surprising
+accident, on this shore, renowned for its hospitality: seized
+immediately, and charged with murder. The first sight that was presented
+to your eyes was the body of your friend, murdered in so unaccountable a
+manner, and placed, as it were, by some fiend across your path.”
+
+As Mr. Kirwin said this, notwithstanding the agitation I endured on this
+retrospect of my sufferings, I also felt considerable surprise at the
+knowledge he seemed to possess concerning me. I suppose some
+astonishment was exhibited in my countenance; for Mr. Kirwin hastened to
+say—
+
+“It was not until a day or two after your illness that I thought of
+examining your dress, that I might discover some trace by which I could
+send to your relations an account of your misfortune and illness. I
+found several letters, and, among others, one which I discovered from
+its commencement to be from your father. I instantly wrote to Geneva:
+nearly two months have elapsed since the departure of my letter.—But
+you are ill; even now you tremble: you are unfit for agitation of any
+kind.”
+
+“This suspense is a thousand times worse than the most horrible event:
+tell me what new scene of death has been acted, and whose murder I am
+now to lament.”
+
+“Your family is perfectly well,” said Mr. Kirwin, with gentleness; “and
+some one, a friend, is come to visit you.”
+
+I know not by what chain of thought the idea presented itself, but it
+instantly darted into my mind that the murderer had come to mock at my
+misery, and taunt me with the death of Clerval, as a new incitement for
+me to comply with his hellish desires. I put my hand before my eyes, and
+cried out in agony—
+
+“Oh! take him away! I cannot see him; for God’s sake, do not let him
+enter!”
+
+Mr. Kirwin regarded me with a troubled countenance. He could not help
+regarding my exclamation as a presumption of my guilt, and said, in
+rather a severe tone—
+
+“I should have thought, young man, that the presence of your father
+would have been welcome, instead of inspiring such violent repugnance.”
+
+“My father!” cried I, while every feature and every muscle was relaxed
+from anguish to pleasure. “Is my father, indeed, come? How kind, how
+very kind. But where is he, why does he not hasten to me?”
+
+My change of manner surprised and pleased the magistrate; perhaps he
+thought that my former exclamation was a momentary return of delirium,
+and now he instantly resumed his former benevolence. He rose, and
+quitted the room with my nurse, and in a moment my father entered it.
+
+Nothing, at this moment, could have given me greater pleasure than the
+arrival of my father. I stretched out my hand to him, and cried—
+
+“Are you then safe—and Elizabeth—and Ernest?”
+
+My father calmed me with assurances of their welfare, and endeavoured,
+by dwelling on these subjects so interesting to my heart, to raise my
+desponding spirits; but he soon felt that a prison cannot be the abode
+of cheerfulness. “What a place is this that you inhabit, my son!” said
+he, looking mournfully at the barred windows, and wretched appearance of
+the room. “You travelled to seek happiness, but a fatality seems to
+pursue you. And poor Clerval—”
+
+The name of my unfortunate and murdered friend was an agitation too
+great to be endured in my weak state; I shed tears.
+
+“Alas! yes, my father,” replied I; “some destiny of the most horrible
+kind hangs over me, and I must live to fulfil it, or surely I should
+have died on the coffin of Henry.”
+
+We were not allowed to converse for any length of time, for the
+precarious state of my health rendered every precaution necessary that
+could insure tranquillity. Mr. Kirwin came in, and insisted that my
+strength should not be exhausted by too much exertion. But the
+appearance of my father was to me like that of my good angel, and I
+gradually recovered my health.
+
+As my sickness quitted me, I was absorbed by a gloomy and black
+melancholy, that nothing could dissipate. The image of Clerval was for
+ever before me, ghastly and murdered. More than once the agitation into
+which these reflections threw me made my friends dread a dangerous
+relapse. Alas! why did they preserve so miserable and detested a life?
+It was surely that I might fulfil my destiny, which is now drawing to a
+close. Soon, oh, very soon, will death extinguish these throbbings, and
+relieve me from the mighty weight of anguish that bears me to the dust;
+and, in executing the award of justice, I shall also sink to rest. Then
+the appearance of death was distant, although the wish was ever present
+to my thoughts; and I often sat for hours motionless and speechless,
+wishing for some mighty revolution that might bury me and my destroyer
+in its ruins.
+
+The season of the assizes approached. I had already been three months
+in prison; and although I was still weak, and in continual danger of a
+relapse, I was obliged to travel nearly a hundred miles to the
+county-town, where the court was held. Mr. Kirwin charged himself with
+every care of collecting witnesses, and arranging my defence. I was
+spared the disgrace of appearing publicly as a criminal, as the case was
+not brought before the court that decides on life and death. The grand
+jury rejected the bill, on its being proved that I was on the Orkney
+Islands at the hour the body of my friend was found, and a fortnight
+after my removal I was liberated from prison.
+
+My father was enraptured on finding me freed from the vexations of a
+criminal charge, that I was again allowed to breathe the fresh
+atmosphere, and allowed to return to my native country. I did not
+participate in these feelings; for to me the walls of a dungeon or a
+palace were alike hateful. The cup of life was poisoned for ever; and
+although the sun shone upon me, as upon the happy and gay of heart, I
+saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by
+no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me. Sometimes they
+were the expressive eyes of Henry, languishing in death, the dark orbs
+nearly covered by the lids, and the long black lashes that fringed them;
+sometimes it was the watery clouded eyes of the monster, as I first saw
+them in my chamber at Ingolstadt.
+
+My father tried to awaken in me the feelings of affection. He talked of
+Geneva, which I should soon visit—of Elizabeth, and Ernest; but these
+words only drew deep groans from me. Sometimes, indeed, I felt a wish
+for happiness; and thought, with melancholy delight, of my beloved
+cousin; or longed, with a devouring _maladie du pays_, to see once more
+the blue lake and rapid Rhone, that had been so dear to me in early
+childhood: but my general state of feeling was a torpor, in which a
+prison was as welcome a residence as the divinest scene in nature; and
+these fits were seldom interrupted, but by paroxysms of anguish and
+despair. At these moments I often endeavoured to put an end to the
+existence I loathed; and it required unceasing attendance and vigilance
+to restrain me from committing some dreadful act of violence.
+
+I remember, as I quitted the prison, I heard one of the men say, “He may
+be innocent of the murder, but he has certainly a bad conscience.” These
+words struck me. A bad conscience! yes, surely I had one. William,
+Justine, and Clerval, had died through my infernal machinations; “And
+whose death,” cried I, “is to finish the tragedy? Ah! my father, do not
+remain in this wretched country; take me where I may forget myself, my
+existence, and all the world.”
+
+My father easily acceded to my desire; and, after having taken leave of
+Mr. Kirwin, we hastened to Dublin. I felt as if I was relieved from a
+heavy weight, when the packet sailed with a fair wind from Ireland, and
+I had quitted for ever the country which had been to me the scene of so
+much misery.
+
+It was midnight. My father slept in the cabin; and I lay on the deck,
+looking at the stars, and listening to the dashing of the waves. I
+hailed the darkness that shut Ireland from my sight, and my pulse beat
+with a feverish joy, when I reflected that I should soon see Geneva. The
+past appeared to me in the light of a frightful dream; yet the vessel in
+which I was, the wind that blew me from the detested shore of Ireland,
+and the sea which surrounded me, told me too forcibly that I was
+deceived by no vision, and that Clerval, my friend and dearest
+companion, had fallen a victim to me and the monster of my creation. I
+repassed, in my memory, my whole life; my quiet happiness while residing
+with my family in Geneva, the death of my mother, and my departure for
+Ingolstadt. I remembered shuddering at the mad enthusiasm that hurried
+me on to the creation of my hideous enemy, and I called to mind the
+night during which he first lived. I was unable to pursue the train of
+thought; a thousand feelings pressed upon me, and I wept bitterly.
+
+Ever since my recovery from the fever I had been in the custom of taking
+every night a small quantity of laudanum; for it was by means of this
+drug only that I was enabled to gain the rest necessary for the
+preservation of life. Oppressed by the recollection of my various
+misfortunes, I now took a double dose, and soon slept profoundly. But
+sleep did not afford me respite from thought and misery; my dreams
+presented a thousand objects that scared me. Towards morning I was
+possessed by a kind of night-mare; I felt the fiend’s grasp in my neck,
+and could not free myself from it; groans and cries rung in my ears. My
+father, who was watching over me, perceiving my restlessness, awoke me,
+and pointed to the port of Holyhead, which we were now entering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+We had resolved not to go to London, but to cross the country to
+Portsmouth, and thence to embark for Havre. I preferred this plan
+principally because I dreaded to see again those places in which I had
+enjoyed a few moments of tranquillity with my beloved Clerval. I thought
+with horror of seeing again those persons whom we had been accustomed to
+visit together, and who might make inquiries concerning an event, the
+very remembrance of which made me again feel the pang I endured when I
+gazed on his lifeless form in the inn at ——.
+
+As for my father, his desires and exertions were bounded to the again
+seeing me restored to health and peace of mind. His tenderness and
+attentions were unremitting; my grief and gloom was obstinate, but he
+would not despair. Sometimes he thought that I felt deeply the
+degradation of being obliged to answer a charge of murder, and he
+endeavoured to prove to me the futility of pride.
+
+“Alas! my father,” said I, “how little do you know me. Human beings,
+their feelings and passions, would indeed be degraded, if such a wretch
+as I felt pride. Justine, poor unhappy Justine, was as innocent as I,
+and she suffered the same charge; she died for it; and I am the cause
+of this—I murdered her. William, Justine, and Henry—they all died by
+my hands.”
+
+My father had often, during my imprisonment, heard me make the same
+assertion; when I thus accused myself, he sometimes seemed to desire an
+explanation, and at others he appeared to consider it as caused by
+delirium, and that, during my illness, some idea of this kind had
+presented itself to my imagination, the remembrance of which I preserved
+in my convalescence. I avoided explanation, and maintained a continual
+silence concerning the wretch I had created. I had a feeling that I
+should be supposed mad, and this for ever chained my tongue, when I
+would have given the whole world to have confided the fatal secret.
+
+Upon this occasion my father said, with an expression of unbounded
+wonder, “What do you mean, Victor? are you mad? My dear son, I entreat
+you never to make such an assertion again.”
+
+“I am not mad,” I cried energetically; “the sun and the heavens, who
+have viewed my operations, can bear witness of my truth. I am the
+assassin of those most innocent victims; they died by my machinations. A
+thousand times would I have shed my own blood, drop by drop, to have
+saved their lives; but I could not, my father, indeed I could not
+sacrifice the whole human race.”
+
+The conclusion of this speech convinced my father that my ideas were
+deranged, and he instantly changed the subject of our conversation, and
+endeavoured to alter the course of my thoughts. He wished as much as
+possible to obliterate the memory of the scenes that had taken place in
+Ireland, and never alluded to them, or suffered me to speak of my
+misfortunes.
+
+As time passed away I became more calm: misery had her dwelling in my
+heart, but I no longer talked in the same incoherent manner of my own
+crimes; sufficient for me was the consciousness of them. By the utmost
+self-violence, I curbed the imperious voice of wretchedness, which
+sometimes desired to declare itself to the whole world; and my manners
+were calmer and more composed than they had ever been since my journey
+to the sea of ice.
+
+We arrived at Havre on the 8th of May, and instantly proceeded to Paris,
+where my father had some business which detained us a few weeks. In this
+city, I received the following letter from Elizabeth:—
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“_To_ VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN.
+
+“MY DEAREST FRIEND,
+
+“It gave me the greatest pleasure to receive a letter from my uncle
+dated at Paris; you are no longer at a formidable distance, and I may
+hope to see you in less than a fortnight. My poor cousin, how much you
+must have suffered! I expect to see you looking even more ill than when
+you quitted Geneva. This winter has been passed most miserably, tortured
+as I have been by anxious suspense; yet I hope to see peace in your
+countenance, and to find that your heart is not totally devoid of
+comfort and tranquillity.
+
+“Yet I fear that the same feelings now exist that made you so miserable
+a year ago, even perhaps augmented by time. I would not disturb you at
+this period, when so many misfortunes weigh upon you; but a conversation
+that I had with my uncle previous to his departure renders some
+explanation necessary before we meet.
+
+“Explanation! you may possibly say; what can Elizabeth have to explain?
+If you really say this, my questions are answered, and I have no more to
+do than to sign myself your affectionate cousin. But you are distant
+from me, and it is possible that you may dread, and yet be pleased with
+this explanation; and, in a probability of this being the case, I dare
+not any longer postpone writing what, during your absence, I have often
+wished to express to you, but have never had the courage to begin.
+
+“You well know, Victor, that our union had been the favourite plan of
+your parents ever since our infancy. We were told this when young, and
+taught to look forward to it as an event that would certainly take
+place. We were affectionate playfellows during childhood, and, I
+believe, dear and valued friends to one another as we grew older. But as
+brother and sister often entertain a lively affection towards each
+other, without desiring a more intimate union, may not such also be our
+case? Tell me, dearest Victor. Answer me, I conjure you, by our mutual
+happiness, with simple truth—Do you not love another?
+
+“You have travelled; you have spent several years of your life at
+Ingolstadt; and I confess to you, my friend, that when I saw you last
+autumn so unhappy, flying to solitude, from the society of every
+creature, I could not help supposing that you might regret our
+connexion, and believe yourself bound in honour to fulfil the wishes of
+your parents, although they opposed themselves to your inclinations. But
+this is false reasoning. I confess to you, my cousin, that I love you,
+and that in my airy dreams of futurity you have been my constant friend
+and companion. But it is your happiness I desire as well as my own, when
+I declare to you, that our marriage would render me eternally miserable,
+unless it were the dictate of your own free choice. Even now I weep to
+think, that, borne down as you are by the cruelest misfortunes, you may
+stifle, by the word _honour_, all hope of that love and happiness which
+would alone restore you to yourself. I, who have so interested an
+affection for you, may increase your miseries ten-fold, by being an
+obstacle to your wishes. Ah, Victor, be assured that your cousin and
+playmate has too sincere a love for you not to be made miserable by this
+supposition. Be happy, my friend; and if you obey me in this one
+request, remain satisfied that nothing on earth will have the power to
+interrupt my tranquillity.
+
+“Do not let this letter disturb you; do not answer it to-morrow, or the
+next day, or even until you come, if it will give you pain. My uncle
+will send me news of your health; and if I see but one smile on your
+lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I
+shall need no other happiness.
+
+“ELIZABETH LAVENZA.
+
+“Geneva, May 18th, 17—.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This letter revived in my memory what I had before forgotten, the threat
+of the fiend—“_I will be with you on your wedding-night!_” Such was my
+sentence, and on that night would the dæmon employ every art to destroy
+me, and tear me from the glimpse of happiness which promised partly to
+console my sufferings. On that night he had determined to consummate his
+crimes by my death. Well, be it so; a deadly struggle would then
+assuredly take place, in which if he was victorious, I should be at
+peace, and his power over me be at an end. If he were vanquished, I
+should be a free man. Alas! what freedom? such as the peasant enjoys
+when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt,
+his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, pennyless, and
+alone, but free. Such would be my liberty, except that in my Elizabeth I
+possessed a treasure; alas! balanced by those horrors of remorse and
+guilt, which would pursue me until death.
+
+Sweet and beloved Elizabeth! I read and re-read her letter, and some
+softened feelings stole into my heart, and dared to whisper paradisaical
+dreams of love and joy; but the apple was already eaten, and the
+angel’s arm bared to drive me from all hope. Yet I would die to make her
+happy. If the monster executed his threat, death was inevitable; yet,
+again, I considered whether my marriage would hasten my fate. My
+destruction might indeed arrive a few months sooner; but if my torturer
+should suspect that I postponed it, influenced by his menaces, he would
+surely find other, and perhaps more dreadful means of revenge. He had
+vowed _to be with me on my wedding-night_, yet he did not consider that
+threat as binding him to peace in the mean time; for, as if to shew me
+that he was not yet satiated with blood, he had murdered Clerval
+immediately after the enunciation of his threats. I resolved, therefore,
+that if my immediate union with my cousin would conduce either to her’s
+or my father’s happiness, my adversary’s designs against my life should
+not retard it a single hour.
+
+In this state of mind I wrote to Elizabeth. My letter was calm and
+affectionate. “I fear, my beloved girl,” I said, “little happiness
+remains for us on earth; yet all that I may one day enjoy is concentered
+in you. Chase away your idle fears; to you alone do I consecrate my
+life, and my endeavours for contentment. I have one secret, Elizabeth, a
+dreadful one; when revealed to you, it will chill your frame with
+horror, and then, far from being surprised at my misery, you will only
+wonder that I survive what I have endured. I will confide this tale of
+misery and terror to you the day after our marriage shall take place;
+for, my sweet cousin, there must be perfect confidence between us. But
+until then, I conjure you, do not mention or allude to it. This I most
+earnestly entreat, and I know you will comply.”
+
+In about a week after the arrival of Elizabeth’s letter, we returned to
+Geneva. My cousin welcomed me with warm affection; yet tears were in her
+eyes, as she beheld my emaciated frame and feverish cheeks. I saw a
+change in her also. She was thinner, and had lost much of that heavenly
+vivacity that had before charmed me; but her gentleness, and soft looks
+of compassion, made her a more fit companion for one blasted and
+miserable as I was.
+
+The tranquillity which I now enjoyed did not endure. Memory brought
+madness with it; and when I thought on what had passed, a real insanity
+possessed me; sometimes I was furious, and burnt with rage, sometimes
+low and despondent. I neither spoke or looked, but sat motionless,
+bewildered by the multitude of miseries that overcame me.
+
+Elizabeth alone had the power to draw me from these fits; her gentle
+voice would soothe me when transported by passion, and inspire me with
+human feelings when sunk in torpor. She wept with me, and for me. When
+reason returned, she would remonstrate, and endeavour to inspire me with
+resignation. Ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for
+the guilty there is no peace. The agonies of remorse poison the luxury
+there is otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief.
+
+Soon after my arrival my father spoke of my immediate marriage with my
+cousin. I remained silent.
+
+“Have you, then, some other attachment?”
+
+“None on earth. I love Elizabeth, and look forward to our union with
+delight. Let the day therefore be fixed; and on it I will consecrate
+myself, in life or death, to the happiness of my cousin.”
+
+“My dear Victor, do not speak thus. Heavy misfortunes have befallen us;
+but let us only cling closer to what remains, and transfer our love for
+those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small,
+but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when
+time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will
+be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived.”
+
+Such were the lessons of my father. But to me the remembrance of the
+threat returned: nor can you wonder, that, omnipotent as the fiend had
+yet been in his deeds of blood, I should almost regard him as
+invincible; and that when he had pronounced the words, “_I shall be with
+you on your wedding-night_,” I should regard the threatened fate as
+unavoidable. But death was no evil to me, if the loss of Elizabeth were
+balanced with it; and I therefore, with a contented and even cheerful
+countenance, agreed with my father, that if my cousin would consent, the
+ceremony should take place in ten days, and thus put, as I imagined, the
+seal to my fate.
+
+Great God! if for one instant I had thought what might be the hellish
+intention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have banished myself
+for ever from my native country, and wandered a friendless outcast over
+the earth, than have consented to this miserable marriage. But, as if
+possessed of magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real
+intentions; and when I thought that I prepared only my own death, I
+hastened that of a far dearer victim.
+
+As the period fixed for our marriage drew nearer, whether from cowardice
+or a prophetic feeling, I felt my heart sink within me. But I concealed
+my feelings by an appearance of hilarity, that brought smiles and joy to
+the countenance of my father, but hardly deceived the ever-watchful and
+nicer eye of Elizabeth. She looked forward to our union with placid
+contentment, not unmingled with a little fear, which past misfortunes
+had impressed, that what now appeared certain and tangible happiness,
+might soon dissipate into an airy dream, and leave no trace but deep and
+everlasting regret.
+
+Preparations were made for the event; congratulatory visits were
+received; and all wore a smiling appearance. I shut up, as well as I
+could, in my own heart the anxiety that preyed there, and entered with
+seeming earnestness into the plans of my father, although they might
+only serve as the decorations of my tragedy. A house was purchased for
+us near Cologny, by which we should enjoy the pleasures of the country,
+and yet be so near Geneva as to see my father every day; who would
+still reside within the walls, for the benefit of Ernest, that he might
+follow his studies at the schools.
+
+In the mean time I took every precaution to defend my person, in case
+the fiend should openly attack me. I carried pistols and a dagger
+constantly about me, and was ever on the watch to prevent artifice; and
+by these means gained a greater degree of tranquillity. Indeed, as the
+period approached, the threat appeared more as a delusion, not to be
+regarded as worthy to disturb my peace, while the happiness I hoped for
+in my marriage wore a greater appearance of certainty, as the day fixed
+for its solemnization drew nearer, and I heard it continually spoken of
+as an occurrence which no accident could possibly prevent.
+
+Elizabeth seemed happy; my tranquil demeanour contributed greatly to
+calm her mind. But on the day that was to fulfil my wishes and my
+destiny, she was melancholy, and a presentiment of evil pervaded her;
+and perhaps also she thought of the dreadful secret, which I had
+promised to reveal to her the following day. My father was in the mean
+time overjoyed, and, in the bustle of preparation, only observed in the
+melancholy of his niece the diffidence of a bride.
+
+After the ceremony was performed, a large party assembled at my
+father’s; but it was agreed that Elizabeth and I should pass the
+afternoon and night at Evian, and return to Cologny the next morning. As
+the day was fair, and the wind favourable, we resolved to go by water.
+
+Those were the last moments of my life during which I enjoyed the
+feeling of happiness. We passed rapidly along: the sun was hot, but we
+were sheltered from its rays by a kind of canopy, while we enjoyed the
+beauty of the scene, sometimes on one side of the lake, where we saw
+Mont Salêve, the pleasant banks of Montalêgre, and at a distance,
+surmounting all, the beautiful Mont Blânc, and the assemblage of snowy
+mountains that in vain endeavour to emulate her; sometimes coasting the
+opposite banks, we saw the mighty Jura opposing its dark side to the
+ambition that would quit its native country, and an almost
+insurmountable barrier to the invader who should wish to enslave it.
+
+I took the hand of Elizabeth: “You are sorrowful, my love. Ah! if you
+knew what I have suffered, and what I may yet endure, you would
+endeavour to let me taste the quiet, and freedom from despair, that this
+one day at least permits me to enjoy.”
+
+“Be happy, my dear Victor,” replied Elizabeth; “there is, I hope,
+nothing to distress you; and be assured that if a lively joy is not
+painted in my face, my heart is contented. Something whispers to me not
+to depend too much on the prospect that is opened before us; but I will
+not listen to such a sinister voice. Observe how fast we move along, and
+how the clouds which sometimes obscure, and sometimes rise above the
+dome of Mont Blânc, render this scene of beauty still more interesting.
+Look also at the innumerable fish that are swimming in the clear
+waters, where we can distinguish every pebble that lies at the bottom.
+What a divine day! how happy and serene all nature appears!”
+
+Thus Elizabeth endeavoured to divert her thoughts and mine from all
+reflection upon melancholy subjects. But her temper was fluctuating; joy
+for a few instants shone in her eyes, but it continually gave place to
+distraction and reverie.
+
+The sun sunk lower in the heavens; we passed the river Drance, and
+observed its path through the chasms of the higher, and the glens of the
+lower hills. The Alps here come closer to the lake, and we approached
+the amphitheatre of mountains which forms its eastern boundary. The
+spire of Evian shone under the woods that surrounded it, and the range
+of mountain above mountain by which it was overhung.
+
+The wind, which had hitherto carried us along with amazing rapidity,
+sunk at sunset to a light breeze; the soft air just ruffled the water,
+and caused a pleasant motion among the trees as we approached the shore,
+from which it wafted the most delightful scent of flowers and hay. The
+sun sunk beneath the horizon as we landed; and as I touched the shore, I
+felt those cares and fears revive, which soon were to clasp me, and
+cling to me for ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+It was eight o’clock when we landed; we walked for a short time on the
+shore, enjoying the transitory light, and then retired to the inn, and
+contemplated the lovely scene of waters, woods, and mountains, obscured
+in darkness, yet still displaying their black outlines.
+
+The wind, which had fallen in the south, now rose with great violence in
+the west. The moon had reached her summit in the heavens, and was
+beginning to descend; the clouds swept across it swifter than the flight
+of the vulture, and dimmed her rays, while the lake reflected the scene
+of the busy heavens, rendered still busier by the restless waves that
+were beginning to rise. Suddenly a heavy storm of rain descended.
+
+I had been calm during the day; but so soon as night obscured the shapes
+of objects, a thousand fears arose in my mind. I was anxious and
+watchful, while my right hand grasped a pistol which was hidden in my
+bosom; every sound terrified me; but I resolved that I would sell my
+life dearly, and not relax the impending conflict until my own life, or
+that of my adversary, were extinguished.
+
+Elizabeth observed my agitation for some time in timid and fearful
+silence; at length she said, “What is it that agitates you, my dear
+Victor? What is it you fear?”
+
+“Oh! peace, peace, my love,” replied I, “this night, and all will be
+safe: but this night is dreadful, very dreadful.”
+
+I passed an hour in this state of mind, when suddenly I reflected how
+dreadful the combat which I momentarily expected would be to my wife,
+and I earnestly entreated her to retire, resolving not to join her until
+I had obtained some knowledge as to the situation of my enemy.
+
+She left me, and I continued some time walking up and down the passages
+of the house, and inspecting every corner that might afford a retreat to
+my adversary. But I discovered no trace of him, and was beginning to
+conjecture that some fortunate chance had intervened to prevent the
+execution of his menaces; when suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful
+scream. It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired. As I
+heard it, the whole truth rushed into my mind, my arms dropped, the
+motion of every muscle and fibre was suspended; I could feel the blood
+trickling in my veins, and tingling in the extremities of my limbs. This
+state lasted but for an instant; the scream was repeated, and I rushed
+into the room.
+
+Great God! why did I not then expire! Why am I here to relate the
+destruction of the best hope, and the purest creature of earth. She was
+there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging
+down, and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair.
+Every where I turn I see the same figure—her bloodless arms and relaxed
+form flung by the murderer on its bridal bier. Could I behold this, and
+live? Alas! life is obstinate, and clings closest where it is most
+hated. For a moment only did I lose recollection; I fainted.
+
+When I recovered, I found myself surrounded by the people of the inn;
+their countenances expressed a breathless terror: but the horror of
+others appeared only as a mockery, a shadow of the feelings that
+oppressed me. I escaped from them to the room where lay the body of
+Elizabeth, my love, my wife, so lately living, so dear, so worthy. She
+had been moved from the posture in which I had first beheld her; and
+now, as she lay, her head upon her arm, and a handkerchief thrown across
+her face and neck, I might have supposed her asleep. I rushed towards
+her, and embraced her with ardour; but the deathly languor and coldness
+of the limbs told me, that what I now held in my arms had ceased to be
+the Elizabeth whom I had loved and cherished. The murderous mark of the
+fiend’s grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from
+her lips.
+
+While I still hung over her in the agony of despair, I happened to look
+up. The windows of the room had before been darkened; and I felt a kind
+of panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon illuminate the
+chamber. The shutters had been thrown back; and, with a sensation of
+horror not to be described, I saw at the open window a figure the most
+hideous and abhorred. A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed
+to jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my
+wife. I rushed towards the window, and drawing a pistol from my bosom,
+shot; but he eluded me, leaped from his station, and, running with the
+swiftness of lightning, plunged into the lake.
+
+The report of the pistol brought a crowd into the room. I pointed to the
+spot where he had disappeared, and we followed the track with boats;
+nets were cast, but in vain. After passing several hours, we returned
+hopeless, most of my companions believing it to have been a form
+conjured by my fancy. After having landed, they proceeded to search the
+country, parties going in different directions among the woods and
+vines.
+
+I did not accompany them; I was exhausted: a film covered my eyes, and
+my skin was parched with the heat of fever. In this state I lay on a
+bed, hardly conscious of what had happened; my eyes wandered round the
+room, as if to seek something that I had lost.
+
+At length I remembered that my father would anxiously expect the return
+of Elizabeth and myself, and that I must return alone. This reflection
+brought tears into my eyes, and I wept for a long time; but my thoughts
+rambled to various subjects, reflecting on my misfortunes, and their
+cause. I was bewildered in a cloud of wonder and horror. The death of
+William, the execution of Justine, the murder of Clerval, and lastly of
+my wife; even at that moment I knew not that my only remaining friends
+were safe from the malignity of the fiend; my father even now might be
+writhing under his grasp, and Ernest might be dead at his feet. This
+idea made me shudder, and recalled me to action. I started up, and
+resolved to return to Geneva with all possible speed.
+
+There were no horses to be procured, and I must return by the lake; but
+the wind was unfavourable, and the rain fell in torrents. However, it
+was hardly morning, and I might reasonably hope to arrive by night. I
+hired men to row, and took an oar myself, for I had always experienced
+relief from mental torment in bodily exercise. But the overflowing
+misery I now felt, and the excess of agitation that I endured, rendered
+me incapable of any exertion. I threw down the oar; and, leaning my head
+upon my hands, gave way to every gloomy idea that arose. If I looked up,
+I saw the scenes which were familiar to me in my happier time, and which
+I had contemplated but the day before in the company of her who was now
+but a shadow and a recollection. Tears streamed from my eyes. The rain
+had ceased for a moment, and I saw the fish play in the waters as they
+had done a few hours before; they had then been observed by Elizabeth.
+Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.
+The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour; but nothing could appear
+to me as it had done the day before. A fiend had snatched from me every
+hope of future happiness: no creature had ever been so miserable as I
+was; so frightful an event is single in the history of man.
+
+But why should I dwell upon the incidents that followed this last
+overwhelming event. Mine has been a tale of horrors; I have reached
+their _acme_, and what I must now relate can but be tedious to you. Know
+that, one by one, my friends were snatched away; I was left desolate. My
+own strength is exhausted; and I must tell, in a few words, what remains
+of my hideous narration.
+
+I arrived at Geneva. My father and Ernest yet lived; but the former sunk
+under the tidings that I bore. I see him now, excellent and venerable
+old man! his eyes wandered in vacancy, for they had lost their charm and
+their delight—his niece, his more than daughter, whom he doated on with
+all that affection which a man feels, who, in the decline of life,
+having few affections, clings more earnestly to those that remain.
+Cursed, cursed be the fiend that brought misery on his grey hairs, and
+doomed him to waste in wretchedness! He could not live under the horrors
+that were accumulated around him; an apoplectic fit was brought on, and
+in a few days he died in my arms.
+
+What then became of me? I know not; I lost sensation, and chains and
+darkness were the only objects that pressed upon me. Sometimes, indeed,
+I dreamt that I wandered in flowery meadows and pleasant vales with the
+friends of my youth; but awoke, and found myself in a dungeon.
+Melancholy followed, but by degrees I gained a clear conception of my
+miseries and situation, and was then released from my prison. For they
+had called me mad; and during many months, as I understood, a solitary
+cell had been my habitation.
+
+But liberty had been a useless gift to me had I not, as I awakened to
+reason, at the same time awakened to revenge. As the memory of past
+misfortunes pressed upon me, I began to reflect on their cause—the
+monster whom I had created, the miserable dæmon whom I had sent abroad
+into the world for my destruction. I was possessed by a maddening rage
+when I thought of him, and desired and ardently prayed that I might have
+him within my grasp to wreak a great and signal revenge on his cursed
+head.
+
+Nor did my hate long confine itself to useless wishes; I began to
+reflect on the best means of securing him; and for this purpose, about a
+month after my release, I repaired to a criminal judge in the town, and
+told him that I had an accusation to make; that I knew the destroyer of
+my family; and that I required him to exert his whole authority for the
+apprehension of the murderer.
+
+The magistrate listened to me with attention and kindness: “Be assured,
+sir,” said he, “no pains or exertions on my part shall be spared to
+discover the villain.”
+
+“I thank you,” replied I; “listen, therefore, to the deposition that I
+have to make. It is indeed a tale so strange, that I should fear you
+would not credit it, were there not something in truth which, however
+wonderful, forces conviction. The story is too connected to be mistaken
+for a dream, and I have no motive for falsehood.” My manner, as I thus
+addressed him, was impressive, but calm; I had formed in my own heart a
+resolution to pursue my destroyer to death; and this purpose quieted my
+agony, and provisionally reconciled me to life. I now related my history
+briefly, but with firmness and precision, marking the dates with
+accuracy, and never deviating into invective or exclamation.
+
+The magistrate appeared at first perfectly incredulous, but as I
+continued he became more attentive and interested; I saw him sometimes
+shudder with horror, at others a lively surprise, unmingled with
+disbelief, was painted on his countenance.
+
+When I had concluded my narration, I said. “This is the being whom I
+accuse, and for whose detection and punishment I call upon you to exert
+your whole power. It is your duty as a magistrate, and I believe and
+hope that your feelings as a man will not revolt from the execution of
+those functions on this occasion.”
+
+This address caused a considerable change in the physiognomy of my
+auditor. He had heard my story with that half kind of belief that is
+given to a tale of spirits and supernatural events; but when he was
+called upon to act officially in consequence, the whole tide of his
+incredulity returned. He, however, answered mildly, “I would willingly
+afford you every aid in your pursuit; but the creature of whom you
+speak appears to have powers which would put all my exertions to
+defiance. Who can follow an animal which can traverse the sea of ice,
+and inhabit caves and dens, where no man would venture to intrude?
+Besides, some months have elapsed since the commission of his crimes,
+and no one can conjecture to what place he has wandered, or what region
+he may now inhabit.”
+
+“I do not doubt that he hovers near the spot which I inhabit; and if he
+has indeed taken refuge in the Alps, he may be hunted like the chamois,
+and destroyed as a beast of prey. But I perceive your thoughts: you do
+not credit my narrative, and do not intend to pursue my enemy with the
+punishment which is his desert.”
+
+As I spoke, rage sparkled in my eyes; the magistrate was intimidated;
+“You are mistaken,” said he, “I will exert myself; and if it is in my
+power to seize the monster, be assured that he shall suffer punishment
+proportionate to his crimes. But I fear, from what you have yourself
+described to be his properties, that this will prove impracticable, and
+that, while every proper measure is pursued, you should endeavour to
+make up your mind to disappointment.”
+
+“That cannot be; but all that I can say will be of little avail. My
+revenge is of no moment to you; yet, while I allow it to be a vice, I
+confess that it is the devouring and only passion of my soul. My rage is
+unspeakable, when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned loose
+upon society, still exists. You refuse my just demand: I have but one
+resource; and I devote myself, either in my life or death, to his
+destruction.”
+
+I trembled with excess of agitation as I said this; there was a phrenzy
+in my manner, and something, I doubt not, of that haughty fierceness,
+which the martyrs of old are said to have possessed. But to a Genevan
+magistrate, whose mind was occupied by far other ideas than those of
+devotion and heroism, this elevation of mind had much the appearance of
+madness. He endeavoured to soothe me as a nurse does a child, and
+reverted to my tale as the effects of delirium.
+
+“Man,” I cried, “how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! Cease;
+you know not what it is you say.”
+
+I broke from the house angry and disturbed, and retired to meditate on
+some other mode of action.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+My present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was
+swallowed up and lost. I was hurried away by fury; revenge alone endowed
+me with strength and composure; it modelled my feelings, and allowed me
+to be calculating and calm, at periods when otherwise delirium or death
+would have been my portion.
+
+My first resolution was to quit Geneva for ever; my country, which, when
+I was happy and beloved, was dear to me, now, in my adversity, became
+hateful. I provided myself with a sum of money, together with a few
+jewels which had belonged to my mother, and departed.
+
+And now my wanderings began, which are to cease but with life. I have
+traversed a vast portion of the earth, and have endured all the
+hardships which travellers, in deserts and barbarous countries, are wont
+to meet. How I have lived I hardly know; many times have I stretched my
+failing limbs upon the sandy plain, and prayed for death. But revenge
+kept me alive; I dared not die, and leave my adversary in being.
+
+When I quitted Geneva, my first labour was to gain some clue by which I
+might trace the steps of my fiendish enemy. But my plan was unsettled;
+and I wandered many hours around the confines of the town, uncertain
+what path I should pursue. As night approached, I found myself at the
+entrance of the cemetery where William, Elizabeth, and my father,
+reposed. I entered it, and approached the tomb which marked their
+graves. Every thing was silent, except the leaves of the trees, which
+were gently agitated by the wind; the night was nearly dark; and the
+scene would have been solemn and affecting even to an uninterested
+observer. The spirits of the departed seemed to flit around, and to cast
+a shadow, which was felt but seen not, around the head of the mourner.
+
+The deep grief which this scene had at first excited quickly gave way to
+rage and despair. They were dead, and I lived; their murderer also
+lived, and to destroy him I must drag out my weary existence. I knelt on
+the grass, and kissed the earth, and with quivering lips exclaimed, “By
+the sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near me, by
+the deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear; and by thee, O Night,
+and by the spirits that preside over thee, I swear to pursue the dæmon,
+who caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict.
+For this purpose I will preserve my life: to execute this dear revenge,
+will I again behold the sun, and tread the green herbage of earth, which
+otherwise should vanish from my eyes for ever. And I call on you,
+spirits of the dead; and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to
+aid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed and hellish monster drink
+deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me.”
+
+I had begun my adjuration with solemnity, and an awe which almost
+assured me that the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my
+devotion; but the furies possessed me as I concluded, and rage choaked
+my utterance.
+
+I was answered through the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish
+laugh. It rung on my ears long and heavily; the mountains re-echoed it,
+and I felt as if all hell surrounded me with mockery and laughter.
+Surely in that moment I should have been possessed by phrenzy, and have
+destroyed my miserable existence, but that my vow was heard, and that I
+was reserved for vengeance. The laughter died away: when a well-known
+and abhorred voice, apparently close to my ear, addressed me in an
+audible whisper—“I am satisfied: miserable wretch! you have determined
+to live, and I am satisfied.”
+
+I darted towards the spot from which the sound proceeded; but the devil
+eluded my grasp. Suddenly the broad disk of the moon arose, and shone
+full upon his ghastly and distorted shape, as he fled with more than
+mortal speed.
+
+I pursued him; and for many months this has been my task. Guided by a
+slight clue, I followed the windings of the Rhone, but vainly. The blue
+Mediterranean appeared; and, by a strange chance, I saw the fiend enter
+by night, and hide himself in a vessel bound for the Black Sea. I took
+my passage in the same ship; but he escaped, I know not how.
+
+Amidst the wilds of Tartary and Russia, although he still evaded me, I
+have ever followed in his track. Sometimes the peasants, scared by this
+horrid apparition, informed me of his path; sometimes he himself, who
+feared that if I lost all trace I should despair and die, often left
+some mark to guide me. The snows descended on my head, and I saw the
+print of his huge step on the white plain. To you first entering on
+life, to whom care is new, and agony unknown, how can you understand
+what I have felt, and still feel? Cold, want, and fatigue, were the least
+pains which I was destined to endure; I was cursed by some devil, and
+carried about with me my eternal hell; yet still a spirit of good
+followed and directed my steps, and, when I most murmured, would
+suddenly extricate me from seemingly insurmountable difficulties.
+Sometimes, when nature, overcome by hunger, sunk under the exhaustion, a
+repast was prepared for me in the desert, that restored and inspirited
+me. The fare was indeed coarse, such as the peasants of the country ate;
+but I may not doubt that it was set there by the spirits that I had
+invoked to aid me. Often, when all was dry, the heavens cloudless, and I
+was parched by thirst, a slight cloud would bedim the sky, shed the few
+drops that revived me, and vanish.
+
+I followed, when I could, the courses of the rivers; but the dæmon
+generally avoided these, as it was here that the population of the
+country chiefly collected. In other places human beings were seldom
+seen; and I generally subsisted on the wild animals that crossed my
+path. I had money with me, and gained the friendship of the villagers by
+distributing it, or bringing with me some food that I had killed, which,
+after taking a small part, I always presented to those who had provided
+me with fire and utensils for cooking.
+
+My life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to me, and it was during
+sleep alone that I could taste joy. O blessed sleep! often, when most
+miserable, I sank to repose, and my dreams lulled me even to rapture.
+The spirits that guarded me had provided these moments, or rather hours,
+of happiness, that I might retain strength to fulfil my pilgrimage.
+Deprived of this respite, I should have sunk under my hardships. During
+the day I was sustained and inspirited by the hope of night: for in
+sleep I saw my friends, my wife, and my beloved country; again I saw the
+benevolent countenance of my father, heard the silver tones of my
+Elizabeth’s voice, and beheld Clerval enjoying health and youth. Often,
+when wearied by a toilsome march, I persuaded myself that I was dreaming
+until night should come, and that I should then enjoy reality in the
+arms of my dearest friends. What agonizing fondness did I feel for them!
+how did I cling to their dear forms, as sometimes they haunted even my
+waking hours, and persuade myself that they still lived! At such
+moments vengeance, that burned within me, died in my heart, and I
+pursued my path towards the destruction of the dæmon, more as a task
+enjoined by heaven, as the mechanical impulse of some power of which I
+was unconscious, than as the ardent desire of my soul.
+
+What his feelings were whom I pursued, I cannot know. Sometimes, indeed,
+he left marks in writing on the barks of the trees, or cut in stone,
+that guided me, and instigated my fury. “My reign is not yet over,”
+(these words were legible in one of these inscriptions); “you live, and
+my power is complete. Follow me; I seek the everlasting ices of the
+north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost, to which I am
+impassive. You will find near this place, if you follow not too tardily,
+a dead hare; eat, and be refreshed. Come on, my enemy; we have yet to
+wrestle for our lives; but many hard and miserable hours must you
+endure, until that period shall arrive.”
+
+Scoffing devil! Again do I vow vengeance; again do I devote thee,
+miserable fiend, to torture and death. Never will I omit my search,
+until he or I perish; and then with what ecstacy shall I join my
+Elizabeth, and those who even now prepare for me the reward of my
+tedious toil and horrible pilgrimage.
+
+As I still pursued my journey to the northward, the snows thickened, and
+the cold increased in a degree almost too severe to support. The
+peasants were shut up in their hovels, and only a few of the most hardy
+ventured forth to seize the animals whom starvation had forced from
+their hiding places to seek for prey. The rivers were covered with ice,
+and no fish could be procured; and thus I was cut off from my chief
+article of maintenance.
+
+The triumph of my enemy increased with the difficulty of my labours. One
+inscription that he left was in these words: “Prepare! your toils only
+begin: wrap yourself in furs, and provide food, for we shall soon enter
+upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting
+hatred.”
+
+My courage and perseverance were invigorated by these scoffing words; I
+resolved not to fail in my purpose; and, calling on heaven to support
+me, I continued with unabated fervour to traverse immense deserts, until
+the ocean appeared at a distance, and formed the utmost boundary of the
+horizon. Oh! how unlike it was to the blue seas of the south! Covered
+with ice, it was only to be distinguished from land by its superior
+wildness and ruggedness. The Greeks wept for joy when they beheld the
+Mediterranean from the hills of Asia, and hailed with rapture the
+boundary of their toils. I did not weep; but I knelt down, and, with a
+full heart, thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in safety to the
+place where I hoped, notwithstanding my adversary’s gibe, to meet and
+grapple with him.
+
+Some weeks before this period I had procured a sledge and dogs, and thus
+traversed the snows with inconceivable speed. I know not whether the
+fiend possessed the same advantages; but I found that, as before I had
+daily lost ground in the pursuit, I now gained on him; so much so, that
+when I first saw the ocean, he was but one day’s journey in advance, and
+I hoped to intercept him before he should reach the beach. With new
+courage, therefore, I pressed on, and in two days arrived at a wretched
+hamlet on the seashore. I inquired of the inhabitants concerning the
+fiend, and gained accurate information. A gigantic monster, they said,
+had arrived the night before, armed with a gun and many pistols; putting
+to flight the inhabitants of a solitary cottage, through fear of his
+terrific appearance. He had carried off their store of winter food, and,
+placing it in a sledge, to draw which he had seized on a numerous drove
+of trained dogs, he had harnessed them, and the same night, to the joy
+of the horror-struck villagers, had pursued his journey across the sea
+in a direction that led to no land; and they conjectured that he must
+speedily be destroyed by the breaking of the ice, or frozen by the
+eternal frosts.
+
+On hearing this information, I suffered a temporary access of despair.
+He had escaped me; and I must commence a destructive and almost endless
+journey across the mountainous ices of the ocean,—amidst cold that few
+of the inhabitants could long endure, and which I, the native of a
+genial and sunny climate, could not hope to survive. Yet at the idea
+that the fiend should live and be triumphant, my rage and vengeance
+returned, and, like a mighty tide, overwhelmed every other feeling.
+After a slight repose, during which the spirits of the dead hovered
+round, and instigated me to toil and revenge, I prepared for my
+journey.
+
+I exchanged my land sledge for one fashioned for the inequalities of the
+frozen ocean; and, purchasing a plentiful stock of provisions, I
+departed from land.
+
+I cannot guess how many days have passed since then; but I have endured
+misery, which nothing but the eternal sentiment of a just retribution
+burning within my heart could have enabled me to support. Immense and
+rugged mountains of ice often barred up my passage, and I often heard
+the thunder of the ground sea, which threatened my destruction. But
+again the frost came, and made the paths of the sea secure.
+
+By the quantity of provision which I had consumed I should guess that I
+had passed three weeks in this journey; and the continual protraction of
+hope, returning back upon the heart, often wrung bitter drops of
+despondency and grief from my eyes. Despair had indeed almost secured
+her prey, and I should soon have sunk beneath this misery; when once,
+after the poor animals that carried me had with incredible toil gained
+the summit of a sloping ice mountain, and one sinking under his fatigue
+died, I viewed the expanse before me with anguish, when suddenly my eye
+caught a dark speck upon the dusky plain. I strained my sight to
+discover what it could be, and uttered a wild cry of ecstacy when I
+distinguished a sledge, and the distorted proportions of a well-known
+form within. Oh! with what a burning gush did hope revisit my heart!
+warm tears filled my eyes, which I hastily wiped away, that they might
+not intercept the view I had of the dæmon; but still my sight was dimmed
+by the burning drops, until, giving way to the emotions that oppressed
+me, I wept aloud.
+
+But this was not the time for delay; I disencumbered the dogs of their
+dead companion, gave them a plentiful portion of food; and, after an
+hour’s rest, which was absolutely necessary, and yet which was bitterly
+irksome to me, I continued my route. The sledge was still visible; nor
+did I again lose sight of it, except at the moments when for a short
+time some ice rock concealed it with its intervening crags. I indeed
+perceptibly gained on it; and when, after nearly two days’ journey, I
+beheld my enemy at no more than a mile distant, my heart bounded within
+me.
+
+But now, when I appeared almost within grasp of my enemy, my hopes were
+suddenly extinguished, and I lost all trace of him more utterly than I
+had ever done before. A ground sea was heard; the thunder of its
+progress, as the waters rolled and swelled beneath me, became every
+moment more ominous and terrific. I pressed on, but in vain. The wind
+arose; the sea roared; and, as with the mighty shock of an earthquake,
+it split, and cracked with a tremendous and overwhelming sound. The work
+was soon finished: in a few minutes a tumultuous sea rolled between me
+and my enemy, and I was left drifting on a scattered piece of ice, that
+was continually lessening, and thus preparing for me a hideous death.
+
+In this manner many appalling hours passed; several of my dogs died; and
+I myself was about to sink under the accumulation of distress, when I
+saw your vessel riding at anchor, and holding forth to me hopes of
+succour and life. I had no conception that vessels ever came so far
+north, and was astounded at the sight. I quickly destroyed part of my
+sledge to construct oars; and by these means was enabled, with infinite
+fatigue, to move my ice-raft in the direction of your ship. I had
+determined, if you were going southward, still to trust myself to the
+mercy of the seas, rather than abandon my purpose. I hoped to induce you
+to grant me a boat with which I could still pursue my enemy. But your
+direction was northward. You took me on board when my vigour was
+exhausted, and I should soon have sunk under my multiplied hardships
+into a death, which I still dread,—for my task is unfulfilled.
+
+Oh! when will my guiding spirit, in conducting me to the dæmon, allow me
+the rest I so much desire; or must I die, and he yet live? If I do,
+swear to me, Walton, that he shall not escape; that you will seek him,
+and satisfy my vengeance in his death. Yet, do I dare ask you to
+undertake my pilgrimage, to endure the hardships that I have undergone?
+No; I am not so selfish. Yet, when I am dead, if he should appear; if
+the ministers of vengeance should conduct him to you, swear that he
+shall not live—swear that he shall not triumph over my accumulated
+woes, and live to make another such a wretch as I am. He is eloquent
+and persuasive; and once his words had even power over my heart: but
+trust him not. His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and
+fiend-like malice. Hear him not; call on the manes of William, Justine,
+Clerval, Elizabeth, my father, and of the wretched Victor, and thrust
+your sword into his heart. I will hover near, and direct the steel
+aright.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+WALTON, _in continuation_.
+
+August 26th, 17—.
+
+You have read this strange and terrific story, Margaret; and do you not
+feel your blood congealed with horror, like that which even now curdles
+mine? Sometimes, seized with sudden agony, he could not continue his
+tale; at others, his voice broken, yet piercing, uttered with difficulty
+the words so replete with agony. His fine and lovely eyes were now
+lighted up with indignation, now subdued to downcast sorrow, and
+quenched in infinite wretchedness. Sometimes he commanded his
+countenance and tones, and related the most horrible incidents with a
+tranquil voice, suppressing every mark of agitation; then, like a
+volcano bursting forth, his face would suddenly change to an expression
+of the wildest rage, as he shrieked out imprecations on his persecutor.
+
+His tale is connected, and told with an appearance of the simplest
+truth; yet I own to you that the letters of Felix and Safie, which he
+shewed me, and the apparition of the monster, seen from our ship,
+brought to me a greater conviction of the truth of his narrative than
+his asseverations, however earnest and connected. Such a monster has
+then really existence; I cannot doubt it; yet I am lost in surprise and
+admiration. Sometimes I endeavoured to gain from Frankenstein the
+particulars of his creature’s formation; but on this point he was
+impenetrable.
+
+“Are you mad, my friend?” said he, “or whither does your senseless
+curiosity lead you? Would you also create for yourself and the world a
+demoniacal enemy? Or to what do your questions tend? Peace, peace! learn
+my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own.”
+
+Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history: he
+asked to see them, and then himself corrected and augmented them in many
+places; but principally in giving the life and spirit to the
+conversations he held with his enemy. “Since you have preserved my
+narration,” said he, “I would not that a mutilated one should go down to
+posterity.”
+
+Thus has a week passed away, while I have listened to the strangest tale
+that ever imagination formed. My thoughts, and every feeling of my soul,
+have been drunk up by the interest for my guest, which this tale, and
+his own elevated and gentle manners have created. I wish to soothe him;
+yet can I counsel one so infinitely miserable, so destitute of every
+hope of consolation, to live? Oh, no! the only joy that he can now know
+will be when he composes his shattered feelings to peace and death. Yet
+he enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium: he
+believes, that, when in dreams he holds converse with his friends, and
+derives from that communion consolation for his miseries, or excitements
+to his vengeance, that they are not the creations of his fancy, but the
+real beings who visit him from the regions of a remote world. This faith
+gives a solemnity to his reveries that render them to me almost as
+imposing and interesting as truth.
+
+Our conversations are not always confined to his own history and
+misfortunes. On every point of general literature he displays unbounded
+knowledge, and a quick and piercing apprehension. His eloquence is
+forcible and touching; nor can I hear him, when he relates a pathetic
+incident, or endeavours to move the passions of pity or love, without
+tears. What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his
+prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin. He seems to feel
+his own worth, and the greatness of his fall.
+
+“When younger,” said he, “I felt as if I were destined for some great
+enterprise. My feelings are profound; but I possessed a coolness of
+judgment that fitted me for illustrious achievements. This sentiment of
+the worth of my nature supported me, when others would have been
+oppressed; for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those
+talents that might be useful to my fellow-creatures. When I reflected on
+the work I had completed, no less a one than the creation of a
+sensitive and rational animal, I could not rank myself with the herd of
+common projectors. But this feeling, which supported me in the
+commencement of my career, now serves only to plunge me lower in the
+dust. All my speculations and hopes are as nothing; and, like the
+archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.
+My imagination was vivid, yet my powers of analysis and application were
+intense; by the union of these qualities I conceived the idea, and
+executed the creation of a man. Even now I cannot recollect, without
+passion, my reveries while the work was incomplete. I trod heaven in my
+thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their
+effects. From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty
+ambition; but how am I sunk! Oh! my friend, if you had known me as I
+once was, you would not recognize me in this state of degradation.
+Despondency rarely visited my heart; a high destiny seemed to bear me
+on, until I fell, never, never again to rise.”
+
+Must I then lose this admirable being? I have longed for a friend; I
+have sought one who would sympathize with and love me. Behold, on these
+desert seas I have found such a one; but, I fear, I have gained him only
+to know his value, and lose him. I would reconcile him to life, but he
+repulses the idea.
+
+“I thank you, Walton,” he said, “for your kind intentions towards so
+miserable a wretch; but when you speak of new ties, and fresh
+affections, think you that any can replace those who are gone? Can any
+man be to me as Clerval was; or any woman another Elizabeth? Even where
+the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the
+companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our
+minds, which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our infantine
+dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never
+eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain
+conclusions as to the integrity of our motives. A sister or a brother
+can never, unless indeed such symptoms have been shewn early, suspect
+the other of fraud or false dealing, when another friend, however
+strongly he may be attached, may, in spite of himself, be invaded with
+suspicion. But I enjoyed friends, dear not only through habit and
+association, but from their own merits; and, wherever I am, the soothing
+voice of my Elizabeth, and the conversation of Clerval, will be ever
+whispered in my ear. They are dead; and but one feeling in such a
+solitude can persuade me to preserve my life. If I were engaged in any
+high undertaking or design, fraught with extensive utility to my
+fellow-creatures, then could I live to fulfil it. But such is not my
+destiny; I must pursue and destroy the being to whom I gave existence;
+then my lot on earth will be fulfilled, and I may die.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+September 2d.
+
+MY BELOVED SISTER,
+
+I write to you, encompassed by peril, and ignorant whether I am ever
+doomed to see again dear England, and the dearer friends that inhabit
+it. I am surrounded by mountains of ice, which admit of no escape, and
+threaten every moment to crush my vessel. The brave fellows, whom I have
+persuaded to be my companions, look towards me for aid; but I have none
+to bestow. There is something terribly appalling in our situation, yet
+my courage and hopes do not desert me. We may survive; and if we do not,
+I will repeat the lessons of my Seneca, and die with a good heart.
+
+Yet what, Margaret, will be the state of your mind? You will not hear of
+my destruction, and you will anxiously await my return. Years will pass,
+and you will have visitings of despair, and yet be tortured by hope. Oh!
+my beloved sister, the sickening failings of your heart-felt
+expectations are, in prospect, more terrible to me than my own death.
+But you have a husband, and lovely children; you may be happy: heaven
+bless you, and make you so!
+
+My unfortunate guest regards me with the tenderest compassion. He
+endeavours to fill me with hope; and talks as if life were a possession
+which he valued. He reminds me how often the same accidents have
+happened to other navigators, who have attempted this sea, and, in spite
+of myself, he fills me with cheerful auguries. Even the sailors feel the
+power of his eloquence: when he speaks, they no longer despair: he
+rouses their energies, and, while they hear his voice, they believe
+these vast mountains of ice are mole-hills, which will vanish before the
+resolutions of man. These feelings are transitory; each day’s
+expectation delayed fills them with fear, and I almost dread a mutiny
+caused by this despair.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+September 5th.
+
+A scene has just passed of such uncommon interest, that although it is
+highly probable that these papers may never reach you, yet I cannot
+forbear recording it.
+
+We are still surrounded by mountains of ice, still in imminent danger of
+being crushed in their conflict. The cold is excessive, and many of my
+unfortunate comrades have already found a grave amidst this scene of
+desolation. Frankenstein has daily declined in health: a feverish fire
+still glimmers in his eyes; but he is exhausted, and, when suddenly
+roused to any exertion, he speedily sinks again into apparent
+lifelessness.
+
+I mentioned in my last letter the fears I entertained of a mutiny. This
+morning, as I sat watching the wan countenance of my friend—his eyes
+half closed, and his limbs hanging listlessly,—I was roused by half a
+dozen of the sailors, who desired admission into the cabin. They
+entered; and their leader addressed me. He told me that he and his
+companions had been chosen by the other sailors to come in deputation to
+me, to make me a demand, which, in justice, I could not refuse. We were
+immured in ice, and should probably never escape; but they feared that
+if, as was possible, the ice should dissipate, and a free passage be
+opened, I should be rash enough to continue my voyage, and lead them
+into fresh dangers, after they might happily have surmounted this. They
+desired, therefore, that I should engage with a solemn promise, that if
+the vessel should be freed, I would instantly direct my coarse
+southward.
+
+This speech troubled me. I had not despaired; nor had I yet conceived
+the idea of returning, if set free. Yet could I, in justice, or even in
+possibility, refuse this demand? I hesitated before I answered; when
+Frankenstein, who had at first been silent, and, indeed, appeared hardly
+to have force enough to attend, now roused himself; his eyes sparkled,
+and his cheeks flushed with momentary vigour. Turning towards the men,
+he said—
+
+“What do you mean? What do you demand of your captain? Are you then so
+easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious
+expedition? and wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was
+smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers
+and terror; because, at every new incident, your fortitude was to be
+called forth, and your courage exhibited; because danger and death
+surrounded, and these dangers you were to brave and overcome. For this
+was it a glorious, for this was it an honourable undertaking. You were
+hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species; your name
+adored, as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honour and
+the benefit of mankind. And now, behold, with the first imagination of
+danger, or, if you will, the first mighty and terrific trial of your
+courage, you shrink away, and are content to be handed down as men who
+had not strength enough to endure cold and peril; and so, poor souls,
+they were chilly, and returned to their warm fire-sides. Why, that
+requires not this preparation; ye need not have come thus far, and
+dragged your captain to the shame of a defeat, merely to prove
+yourselves cowards. Oh! be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your
+purposes, and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your
+hearts might be; it is mutable, cannot withstand you, if you say that it
+shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace
+marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered,
+and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.”
+
+He spoke this with a voice so modulated to the different feelings
+expressed in his speech, with an eye so full of lofty design and
+heroism, that can you wonder that these men were moved. They looked at
+one another, and were unable to reply. I spoke; I told them to retire,
+and consider of what had been said: that I would not lead them further
+north, if they strenuously desired the contrary; but that I hoped that,
+with reflection, their courage would return.
+
+They retired, and I turned towards my friend; but he was sunk in
+languor, and almost deprived of life.
+
+How all this will terminate, I know not; but I had rather die, than
+return shamefully,—my purpose unfulfilled. Yet I fear such will be my
+fate; the men, unsupported by ideas of glory and honour, can never
+willingly continue to endure their present hardships.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+September 7th.
+
+The die is cast; I have consented to return, if we are not destroyed.
+Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come back
+ignorant and disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess,
+to bear this injustice with patience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+September 12th.
+
+It is past; I am returning to England. I have lost my hopes of utility
+and glory;—I have lost my friend. But I will endeavour to detail these
+bitter circumstances to you, my dear sister; and, while I am wafted
+towards England, and towards you, I will not despond.
+
+September 19th, the ice began to move, and roarings like thunder were
+heard at a distance, as the islands split and cracked in every
+direction. We were in the most imminent peril; but, as we could only
+remain passive, my chief attention was occupied by my unfortunate guest,
+whose illness increased in such a degree, that he was entirely confined
+to his bed. The ice cracked behind us, and was driven with force towards
+the north; a breeze sprung from the west, and on the 11th the passage
+towards the south became perfectly free. When the sailors saw this, and
+that their return to their native country was apparently assured, a
+shout of tumultuous joy broke from them, loud and long-continued.
+Frankenstein, who was dozing, awoke, and asked the cause of the tumult.
+“They shout,” I said, “because they will soon return to England.”
+
+“Do you then really return?”
+
+“Alas! yes; I cannot withstand their demands. I cannot lead them
+unwillingly to danger, and I must return.”
+
+“Do so, if you will; but I will not. You may give up your purpose; but
+mine is assigned to me by heaven, and I dare not. I am weak; but surely
+the spirits who assist my vengeance will endow me with sufficient
+strength.” Saying this, he endeavoured to spring from the bed, but the
+exertion was too great for him; he fell back, and fainted.
+
+It was long before he was restored; and I often thought that life was
+entirely extinct. At length he opened his eyes, but he breathed with
+difficulty, and was unable to speak. The surgeon gave him a composing
+draught, and ordered us to leave him undisturbed. In the mean time he
+told me, that my friend had certainly not many hours to live.
+
+His sentence was pronounced; and I could only grieve, and be patient. I
+sat by his bed watching him; his eyes were closed, and I thought he
+slept; but presently he called to me in a feeble voice, and, bidding me
+come near, said—“Alas! the strength I relied on is gone; I feel that I
+shall soon die, and he, my enemy and persecutor, may still be in being.
+Think not, Walton, that in the last moments of my existence I feel that
+burning hatred, and ardent desire of revenge, I once expressed, but I
+feel myself justified in desiring the death of my adversary. During
+these last days I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor
+do I find it blameable. In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a
+rational creature, and was bound towards him, to assure, as far as was
+in my power, his happiness and well-being. This was my duty; but there
+was another still paramount to that. My duties towards my
+fellow-creatures had greater claims to my attention, because they
+included a greater proportion of happiness or misery. Urged by this
+view, I refused, and I did right in refusing, to create a companion for
+the first creature. He shewed unparalleled malignity and selfishness, in
+evil: he destroyed my friends; he devoted to destruction beings who
+possessed exquisite sensations, happiness, and wisdom; nor do I know
+where this thirst for vengeance may end. Miserable himself, that he may
+render no other wretched, he ought to die. The task of his destruction
+was mine, but I have failed. When actuated by selfish and vicious
+motives, I asked you to undertake my unfinished work; and I renew this
+request now, when I am only induced by reason and virtue.
+
+“Yet I cannot ask you to renounce your country and friends, to fulfil
+this task; and now, that you are returning to England, you will have
+little chance of meeting with him. But the consideration of these
+points, and the well-balancing of what you may esteem your duties, I
+leave to you; my judgment and ideas are already disturbed by the near
+approach of death. I dare not ask you to do what I think right, for I
+may still be misled by passion.
+
+“That he should live to be an instrument of mischief disturbs me; in
+other respects this hour, when I momentarily expect my release, is the
+only happy one which I have enjoyed for several years. The forms of the
+beloved dead flit before me, and I hasten to their arms. Farewell,
+Walton! Seek happiness in tranquillity, and avoid ambition, even if it
+be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in
+science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been
+blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.”
+
+His voice became fainter as he spoke; and at length, exhausted by his
+effort, he sunk into silence. About half an hour afterwards he attempted
+again to speak, but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and his eyes
+closed for ever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed away
+from his lips.
+
+Margaret, what comment can I make on the untimely extinction of this
+glorious spirit? What can I say, that will enable you to understand the
+depth of my sorrow? All that I should express would be inadequate and
+feeble. My tears flow; my mind is overshadowed by a cloud of
+disappointment. But I journey towards England, and I may there find
+consolation.
+
+I am interrupted. What do these sounds portend? It is midnight; the
+breeze blows fairly, and the watch on deck scarcely stir. Again; there
+is a sound as of a human voice, but hoarser; it comes from the cabin
+where the remains of Frankenstein still lie. I must arise, and examine.
+Good night, my sister.
+
+Great God! what a scene has just taken place! I am yet dizzy with the
+remembrance of it. I hardly know whether I shall have the power to
+detail it; yet the tale which I have recorded would be incomplete
+without this final and wonderful catastrophe.
+
+I entered the cabin, where lay the remains of my ill-fated and admirable
+friend. Over him hung a form which I cannot find words to describe;
+gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions. As he
+hung over the coffin, his face was concealed by long locks of ragged
+hair; but one vast hand was extended, in colour and apparent texture
+like that of a mummy. When he heard the sound of my approach, he ceased
+to utter exclamations of grief and horror, and sprung towards the
+window. Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such
+loathsome, yet appalling hideousness. I shut my eyes involuntarily, and
+endeavoured to recollect what were my duties with regard to this
+destroyer. I called on him to stay.
+
+He paused, looking on me with wonder; and, again turning towards the
+lifeless form of his creator, he seemed to forget my presence, and every
+feature and gesture seemed instigated by the wildest rage of some
+uncontrollable passion.
+
+“That is also my victim!” he exclaimed; “in his murder my crimes are
+consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! Oh,
+Frankenstein! generous and self-devoted being! what does it avail that I
+now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by
+destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! he is cold; he may not answer me.”
+
+His voice seemed suffocated; and my first impulses, which had suggested
+to me the duty of obeying the dying request of my friend, in destroying
+his enemy, were now suspended by a mixture of curiosity and compassion.
+I approached this tremendous being; I dared not again raise my looks
+upon his face, there was something so scaring and unearthly in his
+ugliness. I attempted to speak, but the words died away on my lips. The
+monster continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At
+length I gathered resolution to address him, in a pause of the tempest
+of his passion: “Your repentance,” I said, “is now superfluous. If you
+had listened to the voice of conscience, and heeded the stings of
+remorse, before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this
+extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived.”
+
+“And do you dream?” said the dæmon; “do you think that I was then dead
+to agony and remorse?—He,” he continued, pointing to the corpse, “he
+suffered not more in the consummation of the deed;—oh! not the
+ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the lingering
+detail of its execution. A frightful selfishness hurried me on, while
+my heart was poisoned with remorse. Think ye that the groans of Clerval
+were music to my ears? My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love
+and sympathy; and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did
+not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot
+even imagine.
+
+“After the murder of Clerval, I returned to Switzerland, heart-broken
+and overcome. I pitied Frankenstein; my pity amounted to horror: I
+abhorred myself. But when I discovered that he, the author at once of my
+existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness;
+that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me, he sought
+his own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the indulgence of which
+I was for ever barred, then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled
+me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance. I recollected my threat, and
+resolved that it should be accomplished. I knew that I was preparing for
+myself a deadly torture; but I was the slave, not the master of an
+impulse, which I detested, yet could not disobey. Yet when she
+died!—nay, then I was not miserable. I had cast off all feeling,
+subdued all anguish to riot in the excess of my despair. Evil
+thenceforth became my good. Urged thus far, I had no choice but to adapt
+my nature to an element which I had willingly chosen. The completion of
+my demoniacal design became an insatiable passion. And now it is ended;
+there is my last victim!”
+
+I was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet when I
+called to mind what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and
+persuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my
+friend, indignation was re-kindled within me. “Wretch!” I said, “it is
+well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you have made.
+You throw a torch into a pile of buildings, and when they are consumed
+you sit among the ruins, and lament the fall. Hypocritical fiend! if he
+whom you mourn still lived, still would he be the object, again would he
+become the prey of your accursed vengeance. It is not pity that you
+feel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity is withdrawn
+from your power.”
+
+“Oh, it is not thus—not thus,” interrupted the being; “yet such must be
+the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my
+actions. Yet I seek not a fellow-feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I
+ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the
+feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being
+overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now, that virtue has
+become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into
+bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am
+content to suffer alone, while my sufferings shall endure: when I die, I
+am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory.
+Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of
+enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings, who, pardoning my
+outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was
+capable of bringing forth. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour
+and devotion. But now vice has degraded me beneath the meanest animal.
+No crime, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable
+to mine. When I call over the frightful catalogue of my deeds, I cannot
+believe that I am he whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and
+transcendant visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it
+is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that
+enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am
+quite alone.
+
+“You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my
+crimes and his misfortunes. But, in the detail which he gave you of
+them, he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I
+endured, wasting in impotent passions. For whilst I destroyed his hopes,
+I did not satisfy my own desires. They were for ever ardent and craving;
+still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there
+no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all
+human kind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his
+friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic
+who sought to destroy the saviour of his child? Nay, these are virtuous
+and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an
+abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my
+blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.
+
+“But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the
+helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept, and grasped to
+death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have
+devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love
+and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that
+irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me;
+but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look
+on the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the
+imagination of it was conceived, and long for the moment when they will
+meet my eyes, when it will haunt my thoughts, no more.
+
+“Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief. My work is
+nearly complete. Neither your’s nor any man’s death is needed to
+consummate the series of my being, and accomplish that which must be
+done; but it requires my own. Do not think that I shall be slow to
+perform this sacrifice. I shall quit your vessel on the ice-raft which
+brought me hither, and shall seek the most northern extremity of the
+globe; I shall collect my funeral pile, and consume to ashes this
+miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and
+unhallowed wretch, who would create such another as I have been. I shall
+die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me, or be the
+prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is dead who called me
+into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance of us both
+will speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun or stars, or feel
+the winds play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense, will pass away;
+and in this condition must I find my happiness. Some years ago, when the
+images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the
+cheering warmth of summer, and heard the rustling of the leaves and the
+chirping of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to
+die; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes, and torn by the
+bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?
+
+“Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of human kind whom these
+eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive,
+and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better
+satiated in my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou
+didst seek my extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness;
+and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hast not yet ceased to
+think and feel, thou desirest not my life for my own misery. Blasted as
+thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine; for the bitter sting of
+remorse may not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close
+them for ever.
+
+“But soon,” he cried, with sad and solemn enthusiasm, “I shall die, and
+what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be
+extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the
+agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade
+away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will
+sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus.
+Farewell.”
+
+He sprung from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft
+which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves, and
+lost in darkness and distance.
+
+
+THE END.
diff --git a/search-engine/books/Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.txt b/search-engine/books/Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.txt
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+Title: Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World
+Author: Jonathan Swift
+
+GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
+
+into several
+
+REMOTE NATIONS OF THE WORLD
+
+
+BY JONATHAN SWIFT, D.D.,
+
+dean of st. patrick’s, dublin.
+
+[_First published in_ 1726–7.]
+
+cover 
+
+Contents
+
+
+ THE PUBLISHER TO THE READER.
+ A LETTER FROM CAPTAIN GULLIVER TO HIS COUSIN SYMPSON.
+ PART I. A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT.
+ PART II. A VOYAGE TO BROBDINGNAG.
+ PART III. A VOYAGE TO LAPUTA, BALNIBARBI, GLUBBDUBDRIB, LUGGNAGG AND JAPAN.
+ PART IV. A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HOUYHNHNMS.
+
+
+THE PUBLISHER TO THE READER.
+
+[_As given in the original edition_.]
+
+
+The author of these Travels, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, is my ancient and
+intimate friend; there is likewise some relation between us on the
+mother’s side. About three years ago, Mr. Gulliver growing weary of the
+concourse of curious people coming to him at his house in Redriff, made
+a small purchase of land, with a convenient house, near Newark, in
+Nottinghamshire, his native country; where he now lives retired, yet in
+good esteem among his neighbours.
+
+Although Mr. Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire, where his father
+dwelt, yet I have heard him say his family came from Oxfordshire; to
+confirm which, I have observed in the churchyard at Banbury in that
+county, several tombs and monuments of the Gullivers.
+
+Before he quitted Redriff, he left the custody of the following papers
+in my hands, with the liberty to dispose of them as I should think fit.
+I have carefully perused them three times. The style is very plain and
+simple; and the only fault I find is, that the author, after the manner
+of travellers, is a little too circumstantial. There is an air of truth
+apparent through the whole; and indeed the author was so distinguished
+for his veracity, that it became a sort of proverb among his neighbours
+at Redriff, when any one affirmed a thing, to say, it was as true as if
+Mr. Gulliver had spoken it.
+
+By the advice of several worthy persons, to whom, with the author’s
+permission, I communicated these papers, I now venture to send them
+into the world, hoping they may be, at least for some time, a better
+entertainment to our young noblemen, than the common scribbles of
+politics and party.
+
+This volume would have been at least twice as large, if I had not made
+bold to strike out innumerable passages relating to the winds and
+tides, as well as to the variations and bearings in the several
+voyages, together with the minute descriptions of the management of the
+ship in storms, in the style of sailors; likewise the account of
+longitudes and latitudes; wherein I have reason to apprehend, that Mr.
+Gulliver may be a little dissatisfied. But I was resolved to fit the
+work as much as possible to the general capacity of readers. However,
+if my own ignorance in sea affairs shall have led me to commit some
+mistakes, I alone am answerable for them. And if any traveller hath a
+curiosity to see the whole work at large, as it came from the hands of
+the author, I will be ready to gratify him.
+
+As for any further particulars relating to the author, the reader will
+receive satisfaction from the first pages of the book.
+
+
+                                                     RICHARD SYMPSON.
+
+
+A LETTER FROM CAPTAIN GULLIVER TO HIS COUSIN SYMPSON.
+
+Written in the Year 1727.
+
+I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called
+to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to
+publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with
+directions to hire some young gentleman of either university to put
+them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my
+advice, in his book called “A Voyage round the world.” But I do not
+remember I gave you power to consent that any thing should be omitted,
+and much less that any thing should be inserted; therefore, as to the
+latter, I do here renounce every thing of that kind; particularly a
+paragraph about her majesty Queen Anne, of most pious and glorious
+memory; although I did reverence and esteem her more than any of human
+species. But you, or your interpolator, ought to have considered, that
+it was not my inclination, so was it not decent to praise any animal of
+our composition before my master _Houyhnhnm_: And besides, the fact was
+altogether false; for to my knowledge, being in England during some
+part of her majesty’s reign, she did govern by a chief minister; nay
+even by two successively, the first whereof was the lord of Godolphin,
+and the second the lord of Oxford; so that you have made me say the
+thing that was not. Likewise in the account of the academy of
+projectors, and several passages of my discourse to my master
+_Houyhnhnm_, you have either omitted some material circumstances, or
+minced or changed them in such a manner, that I do hardly know my own
+work. When I formerly hinted to you something of this in a letter, you
+were pleased to answer that you were afraid of giving offence; that
+people in power were very watchful over the press, and apt not only to
+interpret, but to punish every thing which looked like an _innuendo_
+(as I think you call it). But, pray how could that which I spoke so
+many years ago, and at about five thousand leagues distance, in another
+reign, be applied to any of the _Yahoos_, who now are said to govern
+the herd; especially at a time when I little thought, or feared, the
+unhappiness of living under them? Have not I the most reason to
+complain, when I see these very _Yahoos_ carried by _Houyhnhnms_ in a
+vehicle, as if they were brutes, and those the rational creatures? And
+indeed to avoid so monstrous and detestable a sight was one principal
+motive of my retirement hither.
+
+Thus much I thought proper to tell you in relation to yourself, and to
+the trust I reposed in you.
+
+I do, in the next place, complain of my own great want of judgment, in
+being prevailed upon by the entreaties and false reasoning of you and
+some others, very much against my own opinion, to suffer my travels to
+be published. Pray bring to your mind how often I desired you to
+consider, when you insisted on the motive of public good, that the
+_Yahoos_ were a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by
+precept or example: and so it has proved; for, instead of seeing a full
+stop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island,
+as I had reason to expect; behold, after above six months warning, I
+cannot learn that my book has produced one single effect according to
+my intentions. I desired you would let me know, by a letter, when party
+and faction were extinguished; judges learned and upright; pleaders
+honest and modest, with some tincture of common sense, and Smithfield
+blazing with pyramids of law books; the young nobility’s education
+entirely changed; the physicians banished; the female _Yahoos_
+abounding in virtue, honour, truth, and good sense; courts and levees
+of great ministers thoroughly weeded and swept; wit, merit, and
+learning rewarded; all disgracers of the press in prose and verse
+condemned to eat nothing but their own cotton, and quench their thirst
+with their own ink. These, and a thousand other reformations, I firmly
+counted upon by your encouragement; as indeed they were plainly
+deducible from the precepts delivered in my book. And it must be owned,
+that seven months were a sufficient time to correct every vice and
+folly to which _Yahoos_ are subject, if their natures had been capable
+of the least disposition to virtue or wisdom. Yet, so far have you been
+from answering my expectation in any of your letters; that on the
+contrary you are loading our carrier every week with libels, and keys,
+and reflections, and memoirs, and second parts; wherein I see myself
+accused of reflecting upon great state folk; of degrading human nature
+(for so they have still the confidence to style it), and of abusing the
+female sex. I find likewise that the writers of those bundles are not
+agreed among themselves; for some of them will not allow me to be the
+author of my own travels; and others make me author of books to which I
+am wholly a stranger.
+
+I find likewise that your printer has been so careless as to confound
+the times, and mistake the dates, of my several voyages and returns;
+neither assigning the true year, nor the true month, nor day of the
+month: and I hear the original manuscript is all destroyed since the
+publication of my book; neither have I any copy left: however, I have
+sent you some corrections, which you may insert, if ever there should
+be a second edition: and yet I cannot stand to them; but shall leave
+that matter to my judicious and candid readers to adjust it as they
+please.
+
+I hear some of our sea _Yahoos_ find fault with my sea-language, as not
+proper in many parts, nor now in use. I cannot help it. In my first
+voyages, while I was young, I was instructed by the oldest mariners,
+and learned to speak as they did. But I have since found that the sea
+_Yahoos_ are apt, like the land ones, to become new-fangled in their
+words, which the latter change every year; insomuch, as I remember upon
+each return to my own country their old dialect was so altered, that I
+could hardly understand the new. And I observe, when any _Yahoo_ comes
+from London out of curiosity to visit me at my house, we neither of us
+are able to deliver our conceptions in a manner intelligible to the
+other.
+
+If the censure of the _Yahoos_ could any way affect me, I should have
+great reason to complain, that some of them are so bold as to think my
+book of travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain, and have gone so
+far as to drop hints, that the _Houyhnhnms_ and _Yahoos_ have no more
+existence than the inhabitants of Utopia.
+
+Indeed I must confess, that as to the people of _Lilliput_,
+_Brobdingrag_ (for so the word should have been spelt, and not
+erroneously _Brobdingnag_), and _Laputa_, I have never yet heard of any
+_Yahoo_ so presumptuous as to dispute their being, or the facts I have
+related concerning them; because the truth immediately strikes every
+reader with conviction. And is there less probability in my account of
+the _Houyhnhnms_ or _Yahoos_, when it is manifest as to the latter,
+there are so many thousands even in this country, who only differ from
+their brother brutes in _Houyhnhnmland_, because they use a sort of
+jabber, and do not go naked? I wrote for their amendment, and not their
+approbation. The united praise of the whole race would be of less
+consequence to me, than the neighing of those two degenerate
+_Houyhnhnms_ I keep in my stable; because from these, degenerate as
+they are, I still improve in some virtues without any mixture of vice.
+
+Do these miserable animals presume to think, that I am so degenerated
+as to defend my veracity? _Yahoo_ as I am, it is well known through all
+_Houyhnhnmland_, that, by the instructions and example of my
+illustrious master, I was able in the compass of two years (although I
+confess with the utmost difficulty) to remove that infernal habit of
+lying, shuffling, deceiving, and equivocating, so deeply rooted in the
+very souls of all my species; especially the Europeans.
+
+I have other complaints to make upon this vexatious occasion; but I
+forbear troubling myself or you any further. I must freely confess,
+that since my last return, some corruptions of my _Yahoo_ nature have
+revived in me by conversing with a few of your species, and
+particularly those of my own family, by an unavoidable necessity; else
+I should never have attempted so absurd a project as that of reforming
+the _Yahoo_ race in this kingdom; but I have now done with all such
+visionary schemes for ever.
+
+_April_ 2, 1727
+
+
+PART I. A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The author gives some account of himself and family. His first
+inducements to travel. He is shipwrecked, and swims for his life, gets
+safe on shore in the country of Lilliput; is made a prisoner, and
+carried up the country.
+
+
+My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of
+five sons. He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years
+old, where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my
+studies; but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty
+allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice
+to Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon in London, with whom I continued
+four years. My father now and then sending me small sums of money, I
+laid them out in learning navigation, and other parts of the
+mathematics, useful to those who intend to travel, as I always believed
+it would be, some time or other, my fortune to do. When I left Mr.
+Bates, I went down to my father: where, by the assistance of him and my
+uncle John, and some other relations, I got forty pounds, and a promise
+of thirty pounds a year to maintain me at Leyden: there I studied
+physic two years and seven months, knowing it would be useful in long
+voyages.
+
+Soon after my return from Leyden, I was recommended by my good master,
+Mr. Bates, to be surgeon to the Swallow, Captain Abraham Pannel,
+commander; with whom I continued three years and a half, making a
+voyage or two into the Levant, and some other parts. When I came back I
+resolved to settle in London; to which Mr. Bates, my master, encouraged
+me, and by him I was recommended to several patients. I took part of a
+small house in the Old Jewry; and being advised to alter my condition,
+I married Mrs. Mary Burton, second daughter to Mr. Edmund Burton,
+hosier, in Newgate-street, with whom I received four hundred pounds for
+a portion.
+
+But my good master Bates dying in two years after, and I having few
+friends, my business began to fail; for my conscience would not suffer
+me to imitate the bad practice of too many among my brethren. Having
+therefore consulted with my wife, and some of my acquaintance, I
+determined to go again to sea. I was surgeon successively in two ships,
+and made several voyages, for six years, to the East and West Indies,
+by which I got some addition to my fortune. My hours of leisure I spent
+in reading the best authors, ancient and modern, being always provided
+with a good number of books; and when I was ashore, in observing the
+manners and dispositions of the people, as well as learning their
+language; wherein I had a great facility, by the strength of my memory.
+
+The last of these voyages not proving very fortunate, I grew weary of
+the sea, and intended to stay at home with my wife and family. I
+removed from the Old Jewry to Fetter Lane, and from thence to Wapping,
+hoping to get business among the sailors; but it would not turn to
+account. After three years expectation that things would mend, I
+accepted an advantageous offer from Captain William Prichard, master of
+the Antelope, who was making a voyage to the South Sea. We set sail
+from Bristol, May 4, 1699, and our voyage was at first very prosperous.
+
+It would not be proper, for some reasons, to trouble the reader with
+the particulars of our adventures in those seas; let it suffice to
+inform him, that in our passage from thence to the East Indies, we were
+driven by a violent storm to the north-west of Van Diemen’s Land. By an
+observation, we found ourselves in the latitude of 30 degrees 2 minutes
+south. Twelve of our crew were dead by immoderate labour and ill food;
+the rest were in a very weak condition. On the 5th of November, which
+was the beginning of summer in those parts, the weather being very
+hazy, the seamen spied a rock within half a cable’s length of the ship;
+but the wind was so strong, that we were driven directly upon it, and
+immediately split. Six of the crew, of whom I was one, having let down
+the boat into the sea, made a shift to get clear of the ship and the
+rock. We rowed, by my computation, about three leagues, till we were
+able to work no longer, being already spent with labour while we were
+in the ship. We therefore trusted ourselves to the mercy of the waves,
+and in about half an hour the boat was overset by a sudden flurry from
+the north. What became of my companions in the boat, as well as of
+those who escaped on the rock, or were left in the vessel, I cannot
+tell; but conclude they were all lost. For my own part, I swam as
+fortune directed me, and was pushed forward by wind and tide. I often
+let my legs drop, and could feel no bottom; but when I was almost gone,
+and able to struggle no longer, I found myself within my depth; and by
+this time the storm was much abated. The declivity was so small, that I
+walked near a mile before I got to the shore, which I conjectured was
+about eight o’clock in the evening. I then advanced forward near half a
+mile, but could not discover any sign of houses or inhabitants; at
+least I was in so weak a condition, that I did not observe them. I was
+extremely tired, and with that, and the heat of the weather, and about
+half a pint of brandy that I drank as I left the ship, I found myself
+much inclined to sleep. I lay down on the grass, which was very short
+and soft, where I slept sounder than ever I remembered to have done in
+my life, and, as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it
+was just day-light. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for,
+as I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly
+fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long and
+thick, tied down in the same manner. I likewise felt several slender
+ligatures across my body, from my arm-pits to my thighs. I could only
+look upwards; the sun began to grow hot, and the light offended my
+eyes. I heard a confused noise about me; but in the posture I lay,
+could see nothing except the sky. In a little time I felt something
+alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently forward over my
+breast, came almost up to my chin; when, bending my eyes downwards as
+much as I could, I perceived it to be a human creature not six inches
+high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back. In
+the mean time, I felt at least forty more of the same kind (as I
+conjectured) following the first. I was in the utmost astonishment, and
+roared so loud, that they all ran back in a fright; and some of them,
+as I was afterwards told, were hurt with the falls they got by leaping
+from my sides upon the ground. However, they soon returned, and one of
+them, who ventured so far as to get a full sight of my face, lifting up
+his hands and eyes by way of admiration, cried out in a shrill but
+distinct voice, _Hekinah degul_: the others repeated the same words
+several times, but then I knew not what they meant. I lay all this
+while, as the reader may believe, in great uneasiness. At length,
+struggling to get loose, I had the fortune to break the strings, and
+wrench out the pegs that fastened my left arm to the ground; for, by
+lifting it up to my face, I discovered the methods they had taken to
+bind me, and at the same time with a violent pull, which gave me
+excessive pain, I a little loosened the strings that tied down my hair
+on the left side, so that I was just able to turn my head about two
+inches. But the creatures ran off a second time, before I could seize
+them; whereupon there was a great shout in a very shrill accent, and
+after it ceased I heard one of them cry aloud _Tolgo phonac_; when in
+an instant I felt above a hundred arrows discharged on my left hand,
+which, pricked me like so many needles; and besides, they shot another
+flight into the air, as we do bombs in Europe, whereof many, I suppose,
+fell on my body, (though I felt them not), and some on my face, which I
+immediately covered with my left hand. When this shower of arrows was
+over, I fell a groaning with grief and pain; and then striving again to
+get loose, they discharged another volley larger than the first, and
+some of them attempted with spears to stick me in the sides; but by
+good luck I had on a buff jerkin, which they could not pierce. I
+thought it the most prudent method to lie still, and my design was to
+continue so till night, when, my left hand being already loose, I could
+easily free myself: and as for the inhabitants, I had reason to believe
+I might be a match for the greatest army they could bring against me,
+if they were all of the same size with him that I saw. But fortune
+disposed otherwise of me. When the people observed I was quiet, they
+discharged no more arrows; but, by the noise I heard, I knew their
+numbers increased; and about four yards from me, over against my right
+ear, I heard a knocking for above an hour, like that of people at work;
+when turning my head that way, as well as the pegs and strings would
+permit me, I saw a stage erected about a foot and a half from the
+ground, capable of holding four of the inhabitants, with two or three
+ladders to mount it: from whence one of them, who seemed to be a person
+of quality, made me a long speech, whereof I understood not one
+syllable. But I should have mentioned, that before the principal person
+began his oration, he cried out three times, _Langro dehul san_ (these
+words and the former were afterwards repeated and explained to me);
+whereupon, immediately, about fifty of the inhabitants came and cut the
+strings that fastened the left side of my head, which gave me the
+liberty of turning it to the right, and of observing the person and
+gesture of him that was to speak. He appeared to be of a middle age,
+and taller than any of the other three who attended him, whereof one
+was a page that held up his train, and seemed to be somewhat longer
+than my middle finger; the other two stood one on each side to support
+him. He acted every part of an orator, and I could observe many periods
+of threatenings, and others of promises, pity, and kindness. I answered
+in a few words, but in the most submissive manner, lifting up my left
+hand, and both my eyes to the sun, as calling him for a witness; and
+being almost famished with hunger, having not eaten a morsel for some
+hours before I left the ship, I found the demands of nature so strong
+upon me, that I could not forbear showing my impatience (perhaps
+against the strict rules of decency) by putting my finger frequently to
+my mouth, to signify that I wanted food. The _hurgo_ (for so they call
+a great lord, as I afterwards learnt) understood me very well. He
+descended from the stage, and commanded that several ladders should be
+applied to my sides, on which above a hundred of the inhabitants
+mounted and walked towards my mouth, laden with baskets full of meat,
+which had been provided and sent thither by the king’s orders, upon the
+first intelligence he received of me. I observed there was the flesh of
+several animals, but could not distinguish them by the taste. There
+were shoulders, legs, and loins, shaped like those of mutton, and very
+well dressed, but smaller than the wings of a lark. I ate them by two
+or three at a mouthful, and took three loaves at a time, about the
+bigness of musket bullets. They supplied me as fast as they could,
+showing a thousand marks of wonder and astonishment at my bulk and
+appetite. I then made another sign, that I wanted drink. They found by
+my eating that a small quantity would not suffice me; and being a most
+ingenious people, they slung up, with great dexterity, one of their
+largest hogsheads, then rolled it towards my hand, and beat out the
+top; I drank it off at a draught, which I might well do, for it did not
+hold half a pint, and tasted like a small wine of Burgundy, but much
+more delicious. They brought me a second hogshead, which I drank in the
+same manner, and made signs for more; but they had none to give me.
+When I had performed these wonders, they shouted for joy, and danced
+upon my breast, repeating several times as they did at first, _Hekinah
+degul_. They made me a sign that I should throw down the two hogsheads,
+but first warning the people below to stand out of the way, crying
+aloud, _Borach mevolah_; and when they saw the vessels in the air,
+there was a universal shout of _Hekinah degul_. I confess I was often
+tempted, while they were passing backwards and forwards on my body, to
+seize forty or fifty of the first that came in my reach, and dash them
+against the ground. But the remembrance of what I had felt, which
+probably might not be the worst they could do, and the promise of
+honour I made them—for so I interpreted my submissive behaviour—soon
+drove out these imaginations. Besides, I now considered myself as bound
+by the laws of hospitality, to a people who had treated me with so much
+expense and magnificence. However, in my thoughts I could not
+sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals, who
+durst venture to mount and walk upon my body, while one of my hands was
+at liberty, without trembling at the very sight of so prodigious a
+creature as I must appear to them. After some time, when they observed
+that I made no more demands for meat, there appeared before me a person
+of high rank from his imperial majesty. His excellency, having mounted
+on the small of my right leg, advanced forwards up to my face, with
+about a dozen of his retinue; and producing his credentials under the
+signet royal, which he applied close to my eyes, spoke about ten
+minutes without any signs of anger, but with a kind of determinate
+resolution, often pointing forwards, which, as I afterwards found, was
+towards the capital city, about half a mile distant; whither it was
+agreed by his majesty in council that I must be conveyed. I answered in
+few words, but to no purpose, and made a sign with my hand that was
+loose, putting it to the other (but over his excellency’s head for fear
+of hurting him or his train) and then to my own head and body, to
+signify that I desired my liberty. It appeared that he understood me
+well enough, for he shook his head by way of disapprobation, and held
+his hand in a posture to show that I must be carried as a prisoner.
+However, he made other signs to let me understand that I should have
+meat and drink enough, and very good treatment. Whereupon I once more
+thought of attempting to break my bonds; but again, when I felt the
+smart of their arrows upon my face and hands, which were all in
+blisters, and many of the darts still sticking in them, and observing
+likewise that the number of my enemies increased, I gave tokens to let
+them know that they might do with me what they pleased. Upon this, the
+_hurgo_ and his train withdrew, with much civility and cheerful
+countenances. Soon after I heard a general shout, with frequent
+repetitions of the words _Peplom selan_; and I felt great numbers of
+people on my left side relaxing the cords to such a degree, that I was
+able to turn upon my right, and to ease myself with making water; which
+I very plentifully did, to the great astonishment of the people; who,
+conjecturing by my motion what I was going to do, immediately opened to
+the right and left on that side, to avoid the torrent, which fell with
+such noise and violence from me. But before this, they had daubed my
+face and both my hands with a sort of ointment, very pleasant to the
+smell, which, in a few minutes, removed all the smart of their arrows.
+These circumstances, added to the refreshment I had received by their
+victuals and drink, which were very nourishing, disposed me to sleep. I
+slept about eight hours, as I was afterwards assured; and it was no
+wonder, for the physicians, by the emperor’s order, had mingled a
+sleepy potion in the hogsheads of wine.
+
+It seems, that upon the first moment I was discovered sleeping on the
+ground, after my landing, the emperor had early notice of it by an
+express; and determined in council, that I should be tied in the manner
+I have related, (which was done in the night while I slept;) that
+plenty of meat and drink should be sent to me, and a machine prepared
+to carry me to the capital city.
+
+This resolution perhaps may appear very bold and dangerous, and I am
+confident would not be imitated by any prince in Europe on the like
+occasion. However, in my opinion, it was extremely prudent, as well as
+generous: for, supposing these people had endeavoured to kill me with
+their spears and arrows, while I was asleep, I should certainly have
+awaked with the first sense of smart, which might so far have roused my
+rage and strength, as to have enabled me to break the strings wherewith
+I was tied; after which, as they were not able to make resistance, so
+they could expect no mercy.
+
+These people are most excellent mathematicians, and arrived to a great
+perfection in mechanics, by the countenance and encouragement of the
+emperor, who is a renowned patron of learning. This prince has several
+machines fixed on wheels, for the carriage of trees and other great
+weights. He often builds his largest men of war, whereof some are nine
+feet long, in the woods where the timber grows, and has them carried on
+these engines three or four hundred yards to the sea. Five hundred
+carpenters and engineers were immediately set at work to prepare the
+greatest engine they had. It was a frame of wood raised three inches
+from the ground, about seven feet long, and four wide, moving upon
+twenty-two wheels. The shout I heard was upon the arrival of this
+engine, which, it seems, set out in four hours after my landing. It was
+brought parallel to me, as I lay. But the principal difficulty was to
+raise and place me in this vehicle. Eighty poles, each of one foot
+high, were erected for this purpose, and very strong cords, of the
+bigness of packthread, were fastened by hooks to many bandages, which
+the workmen had girt round my neck, my hands, my body, and my legs.
+Nine hundred of the strongest men were employed to draw up these cords,
+by many pulleys fastened on the poles; and thus, in less than three
+hours, I was raised and slung into the engine, and there tied fast. All
+this I was told; for, while the operation was performing, I lay in a
+profound sleep, by the force of that soporiferous medicine infused into
+my liquor. Fifteen hundred of the emperor’s largest horses, each about
+four inches and a half high, were employed to draw me towards the
+metropolis, which, as I said, was half a mile distant.
+
+About four hours after we began our journey, I awaked by a very
+ridiculous accident; for the carriage being stopped a while, to adjust
+something that was out of order, two or three of the young natives had
+the curiosity to see how I looked when I was asleep; they climbed up
+into the engine, and advancing very softly to my face, one of them, an
+officer in the guards, put the sharp end of his half-pike a good way up
+into my left nostril, which tickled my nose like a straw, and made me
+sneeze violently; whereupon they stole off unperceived, and it was
+three weeks before I knew the cause of my waking so suddenly. We made a
+long march the remaining part of the day, and, rested at night with
+five hundred guards on each side of me, half with torches, and half
+with bows and arrows, ready to shoot me if I should offer to stir. The
+next morning at sunrise we continued our march, and arrived within two
+hundred yards of the city gates about noon. The emperor, and all his
+court, came out to meet us; but his great officers would by no means
+suffer his majesty to endanger his person by mounting on my body.
+
+At the place where the carriage stopped there stood an ancient temple,
+esteemed to be the largest in the whole kingdom; which, having been
+polluted some years before by an unnatural murder, was, according to
+the zeal of those people, looked upon as profane, and therefore had
+been applied to common use, and all the ornaments and furniture carried
+away. In this edifice it was determined I should lodge. The great gate
+fronting to the north was about four feet high, and almost two feet
+wide, through which I could easily creep. On each side of the gate was
+a small window, not above six inches from the ground: into that on the
+left side, the king’s smith conveyed fourscore and eleven chains, like
+those that hang to a lady’s watch in Europe, and almost as large, which
+were locked to my left leg with six-and-thirty padlocks. Over against
+this temple, on the other side of the great highway, at twenty feet
+distance, there was a turret at least five feet high. Here the emperor
+ascended, with many principal lords of his court, to have an
+opportunity of viewing me, as I was told, for I could not see them. It
+was reckoned that above a hundred thousand inhabitants came out of the
+town upon the same errand; and, in spite of my guards, I believe there
+could not be fewer than ten thousand at several times, who mounted my
+body by the help of ladders. But a proclamation was soon issued, to
+forbid it upon pain of death. When the workmen found it was impossible
+for me to break loose, they cut all the strings that bound me;
+whereupon I rose up, with as melancholy a disposition as ever I had in
+my life. But the noise and astonishment of the people, at seeing me
+rise and walk, are not to be expressed. The chains that held my left
+leg were about two yards long, and gave me not only the liberty of
+walking backwards and forwards in a semicircle, but, being fixed within
+four inches of the gate, allowed me to creep in, and lie at my full
+length in the temple.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The emperor of Lilliput, attended by several of the nobility, comes to
+see the author in his confinement. The emperor’s person and habit
+described. Learned men appointed to teach the author their language. He
+gains favour by his mild disposition. His pockets are searched, and his
+sword and pistols taken from him.
+
+
+When I found myself on my feet, I looked about me, and must confess I
+never beheld a more entertaining prospect. The country around appeared
+like a continued garden, and the enclosed fields, which were generally
+forty feet square, resembled so many beds of flowers. These fields were
+intermingled with woods of half a stang, [301] and the tallest trees,
+as I could judge, appeared to be seven feet high. I viewed the town on
+my left hand, which looked like the painted scene of a city in a
+theatre.
+
+I had been for some hours extremely pressed by the necessities of
+nature; which was no wonder, it being almost two days since I had last
+disburdened myself. I was under great difficulties between urgency and
+shame. The best expedient I could think of, was to creep into my house,
+which I accordingly did; and shutting the gate after me, I went as far
+as the length of my chain would suffer, and discharged my body of that
+uneasy load. But this was the only time I was ever guilty of so
+uncleanly an action; for which I cannot but hope the candid reader will
+give some allowance, after he has maturely and impartially considered
+my case, and the distress I was in. From this time my constant practice
+was, as soon as I rose, to perform that business in open air, at the
+full extent of my chain; and due care was taken every morning before
+company came, that the offensive matter should be carried off in
+wheel-barrows, by two servants appointed for that purpose. I would not
+have dwelt so long upon a circumstance that, perhaps, at first sight,
+may appear not very momentous, if I had not thought it necessary to
+justify my character, in point of cleanliness, to the world; which, I
+am told, some of my maligners have been pleased, upon this and other
+occasions, to call in question.
+
+When this adventure was at an end, I came back out of my house, having
+occasion for fresh air. The emperor was already descended from the
+tower, and advancing on horseback towards me, which had like to have
+cost him dear; for the beast, though very well trained, yet wholly
+unused to such a sight, which appeared as if a mountain moved before
+him, reared up on its hinder feet: but that prince, who is an excellent
+horseman, kept his seat, till his attendants ran in, and held the
+bridle, while his majesty had time to dismount. When he alighted, he
+surveyed me round with great admiration; but kept beyond the length of
+my chain. He ordered his cooks and butlers, who were already prepared,
+to give me victuals and drink, which they pushed forward in a sort of
+vehicles upon wheels, till I could reach them. I took these vehicles
+and soon emptied them all; twenty of them were filled with meat, and
+ten with liquor; each of the former afforded me two or three good
+mouthfuls; and I emptied the liquor of ten vessels, which was contained
+in earthen vials, into one vehicle, drinking it off at a draught; and
+so I did with the rest. The empress, and young princes of the blood of
+both sexes, attended by many ladies, sat at some distance in their
+chairs; but upon the accident that happened to the emperor’s horse,
+they alighted, and came near his person, which I am now going to
+describe. He is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of
+his court; which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.
+His features are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip and arched
+nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs
+well proportioned, all his motions graceful, and his deportment
+majestic. He was then past his prime, being twenty-eight years and
+three quarters old, of which he had reigned about seven in great
+felicity, and generally victorious. For the better convenience of
+beholding him, I lay on my side, so that my face was parallel to his,
+and he stood but three yards off: however, I have had him since many
+times in my hand, and therefore cannot be deceived in the description.
+His dress was very plain and simple, and the fashion of it between the
+Asiatic and the European; but he had on his head a light helmet of
+gold, adorned with jewels, and a plume on the crest. He held his sword
+drawn in his hand to defend himself, if I should happen to break loose;
+it was almost three inches long; the hilt and scabbard were gold
+enriched with diamonds. His voice was shrill, but very clear and
+articulate; and I could distinctly hear it when I stood up. The ladies
+and courtiers were all most magnificently clad; so that the spot they
+stood upon seemed to resemble a petticoat spread upon the ground,
+embroidered with figures of gold and silver. His imperial majesty spoke
+often to me, and I returned answers: but neither of us could understand
+a syllable. There were several of his priests and lawyers present (as I
+conjectured by their habits), who were commanded to address themselves
+to me; and I spoke to them in as many languages as I had the least
+smattering of, which were High and Low Dutch, Latin, French, Spanish,
+Italian, and Lingua Franca, but all to no purpose. After about two
+hours the court retired, and I was left with a strong guard, to prevent
+the impertinence, and probably the malice of the rabble, who were very
+impatient to crowd about me as near as they durst; and some of them had
+the impudence to shoot their arrows at me, as I sat on the ground by
+the door of my house, whereof one very narrowly missed my left eye. But
+the colonel ordered six of the ringleaders to be seized, and thought no
+punishment so proper as to deliver them bound into my hands; which some
+of his soldiers accordingly did, pushing them forward with the
+butt-ends of their pikes into my reach. I took them all in my right
+hand, put five of them into my coat-pocket; and as to the sixth, I made
+a countenance as if I would eat him alive. The poor man squalled
+terribly, and the colonel and his officers were in much pain,
+especially when they saw me take out my penknife: but I soon put them
+out of fear; for, looking mildly, and immediately cutting the strings
+he was bound with, I set him gently on the ground, and away he ran. I
+treated the rest in the same manner, taking them one by one out of my
+pocket; and I observed both the soldiers and people were highly
+delighted at this mark of my clemency, which was represented very much
+to my advantage at court.
+
+Towards night I got with some difficulty into my house, where I lay on
+the ground, and continued to do so about a fortnight; during which
+time, the emperor gave orders to have a bed prepared for me. Six
+hundred beds of the common measure were brought in carriages, and
+worked up in my house; a hundred and fifty of their beds, sewn
+together, made up the breadth and length; and these were four double:
+which, however, kept me but very indifferently from the hardness of the
+floor, that was of smooth stone. By the same computation, they provided
+me with sheets, blankets, and coverlets, tolerable enough for one who
+had been so long inured to hardships.
+
+As the news of my arrival spread through the kingdom, it brought
+prodigious numbers of rich, idle, and curious people to see me; so that
+the villages were almost emptied; and great neglect of tillage and
+household affairs must have ensued, if his imperial majesty had not
+provided, by several proclamations and orders of state, against this
+inconveniency. He directed that those who had already beheld me should
+return home, and not presume to come within fifty yards of my house,
+without license from the court; whereby the secretaries of state got
+considerable fees.
+
+In the mean time the emperor held frequent councils, to debate what
+course should be taken with me; and I was afterwards assured by a
+particular friend, a person of great quality, who was as much in the
+secret as any, that the court was under many difficulties concerning
+me. They apprehended my breaking loose; that my diet would be very
+expensive, and might cause a famine. Sometimes they determined to
+starve me; or at least to shoot me in the face and hands with poisoned
+arrows, which would soon despatch me; but again they considered, that
+the stench of so large a carcass might produce a plague in the
+metropolis, and probably spread through the whole kingdom. In the midst
+of these consultations, several officers of the army went to the door
+of the great council-chamber, and two of them being admitted, gave an
+account of my behaviour to the six criminals above-mentioned; which
+made so favourable an impression in the breast of his majesty and the
+whole board, in my behalf, that an imperial commission was issued out,
+obliging all the villages, nine hundred yards round the city, to
+deliver in every morning six beeves, forty sheep, and other victuals
+for my sustenance; together with a proportionable quantity of bread,
+and wine, and other liquors; for the due payment of which, his majesty
+gave assignments upon his treasury:—for this prince lives chiefly upon
+his own demesnes; seldom, except upon great occasions, raising any
+subsidies upon his subjects, who are bound to attend him in his wars at
+their own expense. An establishment was also made of six hundred
+persons to be my domestics, who had board-wages allowed for their
+maintenance, and tents built for them very conveniently on each side of
+my door. It was likewise ordered, that three hundred tailors should
+make me a suit of clothes, after the fashion of the country; that six
+of his majesty’s greatest scholars should be employed to instruct me in
+their language; and lastly, that the emperor’s horses, and those of the
+nobility and troops of guards, should be frequently exercised in my
+sight, to accustom themselves to me. All these orders were duly put in
+execution; and in about three weeks I made a great progress in learning
+their language; during which time the emperor frequently honoured me
+with his visits, and was pleased to assist my masters in teaching me.
+We began already to converse together in some sort; and the first words
+I learnt, were to express my desire “that he would please give me my
+liberty;” which I every day repeated on my knees. His answer, as I
+could comprehend it, was, “that this must be a work of time, not to be
+thought on without the advice of his council, and that first I must
+_lumos kelmin pesso desmar lon emposo_;” that is, swear a peace with
+him and his kingdom. However, that I should be used with all kindness.
+And he advised me to “acquire, by my patience and discreet behaviour,
+the good opinion of himself and his subjects.” He desired “I would not
+take it ill, if he gave orders to certain proper officers to search me;
+for probably I might carry about me several weapons, which must needs
+be dangerous things, if they answered the bulk of so prodigious a
+person.” I said, “His majesty should be satisfied; for I was ready to
+strip myself, and turn up my pockets before him.” This I delivered part
+in words, and part in signs. He replied, “that, by the laws of the
+kingdom, I must be searched by two of his officers; that he knew this
+could not be done without my consent and assistance; and he had so good
+an opinion of my generosity and justice, as to trust their persons in
+my hands; that whatever they took from me, should be returned when I
+left the country, or paid for at the rate which I would set upon them.”
+I took up the two officers in my hands, put them first into my
+coat-pockets, and then into every other pocket about me, except my two
+fobs, and another secret pocket, which I had no mind should be
+searched, wherein I had some little necessaries that were of no
+consequence to any but myself. In one of my fobs there was a silver
+watch, and in the other a small quantity of gold in a purse. These
+gentlemen, having pen, ink, and paper, about them, made an exact
+inventory of every thing they saw; and when they had done, desired I
+would set them down, that they might deliver it to the emperor. This
+inventory I afterwards translated into English, and is, word for word,
+as follows:
+
+
+“_Imprimis_: In the right coat-pocket of the great man-mountain” (for
+so I interpret the words _quinbus flestrin_,) “after the strictest
+search, we found only one great piece of coarse-cloth, large enough to
+be a foot-cloth for your majesty’s chief room of state. In the left
+pocket we saw a huge silver chest, with a cover of the same metal,
+which we, the searchers, were not able to lift. We desired it should be
+opened, and one of us stepping into it, found himself up to the mid leg
+in a sort of dust, some part whereof flying up to our faces set us both
+a sneezing for several times together. In his right waistcoat-pocket we
+found a prodigious bundle of white thin substances, folded one over
+another, about the bigness of three men, tied with a strong cable, and
+marked with black figures; which we humbly conceive to be writings,
+every letter almost half as large as the palm of our hands. In the left
+there was a sort of engine, from the back of which were extended twenty
+long poles, resembling the pallisados before your majesty’s court:
+wherewith we conjecture the man-mountain combs his head; for we did not
+always trouble him with questions, because we found it a great
+difficulty to make him understand us. In the large pocket, on the right
+side of his middle cover” (so I translate the word _ranfulo_, by which
+they meant my breeches,) “we saw a hollow pillar of iron, about the
+length of a man, fastened to a strong piece of timber larger than the
+pillar; and upon one side of the pillar, were huge pieces of iron
+sticking out, cut into strange figures, which we know not what to make
+of. In the left pocket, another engine of the same kind. In the smaller
+pocket on the right side, were several round flat pieces of white and
+red metal, of different bulk; some of the white, which seemed to be
+silver, were so large and heavy, that my comrade and I could hardly
+lift them. In the left pocket were two black pillars irregularly
+shaped: we could not, without difficulty, reach the top of them, as we
+stood at the bottom of his pocket. One of them was covered, and seemed
+all of a piece: but at the upper end of the other there appeared a
+white round substance, about twice the bigness of our heads. Within
+each of these was enclosed a prodigious plate of steel; which, by our
+orders, we obliged him to show us, because we apprehended they might be
+dangerous engines. He took them out of their cases, and told us, that
+in his own country his practice was to shave his beard with one of
+these, and cut his meat with the other. There were two pockets which we
+could not enter: these he called his fobs; they were two large slits
+cut into the top of his middle cover, but squeezed close by the
+pressure of his belly. Out of the right fob hung a great silver chain,
+with a wonderful kind of engine at the bottom. We directed him to draw
+out whatever was at the end of that chain; which appeared to be a
+globe, half silver, and half of some transparent metal; for, on the
+transparent side, we saw certain strange figures circularly drawn, and
+thought we could touch them, till we found our fingers stopped by the
+lucid substance. He put this engine into our ears, which made an
+incessant noise, like that of a water-mill: and we conjecture it is
+either some unknown animal, or the god that he worships; but we are
+more inclined to the latter opinion, because he assured us, (if we
+understood him right, for he expressed himself very imperfectly) that
+he seldom did any thing without consulting it. He called it his oracle,
+and said, it pointed out the time for every action of his life. From
+the left fob he took out a net almost large enough for a fisherman, but
+contrived to open and shut like a purse, and served him for the same
+use: we found therein several massy pieces of yellow metal, which, if
+they be real gold, must be of immense value.
+
+“Having thus, in obedience to your majesty’s commands, diligently
+searched all his pockets, we observed a girdle about his waist made of
+the hide of some prodigious animal, from which, on the left side, hung
+a sword of the length of five men; and on the right, a bag or pouch
+divided into two cells, each cell capable of holding three of your
+majesty’s subjects. In one of these cells were several globes, or
+balls, of a most ponderous metal, about the bigness of our heads, and
+requiring a strong hand to lift them: the other cell contained a heap
+of certain black grains, but of no great bulk or weight, for we could
+hold above fifty of them in the palms of our hands.
+
+“This is an exact inventory of what we found about the body of the
+man-mountain, who used us with great civility, and due respect to your
+majesty’s commission. Signed and sealed on the fourth day of the
+eighty-ninth moon of your majesty’s auspicious reign.
+
+
+                                     Clefrin Frelock, Marsi Frelock.”
+
+When this inventory was read over to the emperor, he directed me,
+although in very gentle terms, to deliver up the several particulars.
+He first called for my scimitar, which I took out, scabbard and all. In
+the mean time he ordered three thousand of his choicest troops (who
+then attended him) to surround me at a distance, with their bows and
+arrows just ready to discharge; but I did not observe it, for my eyes
+were wholly fixed upon his majesty. He then desired me to draw my
+scimitar, which, although it had got some rust by the sea water, was,
+in most parts, exceeding bright. I did so, and immediately all the
+troops gave a shout between terror and surprise; for the sun shone
+clear, and the reflection dazzled their eyes, as I waved the scimitar
+to and fro in my hand. His majesty, who is a most magnanimous prince,
+was less daunted than I could expect: he ordered me to return it into
+the scabbard, and cast it on the ground as gently as I could, about six
+feet from the end of my chain. The next thing he demanded was one of
+the hollow iron pillars; by which he meant my pocket pistols. I drew it
+out, and at his desire, as well as I could, expressed to him the use of
+it; and charging it only with powder, which, by the closeness of my
+pouch, happened to escape wetting in the sea (an inconvenience against
+which all prudent mariners take special care to provide,) I first
+cautioned the emperor not to be afraid, and then I let it off in the
+air. The astonishment here was much greater than at the sight of my
+scimitar. Hundreds fell down as if they had been struck dead; and even
+the emperor, although he stood his ground, could not recover himself
+for some time. I delivered up both my pistols in the same manner as I
+had done my scimitar, and then my pouch of powder and bullets; begging
+him that the former might be kept from fire, for it would kindle with
+the smallest spark, and blow up his imperial palace into the air. I
+likewise delivered up my watch, which the emperor was very curious to
+see, and commanded two of his tallest yeomen of the guards to bear it
+on a pole upon their shoulders, as draymen in England do a barrel of
+ale. He was amazed at the continual noise it made, and the motion of
+the minute-hand, which he could easily discern; for their sight is much
+more acute than ours: he asked the opinions of his learned men about
+it, which were various and remote, as the reader may well imagine
+without my repeating; although indeed I could not very perfectly
+understand them. I then gave up my silver and copper money, my purse,
+with nine large pieces of gold, and some smaller ones; my knife and
+razor, my comb and silver snuff-box, my handkerchief and journal-book.
+My scimitar, pistols, and pouch, were conveyed in carriages to his
+majesty’s stores; but the rest of my goods were returned me.
+
+I had as I before observed, one private pocket, which escaped their
+search, wherein there was a pair of spectacles (which I sometimes use
+for the weakness of my eyes,) a pocket perspective, and some other
+little conveniences; which, being of no consequence to the emperor, I
+did not think myself bound in honour to discover, and I apprehended
+they might be lost or spoiled if I ventured them out of my possession.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The author diverts the emperor, and his nobility of both sexes, in a
+very uncommon manner. The diversions of the court of Lilliput
+described. The author has his liberty granted him upon certain
+conditions.
+
+
+My gentleness and good behaviour had gained so far on the emperor and
+his court, and indeed upon the army and people in general, that I began
+to conceive hopes of getting my liberty in a short time. I took all
+possible methods to cultivate this favourable disposition. The natives
+came, by degrees, to be less apprehensive of any danger from me. I
+would sometimes lie down, and let five or six of them dance on my hand;
+and at last the boys and girls would venture to come and play at
+hide-and-seek in my hair. I had now made a good progress in
+understanding and speaking the language. The emperor had a mind one day
+to entertain me with several of the country shows, wherein they exceed
+all nations I have known, both for dexterity and magnificence. I was
+diverted with none so much as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon
+a slender white thread, extended about two feet, and twelve inches from
+the ground. Upon which I shall desire liberty, with the reader’s
+patience, to enlarge a little.
+
+This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates
+for great employments, and high favour at court. They are trained in
+this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth, or
+liberal education. When a great office is vacant, either by death or
+disgrace (which often happens) five or six of those candidates
+petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a
+dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling,
+succeeds in the office. Very often the chief ministers themselves are
+commanded to show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they
+have not lost their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut
+a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any other
+lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summerset several
+times together, upon a trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker
+than a common packthread in England. My friend Reldresal, principal
+secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial,
+the second after the treasurer; the rest of the great officers are much
+upon a par.
+
+These diversions are often attended with fatal accidents, whereof great
+numbers are on record. I myself have seen two or three candidates break
+a limb. But the danger is much greater, when the ministers themselves
+are commanded to show their dexterity; for, by contending to excel
+themselves and their fellows, they strain so far that there is hardly
+one of them who has not received a fall, and some of them two or three.
+I was assured that, a year or two before my arrival, Flimnap would
+infallibly have broke his neck, if one of the king’s cushions, that
+accidentally lay on the ground, had not weakened the force of his fall.
+
+There is likewise another diversion, which is only shown before the
+emperor and empress, and first minister, upon particular occasions. The
+emperor lays on the table three fine silken threads of six inches long;
+one is blue, the other red, and the third green. These threads are
+proposed as prizes for those persons whom the emperor has a mind to
+distinguish by a peculiar mark of his favour. The ceremony is performed
+in his majesty’s great chamber of state, where the candidates are to
+undergo a trial of dexterity very different from the former, and such
+as I have not observed the least resemblance of in any other country of
+the new or old world. The emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends
+parallel to the horizon, while the candidates advancing, one by one,
+sometimes leap over the stick, sometimes creep under it, backward and
+forward, several times, according as the stick is advanced or
+depressed. Sometimes the emperor holds one end of the stick, and his
+first minister the other; sometimes the minister has it entirely to
+himself. Whoever performs his part with most agility, and holds out the
+longest in leaping and creeping, is rewarded with the blue-coloured
+silk; the red is given to the next, and the green to the third, which
+they all wear girt twice round about the middle; and you see few great
+persons about this court who are not adorned with one of these girdles.
+
+The horses of the army, and those of the royal stables, having been
+daily led before me, were no longer shy, but would come up to my very
+feet without starting. The riders would leap them over my hand, as I
+held it on the ground; and one of the emperor’s huntsmen, upon a large
+courser, took my foot, shoe and all; which was indeed a prodigious
+leap. I had the good fortune to divert the emperor one day after a very
+extraordinary manner. I desired he would order several sticks of two
+feet high, and the thickness of an ordinary cane, to be brought me;
+whereupon his majesty commanded the master of his woods to give
+directions accordingly; and the next morning six woodmen arrived with
+as many carriages, drawn by eight horses to each. I took nine of these
+sticks, and fixing them firmly in the ground in a quadrangular figure,
+two feet and a half square, I took four other sticks, and tied them
+parallel at each corner, about two feet from the ground; then I
+fastened my handkerchief to the nine sticks that stood erect; and
+extended it on all sides, till it was tight as the top of a drum; and
+the four parallel sticks, rising about five inches higher than the
+handkerchief, served as ledges on each side. When I had finished my
+work, I desired the emperor to let a troop of his best horses
+twenty-four in number, come and exercise upon this plain. His majesty
+approved of the proposal, and I took them up, one by one, in my hands,
+ready mounted and armed, with the proper officers to exercise them. As
+soon as they got into order they divided into two parties, performed
+mock skirmishes, discharged blunt arrows, drew their swords, fled and
+pursued, attacked and retired, and in short discovered the best
+military discipline I ever beheld. The parallel sticks secured them and
+their horses from falling over the stage; and the emperor was so much
+delighted, that he ordered this entertainment to be repeated several
+days, and once was pleased to be lifted up and give the word of
+command; and with great difficulty persuaded even the empress herself
+to let me hold her in her close chair within two yards of the stage,
+when she was able to take a full view of the whole performance. It was
+my good fortune, that no ill accident happened in these entertainments;
+only once a fiery horse, that belonged to one of the captains, pawing
+with his hoof, struck a hole in my handkerchief, and his foot slipping,
+he overthrew his rider and himself; but I immediately relieved them
+both, and covering the hole with one hand, I set down the troop with
+the other, in the same manner as I took them up. The horse that fell
+was strained in the left shoulder, but the rider got no hurt; and I
+repaired my handkerchief as well as I could: however, I would not trust
+to the strength of it any more, in such dangerous enterprises.
+
+About two or three days before I was set at liberty, as I was
+entertaining the court with this kind of feat, there arrived an express
+to inform his majesty, that some of his subjects, riding near the place
+where I was first taken up, had seen a great black substance lying on
+the ground, very oddly shaped, extending its edges round, as wide as
+his majesty’s bedchamber, and rising up in the middle as high as a man;
+that it was no living creature, as they at first apprehended, for it
+lay on the grass without motion; and some of them had walked round it
+several times; that, by mounting upon each other’s shoulders, they had
+got to the top, which was flat and even, and, stamping upon it, they
+found that it was hollow within; that they humbly conceived it might be
+something belonging to the man-mountain; and if his majesty pleased,
+they would undertake to bring it with only five horses. I presently
+knew what they meant, and was glad at heart to receive this
+intelligence. It seems, upon my first reaching the shore after our
+shipwreck, I was in such confusion, that before I came to the place
+where I went to sleep, my hat, which I had fastened with a string to my
+head while I was rowing, and had stuck on all the time I was swimming,
+fell off after I came to land; the string, as I conjecture, breaking by
+some accident, which I never observed, but thought my hat had been lost
+at sea. I entreated his imperial majesty to give orders it might be
+brought to me as soon as possible, describing to him the use and the
+nature of it: and the next day the waggoners arrived with it, but not
+in a very good condition; they had bored two holes in the brim, within
+an inch and half of the edge, and fastened two hooks in the holes;
+these hooks were tied by a long cord to the harness, and thus my hat
+was dragged along for above half an English mile; but, the ground in
+that country being extremely smooth and level, it received less damage
+than I expected.
+
+Two days after this adventure, the emperor, having ordered that part of
+his army which quarters in and about his metropolis, to be in
+readiness, took a fancy of diverting himself in a very singular manner.
+He desired I would stand like a Colossus, with my legs as far asunder
+as I conveniently could. He then commanded his general (who was an old
+experienced leader, and a great patron of mine) to draw up the troops
+in close order, and march them under me; the foot by twenty-four
+abreast, and the horse by sixteen, with drums beating, colours flying,
+and pikes advanced. This body consisted of three thousand foot, and a
+thousand horse. His majesty gave orders, upon pain of death, that every
+soldier in his march should observe the strictest decency with regard
+to my person; which however could not prevent some of the younger
+officers from turning up their eyes as they passed under me: and, to
+confess the truth, my breeches were at that time in so ill a condition,
+that they afforded some opportunities for laughter and admiration.
+
+I had sent so many memorials and petitions for my liberty, that his
+majesty at length mentioned the matter, first in the cabinet, and then
+in a full council; where it was opposed by none, except Skyresh
+Bolgolam, who was pleased, without any provocation, to be my mortal
+enemy. But it was carried against him by the whole board, and confirmed
+by the emperor. That minister was _galbet_, or admiral of the realm,
+very much in his master’s confidence, and a person well versed in
+affairs, but of a morose and sour complexion. However, he was at length
+persuaded to comply; but prevailed that the articles and conditions
+upon which I should be set free, and to which I must swear, should be
+drawn up by himself. These articles were brought to me by Skyresh
+Bolgolam in person attended by two under-secretaries, and several
+persons of distinction. After they were read, I was demanded to swear
+to the performance of them; first in the manner of my own country, and
+afterwards in the method prescribed by their laws; which was, to hold
+my right foot in my left hand, and to place the middle finger of my
+right hand on the crown of my head, and my thumb on the tip of my right
+ear. But because the reader may be curious to have some idea of the
+style and manner of expression peculiar to that people, as well as to
+know the article upon which I recovered my liberty, I have made a
+translation of the whole instrument, word for word, as near as I was
+able, which I here offer to the public.
+
+
+“Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue, most mighty
+Emperor of Lilliput, delight and terror of the universe, whose
+dominions extend five thousand _blustrugs_ (about twelve miles in
+circumference) to the extremities of the globe; monarch of all
+monarchs, taller than the sons of men; whose feet press down to the
+centre, and whose head strikes against the sun; at whose nod the
+princes of the earth shake their knees; pleasant as the spring,
+comfortable as the summer, fruitful as autumn, dreadful as winter: his
+most sublime majesty proposes to the man-mountain, lately arrived at
+our celestial dominions, the following articles, which, by a solemn
+oath, he shall be obliged to perform:—
+
+“1st, The man-mountain shall not depart from our dominions, without our
+license under our great seal.
+
+“2d, He shall not presume to come into our metropolis, without our
+express order; at which time, the inhabitants shall have two hours
+warning to keep within doors.
+
+“3d, The said man-mountain shall confine his walks to our principal
+high roads, and not offer to walk, or lie down, in a meadow or field of
+corn.
+
+“4th, As he walks the said roads, he shall take the utmost care not to
+trample upon the bodies of any of our loving subjects, their horses, or
+carriages, nor take any of our subjects into his hands without their
+own consent.
+
+“5th, If an express requires extraordinary despatch, the man-mountain
+shall be obliged to carry, in his pocket, the messenger and horse a six
+days journey, once in every moon, and return the said messenger back
+(if so required) safe to our imperial presence.
+
+“6th, He shall be our ally against our enemies in the island of
+Blefuscu, and do his utmost to destroy their fleet, which is now
+preparing to invade us.
+
+“7th, That the said man-mountain shall, at his times of leisure, be
+aiding and assisting to our workmen, in helping to raise certain great
+stones, towards covering the wall of the principal park, and other our
+royal buildings.
+
+“8th, That the said man-mountain shall, in two moons’ time, deliver in
+an exact survey of the circumference of our dominions, by a computation
+of his own paces round the coast.
+
+“Lastly, That, upon his solemn oath to observe all the above articles,
+the said man-mountain shall have a daily allowance of meat and drink
+sufficient for the support of 1724 of our subjects, with free access to
+our royal person, and other marks of our favour. Given at our palace at
+Belfaborac, the twelfth day of the ninety-first moon of our reign.”
+
+
+I swore and subscribed to these articles with great cheerfulness and
+content, although some of them were not so honourable as I could have
+wished; which proceeded wholly from the malice of Skyresh Bolgolam, the
+high-admiral: whereupon my chains were immediately unlocked, and I was
+at full liberty. The emperor himself, in person, did me the honour to
+be by at the whole ceremony. I made my acknowledgements by prostrating
+myself at his majesty’s feet: but he commanded me to rise; and after
+many gracious expressions, which, to avoid the censure of vanity, I
+shall not repeat, he added, “that he hoped I should prove a useful
+servant, and well deserve all the favours he had already conferred upon
+me, or might do for the future.”
+
+The reader may please to observe, that, in the last article of the
+recovery of my liberty, the emperor stipulates to allow me a quantity
+of meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1724 Lilliputians. Some
+time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that
+determinate number, he told me that his majesty’s mathematicians,
+having taken the height of my body by the help of a quadrant, and
+finding it to exceed theirs in the proportion of twelve to one, they
+concluded from the similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain
+at least 1724 of theirs, and consequently would require as much food as
+was necessary to support that number of Lilliputians. By which the
+reader may conceive an idea of the ingenuity of that people, as well as
+the prudent and exact economy of so great a prince.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Mildendo, the metropolis of Lilliput, described, together with the
+emperor’s palace. A conversation between the author and a principal
+secretary, concerning the affairs of that empire. The author’s offers
+to serve the emperor in his wars.
+
+
+The first request I made, after I had obtained my liberty, was, that I
+might have license to see Mildendo, the metropolis; which the emperor
+easily granted me, but with a special charge to do no hurt either to
+the inhabitants or their houses. The people had notice, by
+proclamation, of my design to visit the town. The wall which
+encompassed it is two feet and a half high, and at least eleven inches
+broad, so that a coach and horses may be driven very safely round it;
+and it is flanked with strong towers at ten feet distance. I stepped
+over the great western gate, and passed very gently, and sidling,
+through the two principal streets, only in my short waistcoat, for fear
+of damaging the roofs and eaves of the houses with the skirts of my
+coat. I walked with the utmost circumspection, to avoid treading on any
+stragglers who might remain in the streets, although the orders were
+very strict, that all people should keep in their houses, at their own
+peril. The garret windows and tops of houses were so crowded with
+spectators, that I thought in all my travels I had not seen a more
+populous place. The city is an exact square, each side of the wall
+being five hundred feet long. The two great streets, which run across
+and divide it into four quarters, are five feet wide. The lanes and
+alleys, which I could not enter, but only view them as I passed, are
+from twelve to eighteen inches. The town is capable of holding five
+hundred thousand souls: the houses are from three to five stories: the
+shops and markets well provided.
+
+The emperor’s palace is in the centre of the city where the two great
+streets meet. It is enclosed by a wall of two feet high, and twenty
+feet distance from the buildings. I had his majesty’s permission to
+step over this wall; and, the space being so wide between that and the
+palace, I could easily view it on every side. The outward court is a
+square of forty feet, and includes two other courts: in the inmost are
+the royal apartments, which I was very desirous to see, but found it
+extremely difficult; for the great gates, from one square into another,
+were but eighteen inches high, and seven inches wide. Now the buildings
+of the outer court were at least five feet high, and it was impossible
+for me to stride over them without infinite damage to the pile, though
+the walls were strongly built of hewn stone, and four inches thick. At
+the same time the emperor had a great desire that I should see the
+magnificence of his palace; but this I was not able to do till three
+days after, which I spent in cutting down with my knife some of the
+largest trees in the royal park, about a hundred yards distant from the
+city. Of these trees I made two stools, each about three feet high, and
+strong enough to bear my weight. The people having received notice a
+second time, I went again through the city to the palace with my two
+stools in my hands. When I came to the side of the outer court, I stood
+upon one stool, and took the other in my hand; this I lifted over the
+roof, and gently set it down on the space between the first and second
+court, which was eight feet wide. I then stept over the building very
+conveniently from one stool to the other, and drew up the first after
+me with a hooked stick. By this contrivance I got into the inmost
+court; and, lying down upon my side, I applied my face to the windows
+of the middle stories, which were left open on purpose, and discovered
+the most splendid apartments that can be imagined. There I saw the
+empress and the young princes, in their several lodgings, with their
+chief attendants about them. Her imperial majesty was pleased to smile
+very graciously upon me, and gave me out of the window her hand to
+kiss.
+
+But I shall not anticipate the reader with further descriptions of this
+kind, because I reserve them for a greater work, which is now almost
+ready for the press; containing a general description of this empire,
+from its first erection, through a long series of princes; with a
+particular account of their wars and politics, laws, learning, and
+religion; their plants and animals; their peculiar manners and customs,
+with other matters very curious and useful; my chief design at present
+being only to relate such events and transactions as happened to the
+public or to myself during a residence of about nine months in that
+empire.
+
+One morning, about a fortnight after I had obtained my liberty,
+Reldresal, principal secretary (as they style him) for private affairs,
+came to my house attended only by one servant. He ordered his coach to
+wait at a distance, and desired I would give him an hour’s audience;
+which I readily consented to, on account of his quality and personal
+merits, as well as of the many good offices he had done me during my
+solicitations at court. I offered to lie down that he might the more
+conveniently reach my ear, but he chose rather to let me hold him in my
+hand during our conversation. He began with compliments on my liberty;
+said “he might pretend to some merit in it;” but, however, added, “that
+if it had not been for the present situation of things at court,
+perhaps I might not have obtained it so soon. For,” said he, “as
+flourishing a condition as we may appear to be in to foreigners, we
+labour under two mighty evils: a violent faction at home, and the
+danger of an invasion, by a most potent enemy, from abroad. As to the
+first, you are to understand, that for about seventy moons past there
+have been two struggling parties in this empire, under the names of
+_Tramecksan_ and _Slamecksan_, from the high and low heels of their
+shoes, by which they distinguish themselves. It is alleged, indeed,
+that the high heels are most agreeable to our ancient constitution;
+but, however this be, his majesty has determined to make use only of
+low heels in the administration of the government, and all offices in
+the gift of the crown, as you cannot but observe; and particularly that
+his majesty’s imperial heels are lower at least by a _drurr_ than any
+of his court (_drurr_ is a measure about the fourteenth part of an
+inch). The animosities between these two parties run so high, that they
+will neither eat, nor drink, nor talk with each other. We compute the
+_Tramecksan_, or high heels, to exceed us in number; but the power is
+wholly on our side. We apprehend his imperial highness, the heir to the
+crown, to have some tendency towards the high heels; at least we can
+plainly discover that one of his heels is higher than the other, which
+gives him a hobble in his gait. Now, in the midst of these intestine
+disquiets, we are threatened with an invasion from the island of
+Blefuscu, which is the other great empire of the universe, almost as
+large and powerful as this of his majesty. For as to what we have heard
+you affirm, that there are other kingdoms and states in the world
+inhabited by human creatures as large as yourself, our philosophers are
+in much doubt, and would rather conjecture that you dropped from the
+moon, or one of the stars; because it is certain, that a hundred
+mortals of your bulk would in a short time destroy all the fruits and
+cattle of his majesty’s dominions: besides, our histories of six
+thousand moons make no mention of any other regions than the two great
+empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu. Which two mighty powers have, as I
+was going to tell you, been engaged in a most obstinate war for
+six-and-thirty moons past. It began upon the following occasion. It is
+allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs, before
+we eat them, was upon the larger end; but his present majesty’s
+grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it
+according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers.
+Whereupon the emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his
+subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs.
+The people so highly resented this law, that our histories tell us,
+there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one
+emperor lost his life, and another his crown. These civil commotions
+were constantly fomented by the monarchs of Blefuscu; and when they
+were quelled, the exiles always fled for refuge to that empire. It is
+computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered
+death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end. Many
+hundred large volumes have been published upon this controversy: but
+the books of the Big-endians have been long forbidden, and the whole
+party rendered incapable by law of holding employments. During the
+course of these troubles, the emperors of Blefuscu did frequently
+expostulate by their ambassadors, accusing us of making a schism in
+religion, by offending against a fundamental doctrine of our great
+prophet Lustrog, in the fifty-fourth chapter of the Blundecral (which
+is their Alcoran). This, however, is thought to be a mere strain upon
+the text; for the words are these: ‘that all true believers break their
+eggs at the convenient end.’ And which is the convenient end, seems, in
+my humble opinion to be left to every man’s conscience, or at least in
+the power of the chief magistrate to determine. Now, the Big-endian
+exiles have found so much credit in the emperor of Blefuscu’s court,
+and so much private assistance and encouragement from their party here
+at home, that a bloody war has been carried on between the two empires
+for six-and-thirty moons, with various success; during which time we
+have lost forty capital ships, and a much greater number of smaller
+vessels, together with thirty thousand of our best seamen and soldiers;
+and the damage received by the enemy is reckoned to be somewhat greater
+than ours. However, they have now equipped a numerous fleet, and are
+just preparing to make a descent upon us; and his imperial majesty,
+placing great confidence in your valour and strength, has commanded me
+to lay this account of his affairs before you.”
+
+I desired the secretary to present my humble duty to the emperor; and
+to let him know, “that I thought it would not become me, who was a
+foreigner, to interfere with parties; but I was ready, with the hazard
+of my life, to defend his person and state against all invaders.”
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The author, by an extraordinary stratagem, prevents an invasion. A high
+title of honour is conferred upon him. Ambassadors arrive from the
+emperor of Blefuscu, and sue for peace. The empress’s apartment on fire
+by an accident; the author instrumental in saving the rest of the
+palace.
+
+
+The empire of Blefuscu is an island situated to the north-east of
+Lilliput, from which it is parted only by a channel of eight hundred
+yards wide. I had not yet seen it, and upon this notice of an intended
+invasion, I avoided appearing on that side of the coast, for fear of
+being discovered, by some of the enemy’s ships, who had received no
+intelligence of me; all intercourse between the two empires having been
+strictly forbidden during the war, upon pain of death, and an embargo
+laid by our emperor upon all vessels whatsoever. I communicated to his
+majesty a project I had formed of seizing the enemy’s whole fleet;
+which, as our scouts assured us, lay at anchor in the harbour, ready to
+sail with the first fair wind. I consulted the most experienced seamen
+upon the depth of the channel, which they had often plumbed; who told
+me, that in the middle, at high-water, it was seventy _glumgluffs_
+deep, which is about six feet of European measure; and the rest of it
+fifty _glumgluffs_ at most. I walked towards the north-east coast, over
+against Blefuscu, where, lying down behind a hillock, I took out my
+small perspective glass, and viewed the enemy’s fleet at anchor,
+consisting of about fifty men of war, and a great number of transports:
+I then came back to my house, and gave orders (for which I had a
+warrant) for a great quantity of the strongest cable and bars of iron.
+The cable was about as thick as packthread and the bars of the length
+and size of a knitting-needle. I trebled the cable to make it stronger,
+and for the same reason I twisted three of the iron bars together,
+bending the extremities into a hook. Having thus fixed fifty hooks to
+as many cables, I went back to the north-east coast, and putting off my
+coat, shoes, and stockings, walked into the sea, in my leathern jerkin,
+about half an hour before high water. I waded with what haste I could,
+and swam in the middle about thirty yards, till I felt ground. I
+arrived at the fleet in less than half an hour. The enemy was so
+frightened when they saw me, that they leaped out of their ships, and
+swam to shore, where there could not be fewer than thirty thousand
+souls. I then took my tackling, and, fastening a hook to the hole at
+the prow of each, I tied all the cords together at the end. While I was
+thus employed, the enemy discharged several thousand arrows, many of
+which stuck in my hands and face, and, beside the excessive smart, gave
+me much disturbance in my work. My greatest apprehension was for my
+eyes, which I should have infallibly lost, if I had not suddenly
+thought of an expedient. I kept, among other little necessaries, a pair
+of spectacles in a private pocket, which, as I observed before, had
+escaped the emperor’s searchers. These I took out and fastened as
+strongly as I could upon my nose, and thus armed, went on boldly with
+my work, in spite of the enemy’s arrows, many of which struck against
+the glasses of my spectacles, but without any other effect, further
+than a little to discompose them. I had now fastened all the hooks,
+and, taking the knot in my hand, began to pull; but not a ship would
+stir, for they were all too fast held by their anchors, so that the
+boldest part of my enterprise remained. I therefore let go the cord,
+and leaving the hooks fixed to the ships, I resolutely cut with my
+knife the cables that fastened the anchors, receiving about two hundred
+shots in my face and hands; then I took up the knotted end of the
+cables, to which my hooks were tied, and with great ease drew fifty of
+the enemy’s largest men of war after me.
+
+The Blefuscudians, who had not the least imagination of what I
+intended, were at first confounded with astonishment. They had seen me
+cut the cables, and thought my design was only to let the ships run
+adrift or fall foul on each other: but when they perceived the whole
+fleet moving in order, and saw me pulling at the end, they set up such
+a scream of grief and despair as it is almost impossible to describe or
+conceive. When I had got out of danger, I stopped awhile to pick out
+the arrows that stuck in my hands and face; and rubbed on some of the
+same ointment that was given me at my first arrival, as I have formerly
+mentioned. I then took off my spectacles, and waiting about an hour,
+till the tide was a little fallen, I waded through the middle with my
+cargo, and arrived safe at the royal port of Lilliput.
+
+The emperor and his whole court stood on the shore, expecting the issue
+of this great adventure. They saw the ships move forward in a large
+half-moon, but could not discern me, who was up to my breast in water.
+When I advanced to the middle of the channel, they were yet more in
+pain, because I was under water to my neck. The emperor concluded me to
+be drowned, and that the enemy’s fleet was approaching in a hostile
+manner: but he was soon eased of his fears; for the channel growing
+shallower every step I made, I came in a short time within hearing, and
+holding up the end of the cable, by which the fleet was fastened, I
+cried in a loud voice, “Long live the most puissant king of Lilliput!”
+This great prince received me at my landing with all possible
+encomiums, and created me a _nardac_ upon the spot, which is the
+highest title of honour among them.
+
+His majesty desired I would take some other opportunity of bringing all
+the rest of his enemy’s ships into his ports. And so unmeasureable is
+the ambition of princes, that he seemed to think of nothing less than
+reducing the whole empire of Blefuscu into a province, and governing
+it, by a viceroy; of destroying the Big-endian exiles, and compelling
+that people to break the smaller end of their eggs, by which he would
+remain the sole monarch of the whole world. But I endeavoured to divert
+him from this design, by many arguments drawn from the topics of policy
+as well as justice; and I plainly protested, “that I would never be an
+instrument of bringing a free and brave people into slavery.” And, when
+the matter was debated in council, the wisest part of the ministry were
+of my opinion.
+
+This open bold declaration of mine was so opposite to the schemes and
+politics of his imperial majesty, that he could never forgive me. He
+mentioned it in a very artful manner at council, where I was told that
+some of the wisest appeared, at least by their silence, to be of my
+opinion; but others, who were my secret enemies, could not forbear some
+expressions which, by a side-wind, reflected on me. And from this time
+began an intrigue between his majesty and a junto of ministers,
+maliciously bent against me, which broke out in less than two months,
+and had like to have ended in my utter destruction. Of so little weight
+are the greatest services to princes, when put into the balance with a
+refusal to gratify their passions.
+
+About three weeks after this exploit, there arrived a solemn embassy
+from Blefuscu, with humble offers of a peace, which was soon concluded,
+upon conditions very advantageous to our emperor, wherewith I shall not
+trouble the reader. There were six ambassadors, with a train of about
+five hundred persons, and their entry was very magnificent, suitable to
+the grandeur of their master, and the importance of their business.
+When their treaty was finished, wherein I did them several good offices
+by the credit I now had, or at least appeared to have, at court, their
+excellencies, who were privately told how much I had been their friend,
+made me a visit in form. They began with many compliments upon my
+valour and generosity, invited me to that kingdom in the emperor their
+master’s name, and desired me to show them some proofs of my prodigious
+strength, of which they had heard so many wonders; wherein I readily
+obliged them, but shall not trouble the reader with the particulars.
+
+When I had for some time entertained their excellencies, to their
+infinite satisfaction and surprise, I desired they would do me the
+honour to present my most humble respects to the emperor their master,
+the renown of whose virtues had so justly filled the whole world with
+admiration, and whose royal person I resolved to attend, before I
+returned to my own country. Accordingly, the next time I had the honour
+to see our emperor, I desired his general license to wait on the
+Blefuscudian monarch, which he was pleased to grant me, as I could
+perceive, in a very cold manner; but could not guess the reason, till I
+had a whisper from a certain person, “that Flimnap and Bolgolam had
+represented my intercourse with those ambassadors as a mark of
+disaffection;” from which I am sure my heart was wholly free. And this
+was the first time I began to conceive some imperfect idea of courts
+and ministers.
+
+It is to be observed, that these ambassadors spoke to me, by an
+interpreter, the languages of both empires differing as much from each
+other as any two in Europe, and each nation priding itself upon the
+antiquity, beauty, and energy of their own tongue, with an avowed
+contempt for that of their neighbour; yet our emperor, standing upon
+the advantage he had got by the seizure of their fleet, obliged them to
+deliver their credentials, and make their speech, in the Lilliputian
+tongue. And it must be confessed, that from the great intercourse of
+trade and commerce between both realms, from the continual reception of
+exiles which is mutual among them, and from the custom, in each empire,
+to send their young nobility and richer gentry to the other, in order
+to polish themselves by seeing the world, and understanding men and
+manners; there are few persons of distinction, or merchants, or seamen,
+who dwell in the maritime parts, but what can hold conversation in both
+tongues; as I found some weeks after, when I went to pay my respects to
+the emperor of Blefuscu, which, in the midst of great misfortunes,
+through the malice of my enemies, proved a very happy adventure to me,
+as I shall relate in its proper place.
+
+The reader may remember, that when I signed those articles upon which I
+recovered my liberty, there were some which I disliked, upon account of
+their being too servile; neither could anything but an extreme
+necessity have forced me to submit. But being now a _nardac_ of the
+highest rank in that empire, such offices were looked upon as below my
+dignity, and the emperor (to do him justice), never once mentioned them
+to me. However, it was not long before I had an opportunity of doing
+his majesty, at least as I then thought, a most signal service. I was
+alarmed at midnight with the cries of many hundred people at my door;
+by which, being suddenly awaked, I was in some kind of terror. I heard
+the word _Burglum_ repeated incessantly: several of the emperor’s
+court, making their way through the crowd, entreated me to come
+immediately to the palace, where her imperial majesty’s apartment was
+on fire, by the carelessness of a maid of honour, who fell asleep while
+she was reading a romance. I got up in an instant; and orders being
+given to clear the way before me, and it being likewise a moonshine
+night, I made a shift to get to the palace without trampling on any of
+the people. I found they had already applied ladders to the walls of
+the apartment, and were well provided with buckets, but the water was
+at some distance. These buckets were about the size of large thimbles,
+and the poor people supplied me with them as fast as they could: but
+the flame was so violent that they did little good. I might easily have
+stifled it with my coat, which I unfortunately left behind me for
+haste, and came away only in my leathern jerkin. The case seemed wholly
+desperate and deplorable; and this magnificent palace would have
+infallibly been burnt down to the ground, if, by a presence of mind
+unusual to me, I had not suddenly thought of an expedient. I had, the
+evening before, drunk plentifully of a most delicious wine called
+_glimigrim_, (the Blefuscudians call it _flunec_, but ours is esteemed
+the better sort,) which is very diuretic. By the luckiest chance in the
+world, I had not discharged myself of any part of it. The heat I had
+contracted by coming very near the flames, and by labouring to quench
+them, made the wine begin to operate by urine; which I voided in such a
+quantity, and applied so well to the proper places, that in three
+minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of that noble
+pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, preserved from
+destruction.
+
+It was now day-light, and I returned to my house without waiting to
+congratulate with the emperor: because, although I had done a very
+eminent piece of service, yet I could not tell how his majesty might
+resent the manner by which I had performed it: for, by the fundamental
+laws of the realm, it is capital in any person, of what quality soever,
+to make water within the precincts of the palace. But I was a little
+comforted by a message from his majesty, “that he would give orders to
+the grand justiciary for passing my pardon in form:” which, however, I
+could not obtain; and I was privately assured, “that the empress,
+conceiving the greatest abhorrence of what I had done, removed to the
+most distant side of the court, firmly resolved that those buildings
+should never be repaired for her use: and, in the presence of her chief
+confidents could not forbear vowing revenge.”
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Of the inhabitants of Lilliput; their learning, laws, and customs; the
+manner of educating their children. The author’s way of living in that
+country. His vindication of a great lady.
+
+
+Although I intend to leave the description of this empire to a
+particular treatise, yet, in the mean time, I am content to gratify the
+curious reader with some general ideas. As the common size of the
+natives is somewhat under six inches high, so there is an exact
+proportion in all other animals, as well as plants and trees: for
+instance, the tallest horses and oxen are between four and five inches
+in height, the sheep an inch and half, more or less: their geese about
+the bigness of a sparrow, and so the several gradations downwards till
+you come to the smallest, which to my sight, were almost invisible; but
+nature has adapted the eyes of the Lilliputians to all objects proper
+for their view: they see with great exactness, but at no great
+distance. And, to show the sharpness of their sight towards objects
+that are near, I have been much pleased with observing a cook pulling a
+lark, which was not so large as a common fly; and a young girl
+threading an invisible needle with invisible silk. Their tallest trees
+are about seven feet high: I mean some of those in the great royal
+park, the tops whereof I could but just reach with my fist clenched.
+The other vegetables are in the same proportion; but this I leave to
+the reader’s imagination.
+
+I shall say but little at present of their learning, which, for many
+ages, has flourished in all its branches among them: but their manner
+of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right,
+like the Europeans, nor from the right to the left, like the Arabians,
+nor from up to down, like the Chinese, but aslant, from one corner of
+the paper to the other, like ladies in England.
+
+They bury their dead with their heads directly downward, because they
+hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise
+again; in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will
+turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection,
+be found ready standing on their feet. The learned among them confess
+the absurdity of this doctrine; but the practice still continues, in
+compliance to the vulgar.
+
+There are some laws and customs in this empire very peculiar; and if
+they were not so directly contrary to those of my own dear country, I
+should be tempted to say a little in their justification. It is only to
+be wished they were as well executed. The first I shall mention,
+relates to informers. All crimes against the state, are punished here
+with the utmost severity; but, if the person accused makes his
+innocence plainly to appear upon his trial, the accuser is immediately
+put to an ignominious death; and out of his goods or lands the innocent
+person is quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time, for the
+danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all
+the charges he has been at in making his defence; or, if that fund be
+deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown. The emperor also
+confers on him some public mark of his favour, and proclamation is made
+of his innocence through the whole city.
+
+They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore
+seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and
+vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man’s goods
+from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and,
+since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of
+buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted
+and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is
+always undone, and the knave gets the advantage. I remember, when I was
+once interceding with the emperor for a criminal who had wronged his
+master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order and ran
+away with; and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation,
+that it was only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in
+me to offer as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and
+truly I had little to say in return, farther than the common answer,
+that different nations had different customs; for, I confess, I was
+heartily ashamed. [330]
+
+Although we usually call reward and punishment the two hinges upon
+which all government turns, yet I could never observe this maxim to be
+put in practice by any nation except that of Lilliput. Whoever can
+there bring sufficient proof, that he has strictly observed the laws of
+his country for seventy-three moons, has a claim to certain privileges,
+according to his quality or condition of life, with a proportionable
+sum of money out of a fund appropriated for that use: he likewise
+acquires the title of _snilpall_, or legal, which is added to his name,
+but does not descend to his posterity. And these people thought it a
+prodigious defect of policy among us, when I told them that our laws
+were enforced only by penalties, without any mention of reward. It is
+upon this account that the image of Justice, in their courts of
+judicature, is formed with six eyes, two before, as many behind, and on
+each side one, to signify circumspection; with a bag of gold open in
+her right hand, and a sword sheathed in her left, to show she is more
+disposed to reward than to punish.
+
+In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good
+morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to
+mankind, they believe, that the common size of human understanding is
+fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to
+make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only
+by a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three
+born in an age: but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the
+like, to be in every man’s power; the practice of which virtues,
+assisted by experience and a good intention, would qualify any man for
+the service of his country, except where a course of study is required.
+But they thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being
+supplied by superior endowments of the mind, that employments could
+never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so
+qualified; and, at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in
+a virtuous disposition, would never be of such fatal consequence to the
+public weal, as the practices of a man, whose inclinations led him to
+be corrupt, and who had great abilities to manage, to multiply, and
+defend his corruptions.
+
+In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man
+incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow
+themselves to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think
+nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as
+disown the authority under which he acts.
+
+In relating these and the following laws, I would only be understood to
+mean the original institutions, and not the most scandalous
+corruptions, into which these people are fallen by the degenerate
+nature of man. For, as to that infamous practice of acquiring great
+employments by dancing on the ropes, or badges of favour and
+distinction by leaping over sticks and creeping under them, the reader
+is to observe, that they were first introduced by the grandfather of
+the emperor now reigning, and grew to the present height by the gradual
+increase of party and faction.
+
+Ingratitude is among them a capital crime, as we read it to have been
+in some other countries: for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill
+returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of
+mankind, from whom he has received no obligation, and therefore such a
+man is not fit to live.
+
+Their notions relating to the duties of parents and children differ
+extremely from ours. For, since the conjunction of male and female is
+founded upon the great law of nature, in order to propagate and
+continue the species, the Lilliputians will needs have it, that men and
+women are joined together, like other animals, by the motives of
+concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds
+from the like natural principle: for which reason they will never allow
+that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him,
+or to his mother for bringing him into the world; which, considering
+the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor
+intended so by his parents, whose thoughts, in their love encounters,
+were otherwise employed. Upon these, and the like reasonings, their
+opinion is, that parents are the last of all others to be trusted with
+the education of their own children; and therefore they have in every
+town public nurseries, where all parents, except cottagers and
+labourers, are obliged to send their infants of both sexes to be reared
+and educated, when they come to the age of twenty moons, at which time
+they are supposed to have some rudiments of docility. These schools are
+of several kinds, suited to different qualities, and both sexes. They
+have certain professors well skilled in preparing children for such a
+condition of life as befits the rank of their parents, and their own
+capacities, as well as inclinations. I shall first say something of the
+male nurseries, and then of the female.
+
+The nurseries for males of noble or eminent birth, are provided with
+grave and learned professors, and their several deputies. The clothes
+and food of the children are plain and simple. They are bred up in the
+principles of honour, justice, courage, modesty, clemency, religion,
+and love of their country; they are always employed in some business,
+except in the times of eating and sleeping, which are very short, and
+two hours for diversions consisting of bodily exercises. They are
+dressed by men till four years of age, and then are obliged to dress
+themselves, although their quality be ever so great; and the women
+attendant, who are aged proportionably to ours at fifty, perform only
+the most menial offices. They are never suffered to converse with
+servants, but go together in smaller or greater numbers to take their
+diversions, and always in the presence of a professor, or one of his
+deputies; whereby they avoid those early bad impressions of folly and
+vice, to which our children are subject. Their parents are suffered to
+see them only twice a year; the visit is to last but an hour; they are
+allowed to kiss the child at meeting and parting; but a professor, who
+always stands by on those occasions, will not suffer them to whisper,
+or use any fondling expressions, or bring any presents of toys,
+sweetmeats, and the like.
+
+The pension from each family for the education and entertainment of a
+child, upon failure of due payment, is levied by the emperor’s
+officers.
+
+The nurseries for children of ordinary gentlemen, merchants, traders,
+and handicrafts, are managed proportionably after the same manner; only
+those designed for trades are put out apprentices at eleven years old,
+whereas those of persons of quality continue in their exercises till
+fifteen, which answers to twenty-one with us: but the confinement is
+gradually lessened for the last three years.
+
+In the female nurseries, the young girls of quality are educated much
+like the males, only they are dressed by orderly servants of their own
+sex; but always in the presence of a professor or deputy, till they
+come to dress themselves, which is at five years old. And if it be
+found that these nurses ever presume to entertain the girls with
+frightful or foolish stories, or the common follies practised by
+chambermaids among us, they are publicly whipped thrice about the city,
+imprisoned for a year, and banished for life to the most desolate part
+of the country. Thus the young ladies are as much ashamed of being
+cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ornaments,
+beyond decency and cleanliness: neither did I perceive any difference
+in their education made by their difference of sex, only that the
+exercises of the females were not altogether so robust; and that some
+rules were given them relating to domestic life, and a smaller compass
+of learning was enjoined them: for their maxim is, that among peoples
+of quality, a wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable
+companion, because she cannot always be young. When the girls are
+twelve years old, which among them is the marriageable age, their
+parents or guardians take them home, with great expressions of
+gratitude to the professors, and seldom without tears of the young lady
+and her companions.
+
+In the nurseries of females of the meaner sort, the children are
+instructed in all kinds of works proper for their sex, and their
+several degrees: those intended for apprentices are dismissed at seven
+years old, the rest are kept to eleven.
+
+The meaner families who have children at these nurseries, are obliged,
+besides their annual pension, which is as low as possible, to return to
+the steward of the nursery a small monthly share of their gettings, to
+be a portion for the child; and therefore all parents are limited in
+their expenses by the law. For the Lilliputians think nothing can be
+more unjust, than for people, in subservience to their own appetites,
+to bring children into the world, and leave the burthen of supporting
+them on the public. As to persons of quality, they give security to
+appropriate a certain sum for each child, suitable to their condition;
+and these funds are always managed with good husbandry and the most
+exact justice.
+
+The cottagers and labourers keep their children at home, their business
+being only to till and cultivate the earth, and therefore their
+education is of little consequence to the public: but the old and
+diseased among them are supported by hospitals; for begging is a trade
+unknown in this empire.
+
+And here it may, perhaps, divert the curious reader, to give some
+account of my domestics, and my manner of living in this country,
+during a residence of nine months, and thirteen days. Having a head
+mechanically turned, and being likewise forced by necessity, I had made
+for myself a table and chair convenient enough, out of the largest
+trees in the royal park. Two hundred sempstresses were employed to make
+me shirts, and linen for my bed and table, all of the strongest and
+coarsest kind they could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt
+together in several folds, for the thickest was some degrees finer than
+lawn. Their linen is usually three inches wide, and three feet make a
+piece. The sempstresses took my measure as I lay on the ground, one
+standing at my neck, and another at my mid-leg, with a strong cord
+extended, that each held by the end, while a third measured the length
+of the cord with a rule of an inch long. Then they measured my right
+thumb, and desired no more; for by a mathematical computation, that
+twice round the thumb is once round the wrist, and so on to the neck
+and the waist, and by the help of my old shirt, which I displayed on
+the ground before them for a pattern, they fitted me exactly. Three
+hundred tailors were employed in the same manner to make me clothes;
+but they had another contrivance for taking my measure. I kneeled down,
+and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck; upon this ladder
+one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line from my collar to the
+floor, which just answered the length of my coat: but my waist and arms
+I measured myself. When my clothes were finished, which was done in my
+house (for the largest of theirs would not have been able to hold
+them), they looked like the patch-work made by the ladies in England,
+only that mine were all of a colour.
+
+I had three hundred cooks to dress my victuals, in little convenient
+huts built about my house, where they and their families lived, and
+prepared me two dishes a-piece. I took up twenty waiters in my hand,
+and placed them on the table: a hundred more attended below on the
+ground, some with dishes of meat, and some with barrels of wine and
+other liquors slung on their shoulders; all which the waiters above
+drew up, as I wanted, in a very ingenious manner, by certain cords, as
+we draw the bucket up a well in Europe. A dish of their meat was a good
+mouthful, and a barrel of their liquor a reasonable draught. Their
+mutton yields to ours, but their beef is excellent. I have had a
+sirloin so large, that I have been forced to make three bites of it;
+but this is rare. My servants were astonished to see me eat it, bones
+and all, as in our country we do the leg of a lark. Their geese and
+turkeys I usually ate at a mouthful, and I confess they far exceed
+ours. Of their smaller fowl I could take up twenty or thirty at the end
+of my knife.
+
+One day his imperial majesty, being informed of my way of living,
+desired “that himself and his royal consort, with the young princes of
+the blood of both sexes, might have the happiness,” as he was pleased
+to call it, “of dining with me.” They came accordingly, and I placed
+them in chairs of state, upon my table, just over against me, with
+their guards about them. Flimnap, the lord high treasurer, attended
+there likewise with his white staff; and I observed he often looked on
+me with a sour countenance, which I would not seem to regard, but ate
+more than usual, in honour to my dear country, as well as to fill the
+court with admiration. I have some private reasons to believe, that
+this visit from his majesty gave Flimnap an opportunity of doing me ill
+offices to his master. That minister had always been my secret enemy,
+though he outwardly caressed me more than was usual to the moroseness
+of his nature. He represented to the emperor “the low condition of his
+treasury; that he was forced to take up money at a great discount; that
+exchequer bills would not circulate under nine per cent. below par;
+that I had cost his majesty above a million and a half of _sprugs_”
+(their greatest gold coin, about the bigness of a spangle) “and, upon
+the whole, that it would be advisable in the emperor to take the first
+fair occasion of dismissing me.”
+
+I am here obliged to vindicate the reputation of an excellent lady, who
+was an innocent sufferer upon my account. The treasurer took a fancy to
+be jealous of his wife, from the malice of some evil tongues, who
+informed him that her grace had taken a violent affection for my
+person; and the court scandal ran for some time, that she once came
+privately to my lodging. This I solemnly declare to be a most infamous
+falsehood, without any grounds, further than that her grace was pleased
+to treat me with all innocent marks of freedom and friendship. I own
+she came often to my house, but always publicly, nor ever without three
+more in the coach, who were usually her sister and young daughter, and
+some particular acquaintance; but this was common to many other ladies
+of the court. And I still appeal to my servants round, whether they at
+any time saw a coach at my door, without knowing what persons were in
+it. On those occasions, when a servant had given me notice, my custom
+was to go immediately to the door, and, after paying my respects, to
+take up the coach and two horses very carefully in my hands (for, if
+there were six horses, the postillion always unharnessed four,) and
+place them on a table, where I had fixed a movable rim quite round, of
+five inches high, to prevent accidents. And I have often had four
+coaches and horses at once on my table, full of company, while I sat in
+my chair, leaning my face towards them; and when I was engaged with one
+set, the coachmen would gently drive the others round my table. I have
+passed many an afternoon very agreeably in these conversations. But I
+defy the treasurer, or his two informers (I will name them, and let
+them make the best of it) Clustril and Drunlo, to prove that any person
+ever came to me _incognito_, except the secretary Reldresal, who was
+sent by express command of his imperial majesty, as I have before
+related. I should not have dwelt so long upon this particular, if it
+had not been a point wherein the reputation of a great lady is so
+nearly concerned, to say nothing of my own; though I then had the
+honour to be a _nardac_, which the treasurer himself is not; for all
+the world knows, that he is only a _glumglum_, a title inferior by one
+degree, as that of a marquis is to a duke in England; yet I allow he
+preceded me in right of his post. These false informations, which I
+afterwards came to the knowledge of by an accident not proper to
+mention, made the treasurer show his lady for some time an ill
+countenance, and me a worse; and although he was at last undeceived and
+reconciled to her, yet I lost all credit with him, and found my
+interest decline very fast with the emperor himself, who was, indeed,
+too much governed by that favourite.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The author, being informed of a design to accuse him of high-treason,
+makes his escape to Blefuscu. His reception there.
+
+
+Before I proceed to give an account of my leaving this kingdom, it may
+be proper to inform the reader of a private intrigue which had been for
+two months forming against me.
+
+I had been hitherto, all my life, a stranger to courts, for which I was
+unqualified by the meanness of my condition. I had indeed heard and
+read enough of the dispositions of great princes and ministers, but
+never expected to have found such terrible effects of them, in so
+remote a country, governed, as I thought, by very different maxims from
+those in Europe.
+
+When I was just preparing to pay my attendance on the emperor of
+Blefuscu, a considerable person at court (to whom I had been very
+serviceable, at a time when he lay under the highest displeasure of his
+imperial majesty) came to my house very privately at night, in a close
+chair, and, without sending his name, desired admittance. The chairmen
+were dismissed; I put the chair, with his lordship in it, into my
+coat-pocket: and, giving orders to a trusty servant, to say I was
+indisposed and gone to sleep, I fastened the door of my house, placed
+the chair on the table, according to my usual custom, and sat down by
+it. After the common salutations were over, observing his lordship’s
+countenance full of concern, and inquiring into the reason, he desired
+“I would hear him with patience, in a matter that highly concerned my
+honour and my life.” His speech was to the following effect, for I took
+notes of it as soon as he left me:—
+
+“You are to know,” said he, “that several committees of council have
+been lately called, in the most private manner, on your account; and it
+is but two days since his majesty came to a full resolution.
+
+“You are very sensible that Skyresh Bolgolam” (_galbet_, or
+high-admiral) “has been your mortal enemy, almost ever since your
+arrival. His original reasons I know not; but his hatred is increased
+since your great success against Blefuscu, by which his glory as
+admiral is much obscured. This lord, in conjunction with Flimnap the
+high-treasurer, whose enmity against you is notorious on account of his
+lady, Limtoc the general, Lalcon the chamberlain, and Balmuff the grand
+justiciary, have prepared articles of impeachment against you, for
+treason and other capital crimes.”
+
+This preface made me so impatient, being conscious of my own merits and
+innocence, that I was going to interrupt him; when he entreated me to
+be silent, and thus proceeded:—
+
+“Out of gratitude for the favours you have done me, I procured
+information of the whole proceedings, and a copy of the articles;
+wherein I venture my head for your service.
+
+
+“‘_Articles of Impeachment against_ QUINBUS FLESTRIN, (_the
+Man-Mountain_.)
+
+Article I.
+
+
+“‘Whereas, by a statute made in the reign of his imperial majesty Calin
+Deffar Plune, it is enacted, that, whoever shall make water within the
+precincts of the royal palace, shall be liable to the pains and
+penalties of high-treason; notwithstanding, the said Quinbus Flestrin,
+in open breach of the said law, under colour of extinguishing the fire
+kindled in the apartment of his majesty’s most dear imperial consort,
+did maliciously, traitorously, and devilishly, by discharge of his
+urine, put out the said fire kindled in the said apartment, lying and
+being within the precincts of the said royal palace, against the
+statute in that case provided, etc. against the duty, etc.
+
+Article II.
+
+
+“‘That the said Quinbus Flestrin, having brought the imperial fleet of
+Blefuscu into the royal port, and being afterwards commanded by his
+imperial majesty to seize all the other ships of the said empire of
+Blefuscu, and reduce that empire to a province, to be governed by a
+viceroy from hence, and to destroy and put to death, not only all the
+Big-endian exiles, but likewise all the people of that empire who would
+not immediately forsake the Big-endian heresy, he, the said Flestrin,
+like a false traitor against his most auspicious, serene, imperial
+majesty, did petition to be excused from the said service, upon
+pretence of unwillingness to force the consciences, or destroy the
+liberties and lives of an innocent people.
+
+Article III.
+
+
+“‘That, whereas certain ambassadors arrived from the Court of Blefuscu,
+to sue for peace in his majesty’s court, he, the said Flestrin, did,
+like a false traitor, aid, abet, comfort, and divert, the said
+ambassadors, although he knew them to be servants to a prince who was
+lately an open enemy to his imperial majesty, and in an open war
+against his said majesty.
+
+Article IV.
+
+
+“‘That the said Quinbus Flestrin, contrary to the duty of a faithful
+subject, is now preparing to make a voyage to the court and empire of
+Blefuscu, for which he has received only verbal license from his
+imperial majesty; and, under colour of the said license, does falsely
+and traitorously intend to take the said voyage, and thereby to aid,
+comfort, and abet the emperor of Blefuscu, so lately an enemy, and in
+open war with his imperial majesty aforesaid.’
+
+
+“There are some other articles; but these are the most important, of
+which I have read you an abstract.
+
+“In the several debates upon this impeachment, it must be confessed
+that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity; often urging the
+services you had done him, and endeavouring to extenuate your crimes.
+The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most
+painful and ignominious death, by setting fire to your house at night,
+and the general was to attend with twenty thousand men, armed with
+poisoned arrows, to shoot you on the face and hands. Some of your
+servants were to have private orders to strew a poisonous juice on your
+shirts and sheets, which would soon make you tear your own flesh, and
+die in the utmost torture. The general came into the same opinion; so
+that for a long time there was a majority against you; but his majesty
+resolving, if possible, to spare your life, at last brought off the
+chamberlain.
+
+“Upon this incident, Reldresal, principal secretary for private
+affairs, who always approved himself your true friend, was commanded by
+the emperor to deliver his opinion, which he accordingly did; and
+therein justified the good thoughts you have of him. He allowed your
+crimes to be great, but that still there was room for mercy, the most
+commendable virtue in a prince, and for which his majesty was so justly
+celebrated. He said, the friendship between you and him was so well
+known to the world, that perhaps the most honourable board might think
+him partial; however, in obedience to the command he had received, he
+would freely offer his sentiments. That if his majesty, in
+consideration of your services, and pursuant to his own merciful
+disposition, would please to spare your life, and only give orders to
+put out both your eyes, he humbly conceived, that by this expedient
+justice might in some measure be satisfied, and all the world would
+applaud the lenity of the emperor, as well as the fair and generous
+proceedings of those who have the honour to be his counsellors. That
+the loss of your eyes would be no impediment to your bodily strength,
+by which you might still be useful to his majesty; that blindness is an
+addition to courage, by concealing dangers from us; that the fear you
+had for your eyes, was the greatest difficulty in bringing over the
+enemy’s fleet, and it would be sufficient for you to see by the eyes of
+the ministers, since the greatest princes do no more.
+
+“This proposal was received with the utmost disapprobation by the whole
+board. Bolgolam, the admiral, could not preserve his temper, but,
+rising up in fury, said, he wondered how the secretary durst presume to
+give his opinion for preserving the life of a traitor; that the
+services you had performed were, by all true reasons of state, the
+great aggravation of your crimes; that you, who were able to extinguish
+the fire by discharge of urine in her majesty’s apartment (which he
+mentioned with horror), might, at another time, raise an inundation by
+the same means, to drown the whole palace; and the same strength which
+enabled you to bring over the enemy’s fleet, might serve, upon the
+first discontent, to carry it back; that he had good reasons to think
+you were a Big-endian in your heart; and, as treason begins in the
+heart, before it appears in overt acts, so he accused you as a traitor
+on that account, and therefore insisted you should be put to death.
+
+“The treasurer was of the same opinion: he showed to what straits his
+majesty’s revenue was reduced, by the charge of maintaining you, which
+would soon grow insupportable; that the secretary’s expedient of
+putting out your eyes, was so far from being a remedy against this
+evil, that it would probably increase it, as is manifest from the
+common practice of blinding some kind of fowls, after which they fed
+the faster, and grew sooner fat; that his sacred majesty and the
+council, who are your judges, were, in their own consciences, fully
+convinced of your guilt, which was a sufficient argument to condemn you
+to death, without the formal proofs required by the strict letter of
+the law.
+
+“But his imperial majesty, fully determined against capital punishment,
+was graciously pleased to say, that since the council thought the loss
+of your eyes too easy a censure, some other way may be inflicted
+hereafter. And your friend the secretary, humbly desiring to be heard
+again, in answer to what the treasurer had objected, concerning the
+great charge his majesty was at in maintaining you, said, that his
+excellency, who had the sole disposal of the emperor’s revenue, might
+easily provide against that evil, by gradually lessening your
+establishment; by which, for want of sufficient food, you would grow
+weak and faint, and lose your appetite, and consequently, decay, and
+consume in a few months; neither would the stench of your carcass be
+then so dangerous, when it should become more than half diminished; and
+immediately upon your death five or six thousand of his majesty’s
+subjects might, in two or three days, cut your flesh from your bones,
+take it away by cart-loads, and bury it in distant parts, to prevent
+infection, leaving the skeleton as a monument of admiration to
+posterity.
+
+“Thus, by the great friendship of the secretary, the whole affair was
+compromised. It was strictly enjoined, that the project of starving you
+by degrees should be kept a secret; but the sentence of putting out
+your eyes was entered on the books; none dissenting, except Bolgolam
+the admiral, who, being a creature of the empress, was perpetually
+instigated by her majesty to insist upon your death, she having borne
+perpetual malice against you, on account of that infamous and illegal
+method you took to extinguish the fire in her apartment.
+
+“In three days your friend the secretary will be directed to come to
+your house, and read before you the articles of impeachment; and then
+to signify the great lenity and favour of his majesty and council,
+whereby you are only condemned to the loss of your eyes, which his
+majesty does not question you will gratefully and humbly submit to; and
+twenty of his majesty’s surgeons will attend, in order to see the
+operation well performed, by discharging very sharp-pointed arrows into
+the balls of your eyes, as you lie on the ground.
+
+“I leave to your prudence what measures you will take; and to avoid
+suspicion, I must immediately return in as private a manner as I came.”
+
+His lordship did so; and I remained alone, under many doubts and
+perplexities of mind.
+
+It was a custom introduced by this prince and his ministry (very
+different, as I have been assured, from the practice of former times,)
+that after the court had decreed any cruel execution, either to gratify
+the monarch’s resentment, or the malice of a favourite, the emperor
+always made a speech to his whole council, expressing his great lenity
+and tenderness, as qualities known and confessed by all the world. This
+speech was immediately published throughout the kingdom; nor did any
+thing terrify the people so much as those encomiums on his majesty’s
+mercy; because it was observed, that the more these praises were
+enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the
+sufferer more innocent. Yet, as to myself, I must confess, having never
+been designed for a courtier, either by my birth or education, I was so
+ill a judge of things, that I could not discover the lenity and favour
+of this sentence, but conceived it (perhaps erroneously) rather to be
+rigorous than gentle. I sometimes thought of standing my trial, for,
+although I could not deny the facts alleged in the several articles,
+yet I hoped they would admit of some extenuation. But having in my life
+perused many state-trials, which I ever observed to terminate as the
+judges thought fit to direct, I durst not rely on so dangerous a
+decision, in so critical a juncture, and against such powerful enemies.
+Once I was strongly bent upon resistance, for, while I had liberty the
+whole strength of that empire could hardly subdue me, and I might
+easily with stones pelt the metropolis to pieces; but I soon rejected
+that project with horror, by remembering the oath I had made to the
+emperor, the favours I received from him, and the high title of
+_nardac_ he conferred upon me. Neither had I so soon learned the
+gratitude of courtiers, to persuade myself, that his majesty’s present
+severities acquitted me of all past obligations.
+
+At last, I fixed upon a resolution, for which it is probable I may
+incur some censure, and not unjustly; for I confess I owe the
+preserving of my eyes, and consequently my liberty, to my own great
+rashness and want of experience; because, if I had then known the
+nature of princes and ministers, which I have since observed in many
+other courts, and their methods of treating criminals less obnoxious
+than myself, I should, with great alacrity and readiness, have
+submitted to so easy a punishment. But hurried on by the precipitancy
+of youth, and having his imperial majesty’s license to pay my
+attendance upon the emperor of Blefuscu, I took this opportunity,
+before the three days were elapsed, to send a letter to my friend the
+secretary, signifying my resolution of setting out that morning for
+Blefuscu, pursuant to the leave I had got; and, without waiting for an
+answer, I went to that side of the island where our fleet lay. I seized
+a large man of war, tied a cable to the prow, and, lifting up the
+anchors, I stripped myself, put my clothes (together with my coverlet,
+which I carried under my arm) into the vessel, and, drawing it after
+me, between wading and swimming arrived at the royal port of Blefuscu,
+where the people had long expected me: they lent me two guides to
+direct me to the capital city, which is of the same name. I held them
+in my hands, till I came within two hundred yards of the gate, and
+desired them “to signify my arrival to one of the secretaries, and let
+him know, I there waited his majesty’s command.” I had an answer in
+about an hour, “that his majesty, attended by the royal family, and
+great officers of the court, was coming out to receive me.” I advanced
+a hundred yards. The emperor and his train alighted from their horses,
+the empress and ladies from their coaches, and I did not perceive they
+were in any fright or concern. I lay on the ground to kiss his
+majesty’s and the empress’s hands. I told his majesty, “that I was come
+according to my promise, and with the license of the emperor my master,
+to have the honour of seeing so mighty a monarch, and to offer him any
+service in my power, consistent with my duty to my own prince;” not
+mentioning a word of my disgrace, because I had hitherto no regular
+information of it, and might suppose myself wholly ignorant of any such
+design; neither could I reasonably conceive that the emperor would
+discover the secret, while I was out of his power; wherein, however, it
+soon appeared I was deceived.
+
+I shall not trouble the reader with the particular account of my
+reception at this court, which was suitable to the generosity of so
+great a prince; nor of the difficulties I was in for want of a house
+and bed, being forced to lie on the ground, wrapped up in my coverlet.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The author, by a lucky accident, finds means to leave Blefuscu; and,
+after some difficulties, returns safe to his native country.
+
+
+Three days after my arrival, walking out of curiosity to the north-east
+coast of the island, I observed, about half a league off in the sea,
+somewhat that looked like a boat overturned. I pulled off my shoes and
+stockings, and, wading two or three hundred yards, I found the object
+to approach nearer by force of the tide; and then plainly saw it to be
+a real boat, which I supposed might by some tempest have been driven
+from a ship. Whereupon, I returned immediately towards the city, and
+desired his imperial majesty to lend me twenty of the tallest vessels
+he had left, after the loss of his fleet, and three thousand seamen,
+under the command of his vice-admiral. This fleet sailed round, while I
+went back the shortest way to the coast, where I first discovered the
+boat. I found the tide had driven it still nearer. The seamen were all
+provided with cordage, which I had beforehand twisted to a sufficient
+strength. When the ships came up, I stripped myself, and waded till I
+came within a hundred yards of the boat, after which I was forced to
+swim till I got up to it. The seamen threw me the end of the cord,
+which I fastened to a hole in the fore-part of the boat, and the other
+end to a man of war; but I found all my labour to little purpose; for,
+being out of my depth, I was not able to work. In this necessity I was
+forced to swim behind, and push the boat forward, as often as I could,
+with one of my hands; and the tide favouring me, I advanced so far that
+I could just hold up my chin and feel the ground. I rested two or three
+minutes, and then gave the boat another shove, and so on, till the sea
+was no higher than my arm-pits; and now, the most laborious part being
+over, I took out my other cables, which were stowed in one of the
+ships, and fastened them first to the boat, and then to nine of the
+vessels which attended me; the wind being favourable, the seamen towed,
+and I shoved, until we arrived within forty yards of the shore; and,
+waiting till the tide was out, I got dry to the boat, and by the
+assistance of two thousand men, with ropes and engines, I made a shift
+to turn it on its bottom, and found it was but little damaged.
+
+I shall not trouble the reader with the difficulties I was under, by
+the help of certain paddles, which cost me ten days making, to get my
+boat to the royal port of Blefuscu, where a mighty concourse of people
+appeared upon my arrival, full of wonder at the sight of so prodigious
+a vessel. I told the emperor “that my good fortune had thrown this boat
+in my way, to carry me to some place whence I might return into my
+native country; and begged his majesty’s orders for getting materials
+to fit it up, together with his license to depart;” which, after some
+kind expostulations, he was pleased to grant.
+
+I did very much wonder, in all this time, not to have heard of any
+express relating to me from our emperor to the court of Blefuscu. But I
+was afterward given privately to understand, that his imperial majesty,
+never imagining I had the least notice of his designs, believed I was
+only gone to Blefuscu in performance of my promise, according to the
+license he had given me, which was well known at our court, and would
+return in a few days, when the ceremony was ended. But he was at last
+in pain at my long absence; and after consulting with the treasurer and
+the rest of that cabal, a person of quality was dispatched with the
+copy of the articles against me. This envoy had instructions to
+represent to the monarch of Blefuscu, “the great lenity of his master,
+who was content to punish me no farther than with the loss of my eyes;
+that I had fled from justice; and if I did not return in two hours, I
+should be deprived of my title of _nardac_, and declared a traitor.”
+The envoy further added, “that in order to maintain the peace and amity
+between both empires, his master expected that his brother of Blefuscu
+would give orders to have me sent back to Lilliput, bound hand and
+foot, to be punished as a traitor.”
+
+The emperor of Blefuscu, having taken three days to consult, returned
+an answer consisting of many civilities and excuses. He said, “that as
+for sending me bound, his brother knew it was impossible; that,
+although I had deprived him of his fleet, yet he owed great obligations
+to me for many good offices I had done him in making the peace. That,
+however, both their majesties would soon be made easy; for I had found
+a prodigious vessel on the shore, able to carry me on the sea, which he
+had given orders to fit up, with my own assistance and direction; and
+he hoped, in a few weeks, both empires would be freed from so
+insupportable an encumbrance.”
+
+With this answer the envoy returned to Lilliput; and the monarch of
+Blefuscu related to me all that had passed; offering me at the same
+time (but under the strictest confidence) his gracious protection, if I
+would continue in his service; wherein, although I believed him
+sincere, yet I resolved never more to put any confidence in princes or
+ministers, where I could possibly avoid it; and therefore, with all due
+acknowledgments for his favourable intentions, I humbly begged to be
+excused. I told him, “that since fortune, whether good or evil, had
+thrown a vessel in my way, I was resolved to venture myself on the
+ocean, rather than be an occasion of difference between two such mighty
+monarchs.” Neither did I find the emperor at all displeased; and I
+discovered, by a certain accident, that he was very glad of my
+resolution, and so were most of his ministers.
+
+These considerations moved me to hasten my departure somewhat sooner
+than I intended; to which the court, impatient to have me gone, very
+readily contributed. Five hundred workmen were employed to make two
+sails to my boat, according to my directions, by quilting thirteen
+folds of their strongest linen together. I was at the pains of making
+ropes and cables, by twisting ten, twenty, or thirty of the thickest
+and strongest of theirs. A great stone that I happened to find, after a
+long search, by the sea-shore, served me for an anchor. I had the
+tallow of three hundred cows, for greasing my boat, and other uses. I
+was at incredible pains in cutting down some of the largest
+timber-trees, for oars and masts, wherein I was, however, much assisted
+by his majesty’s ship-carpenters, who helped me in smoothing them,
+after I had done the rough work.
+
+In about a month, when all was prepared, I sent to receive his
+majesty’s commands, and to take my leave. The emperor and royal family
+came out of the palace; I lay down on my face to kiss his hand, which
+he very graciously gave me: so did the empress and young princes of the
+blood. His majesty presented me with fifty purses of two hundred
+_sprugs_ a-piece, together with his picture at full length, which I put
+immediately into one of my gloves, to keep it from being hurt. The
+ceremonies at my departure were too many to trouble the reader with at
+this time.
+
+I stored the boat with the carcases of a hundred oxen, and three
+hundred sheep, with bread and drink proportionable, and as much meat
+ready dressed as four hundred cooks could provide. I took with me six
+cows and two bulls alive, with as many ewes and rams, intending to
+carry them into my own country, and propagate the breed. And to feed
+them on board, I had a good bundle of hay, and a bag of corn. I would
+gladly have taken a dozen of the natives, but this was a thing the
+emperor would by no means permit; and, besides a diligent search into
+my pockets, his majesty engaged my honour “not to carry away any of his
+subjects, although with their own consent and desire.”
+
+Having thus prepared all things as well as I was able, I set sail on
+the twenty-fourth day of September 1701, at six in the morning; and
+when I had gone about four leagues to the northward, the wind being at
+south-east, at six in the evening I descried a small island, about half
+a league to the north-west. I advanced forward, and cast anchor on the
+lee-side of the island, which seemed to be uninhabited. I then took
+some refreshment, and went to my rest. I slept well, and as I
+conjectured at least six hours, for I found the day broke in two hours
+after I awaked. It was a clear night. I ate my breakfast before the sun
+was up; and heaving anchor, the wind being favourable, I steered the
+same course that I had done the day before, wherein I was directed by
+my pocket compass. My intention was to reach, if possible, one of those
+islands which I had reason to believe lay to the north-east of Van
+Diemen’s Land. I discovered nothing all that day; but upon the next,
+about three in the afternoon, when I had by my computation made
+twenty-four leagues from Blefuscu, I descried a sail steering to the
+south-east; my course was due east. I hailed her, but could get no
+answer; yet I found I gained upon her, for the wind slackened. I made
+all the sail I could, and in half an hour she spied me, then hung out
+her ancient, and discharged a gun. It is not easy to express the joy I
+was in, upon the unexpected hope of once more seeing my beloved
+country, and the dear pledges I left in it. The ship slackened her
+sails, and I came up with her between five and six in the evening,
+September 26th; but my heart leaped within me to see her English
+colours. I put my cows and sheep into my coat-pockets, and got on board
+with all my little cargo of provisions. The vessel was an English
+merchantman, returning from Japan by the North and South seas; the
+captain, Mr. John Biddel, of Deptford, a very civil man, and an
+excellent sailor.
+
+We were now in the latitude of 30 degrees south; there were about fifty
+men in the ship; and here I met an old comrade of mine, one Peter
+Williams, who gave me a good character to the captain. This gentleman
+treated me with kindness, and desired I would let him know what place I
+came from last, and whither I was bound; which I did in a few words,
+but he thought I was raving, and that the dangers I underwent had
+disturbed my head; whereupon I took my black cattle and sheep out of my
+pocket, which, after great astonishment, clearly convinced him of my
+veracity. I then showed him the gold given me by the emperor of
+Blefuscu, together with his majesty’s picture at full length, and some
+other rarities of that country. I gave him two purses of two hundreds
+_sprugs_ each, and promised, when we arrived in England, to make him a
+present of a cow and a sheep big with young.
+
+I shall not trouble the reader with a particular account of this
+voyage, which was very prosperous for the most part. We arrived in the
+Downs on the 13th of April, 1702. I had only one misfortune, that the
+rats on board carried away one of my sheep; I found her bones in a
+hole, picked clean from the flesh. The rest of my cattle I got safe
+ashore, and set them a-grazing in a bowling-green at Greenwich, where
+the fineness of the grass made them feed very heartily, though I had
+always feared the contrary: neither could I possibly have preserved
+them in so long a voyage, if the captain had not allowed me some of his
+best biscuit, which, rubbed to powder, and mingled with water, was
+their constant food. The short time I continued in England, I made a
+considerable profit by showing my cattle to many persons of quality and
+others: and before I began my second voyage, I sold them for six
+hundred pounds. Since my last return I find the breed is considerably
+increased, especially the sheep, which I hope will prove much to the
+advantage of the woollen manufacture, by the fineness of the fleeces.
+
+I stayed but two months with my wife and family, for my insatiable
+desire of seeing foreign countries, would suffer me to continue no
+longer. I left fifteen hundred pounds with my wife, and fixed her in a
+good house at Redriff. My remaining stock I carried with me, part in
+money and part in goods, in hopes to improve my fortunes. My eldest
+uncle John had left me an estate in land, near Epping, of about thirty
+pounds a year; and I had a long lease of the Black Bull in Fetter Lane,
+which yielded me as much more; so that I was not in any danger of
+leaving my family upon the parish. My son Johnny, named so after his
+uncle, was at the grammar school, and a towardly child. My daughter
+Betty (who is now well married, and has children) was then at her
+needlework. I took leave of my wife, and boy and girl, with tears on
+both sides, and went on board the Adventure, a merchant ship of three
+hundred tons, bound for Surat, captain John Nicholas, of Liverpool,
+commander. But my account of this voyage must be referred to the Second
+Part of my Travels.
+
+
+PART II. A VOYAGE TO BROBDINGNAG.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A great storm described; the long boat sent to fetch water; the author
+goes with it to discover the country. He is left on shore, is seized by
+one of the natives, and carried to a farmer’s house. His reception,
+with several accidents that happened there. A description of the
+inhabitants.
+
+
+Having been condemned, by nature and fortune, to active and restless
+life, in two months after my return, I again left my native country,
+and took shipping in the Downs, on the 20th day of June, 1702, in the
+Adventure, Captain John Nicholas, a Cornish man, commander, bound for
+Surat. We had a very prosperous gale, till we arrived at the Cape of
+Good Hope, where we landed for fresh water; but discovering a leak, we
+unshipped our goods and wintered there; for the captain falling sick of
+an ague, we could not leave the Cape till the end of March. We then set
+sail, and had a good voyage till we passed the Straits of Madagascar;
+but having got northward of that island, and to about five degrees
+south latitude, the winds, which in those seas are observed to blow a
+constant equal gale between the north and west, from the beginning of
+December to the beginning of May, on the 19th of April began to blow
+with much greater violence, and more westerly than usual, continuing so
+for twenty days together: during which time, we were driven a little to
+the east of the Molucca Islands, and about three degrees northward of
+the line, as our captain found by an observation he took the 2nd of
+May, at which time the wind ceased, and it was a perfect calm, whereat
+I was not a little rejoiced. But he, being a man well experienced in
+the navigation of those seas, bid us all prepare against a storm, which
+accordingly happened the day following: for the southern wind, called
+the southern monsoon, began to set in.
+
+Finding it was likely to overblow, we took in our sprit-sail, and stood
+by to hand the fore-sail; but making foul weather, we looked the guns
+were all fast, and handed the mizen. The ship lay very broad off, so we
+thought it better spooning before the sea, than trying or hulling. We
+reefed the fore-sail and set him, and hauled aft the fore-sheet; the
+helm was hard a-weather. The ship wore bravely. We belayed the fore
+down-haul; but the sail was split, and we hauled down the yard, and got
+the sail into the ship, and unbound all the things clear of it. It was
+a very fierce storm; the sea broke strange and dangerous. We hauled off
+upon the laniard of the whip-staff, and helped the man at the helm. We
+would not get down our topmast, but let all stand, because she scudded
+before the sea very well, and we knew that the top-mast being aloft,
+the ship was the wholesomer, and made better way through the sea,
+seeing we had sea-room. When the storm was over, we set fore-sail and
+main-sail, and brought the ship to. Then we set the mizen,
+main-top-sail, and the fore-top-sail. Our course was east-north-east,
+the wind was at south-west. We got the starboard tacks aboard, we cast
+off our weather-braces and lifts; we set in the lee-braces, and hauled
+forward by the weather-bowlings, and hauled them tight, and belayed
+them, and hauled over the mizen tack to windward, and kept her full and
+by as near as she would lie.
+
+During this storm, which was followed by a strong wind west-south-west,
+we were carried, by my computation, about five hundred leagues to the
+east, so that the oldest sailor on board could not tell in what part of
+the world we were. Our provisions held out well, our ship was staunch,
+and our crew all in good health; but we lay in the utmost distress for
+water. We thought it best to hold on the same course, rather than turn
+more northerly, which might have brought us to the north-west part of
+Great Tartary, and into the Frozen Sea.
+
+On the 16th day of June, 1703, a boy on the top-mast discovered land.
+On the 17th, we came in full view of a great island, or continent (for
+we knew not whether;) on the south side whereof was a small neck of
+land jutting out into the sea, and a creek too shallow to hold a ship
+of above one hundred tons. We cast anchor within a league of this
+creek, and our captain sent a dozen of his men well armed in the
+long-boat, with vessels for water, if any could be found. I desired his
+leave to go with them, that I might see the country, and make what
+discoveries I could. When we came to land we saw no river or spring,
+nor any sign of inhabitants. Our men therefore wandered on the shore to
+find out some fresh water near the sea, and I walked alone about a mile
+on the other side, where I observed the country all barren and rocky. I
+now began to be weary, and seeing nothing to entertain my curiosity, I
+returned gently down towards the creek; and the sea being full in my
+view, I saw our men already got into the boat, and rowing for life to
+the ship. I was going to holla after them, although it had been to
+little purpose, when I observed a huge creature walking after them in
+the sea, as fast as he could: he waded not much deeper than his knees,
+and took prodigious strides: but our men had the start of him half a
+league, and, the sea thereabouts being full of sharp-pointed rocks, the
+monster was not able to overtake the boat. This I was afterwards told,
+for I durst not stay to see the issue of the adventure; but ran as fast
+as I could the way I first went, and then climbed up a steep hill,
+which gave me some prospect of the country. I found it fully
+cultivated; but that which first surprised me was the length of the
+grass, which, in those grounds that seemed to be kept for hay, was
+about twenty feet high.
+
+I fell into a high road, for so I took it to be, though it served to
+the inhabitants only as a foot-path through a field of barley. Here I
+walked on for some time, but could see little on either side, it being
+now near harvest, and the corn rising at least forty feet. I was an
+hour walking to the end of this field, which was fenced in with a hedge
+of at least one hundred and twenty feet high, and the trees so lofty
+that I could make no computation of their altitude. There was a stile
+to pass from this field into the next. It had four steps, and a stone
+to cross over when you came to the uppermost. It was impossible for me
+to climb this stile, because every step was six-feet high, and the
+upper stone about twenty. I was endeavouring to find some gap in the
+hedge, when I discovered one of the inhabitants in the next field,
+advancing towards the stile, of the same size with him whom I saw in
+the sea pursuing our boat. He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire
+steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as I could
+guess. I was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to
+hide myself in the corn, whence I saw him at the top of the stile
+looking back into the next field on the right hand, and heard him call
+in a voice many degrees louder than a speaking-trumpet: but the noise
+was so high in the air, that at first I certainly thought it was
+thunder. Whereupon seven monsters, like himself, came towards him with
+reaping-hooks in their hands, each hook about the largeness of six
+scythes. These people were not so well clad as the first, whose
+servants or labourers they seemed to be; for, upon some words he spoke,
+they went to reap the corn in the field where I lay. I kept from them
+at as great a distance as I could, but was forced to move with extreme
+difficulty, for the stalks of the corn were sometimes not above a foot
+distant, so that I could hardly squeeze my body betwixt them. However,
+I made a shift to go forward, till I came to a part of the field where
+the corn had been laid by the rain and wind. Here it was impossible for
+me to advance a step; for the stalks were so interwoven, that I could
+not creep through, and the beards of the fallen ears so strong and
+pointed, that they pierced through my clothes into my flesh. At the
+same time I heard the reapers not a hundred yards behind me. Being
+quite dispirited with toil, and wholly overcome by grief and dispair, I
+lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished I might there end my
+days. I bemoaned my desolate widow and fatherless children. I lamented
+my own folly and wilfulness, in attempting a second voyage, against the
+advice of all my friends and relations. In this terrible agitation of
+mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants
+looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world;
+where I was able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and perform
+those other actions, which will be recorded for ever in the chronicles
+of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, although
+attested by millions. I reflected what a mortification it must prove to
+me, to appear as inconsiderable in this nation, as one single
+Lilliputian would be among us. But this I conceived was to be the least
+of my misfortunes; for, as human creatures are observed to be more
+savage and cruel in proportion to their bulk, what could I expect but
+to be a morsel in the mouth of the first among these enormous
+barbarians that should happen to seize me? Undoubtedly philosophers are
+in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little
+otherwise than by comparison. It might have pleased fortune, to have
+let the Lilliputians find some nation, where the people were as
+diminutive with respect to them, as they were to me. And who knows but
+that even this prodigious race of mortals might be equally overmatched
+in some distant part of the world, whereof we have yet no discovery.
+
+Scared and confounded as I was, I could not forbear going on with these
+reflections, when one of the reapers, approaching within ten yards of
+the ridge where I lay, made me apprehend that with the next step I
+should be squashed to death under his foot, or cut in two with his
+reaping-hook. And therefore, when he was again about to move, I
+screamed as loud as fear could make me: whereupon the huge creature
+trod short, and, looking round about under him for some time, at last
+espied me as I lay on the ground. He considered awhile, with the
+caution of one who endeavours to lay hold on a small dangerous animal
+in such a manner that it shall not be able either to scratch or bite
+him, as I myself have sometimes done with a weasel in England. At
+length he ventured to take me behind, by the middle, between his
+fore-finger and thumb, and brought me within three yards of his eyes,
+that he might behold my shape more perfectly. I guessed his meaning,
+and my good fortune gave me so much presence of mind, that I resolved
+not to struggle in the least as he held me in the air above sixty feet
+from the ground, although he grievously pinched my sides, for fear I
+should slip through his fingers. All I ventured was to raise my eyes
+towards the sun, and place my hands together in a supplicating posture,
+and to speak some words in a humble melancholy tone, suitable to the
+condition I then was in: for I apprehended every moment that he would
+dash me against the ground, as we usually do any little hateful animal,
+which we have a mind to destroy. But my good star would have it, that
+he appeared pleased with my voice and gestures, and began to look upon
+me as a curiosity, much wondering to hear me pronounce articulate
+words, although he could not understand them. In the mean time I was
+not able to forbear groaning and shedding tears, and turning my head
+towards my sides; letting him know, as well as I could, how cruelly I
+was hurt by the pressure of his thumb and finger. He seemed to
+apprehend my meaning; for, lifting up the lappet of his coat, he put me
+gently into it, and immediately ran along with me to his master, who
+was a substantial farmer, and the same person I had first seen in the
+field.
+
+The farmer having (as I suppose by their talk) received such an account
+of me as his servant could give him, took a piece of a small straw,
+about the size of a walking-staff, and therewith lifted up the lappets
+of my coat; which it seems he thought to be some kind of covering that
+nature had given me. He blew my hairs aside to take a better view of my
+face. He called his hinds about him, and asked them, as I afterwards
+learned, whether they had ever seen in the fields any little creature
+that resembled me. He then placed me softly on the ground upon all
+fours, but I got immediately up, and walked slowly backward and
+forward, to let those people see I had no intent to run away. They all
+sat down in a circle about me, the better to observe my motions. I
+pulled off my hat, and made a low bow towards the farmer. I fell on my
+knees, and lifted up my hands and eyes, and spoke several words as loud
+as I could: I took a purse of gold out of my pocket, and humbly
+presented it to him. He received it on the palm of his hand, then
+applied it close to his eye to see what it was, and afterwards turned
+it several times with the point of a pin (which he took out of his
+sleeve,) but could make nothing of it. Whereupon I made a sign that he
+should place his hand on the ground. I then took the purse, and,
+opening it, poured all the gold into his palm. There were six Spanish
+pieces of four pistoles each, beside twenty or thirty smaller coins. I
+saw him wet the tip of his little finger upon his tongue, and take up
+one of my largest pieces, and then another; but he seemed to be wholly
+ignorant what they were. He made me a sign to put them again into my
+purse, and the purse again into my pocket, which, after offering it to
+him several times, I thought it best to do.
+
+The farmer, by this time, was convinced I must be a rational creature.
+He spoke often to me; but the sound of his voice pierced my ears like
+that of a water-mill, yet his words were articulate enough. I answered
+as loud as I could in several languages, and he often laid his ear
+within two yards of me: but all in vain, for we were wholly
+unintelligible to each other. He then sent his servants to their work,
+and taking his handkerchief out of his pocket, he doubled and spread it
+on his left hand, which he placed flat on the ground with the palm
+upward, making me a sign to step into it, as I could easily do, for it
+was not above a foot in thickness. I thought it my part to obey, and,
+for fear of falling, laid myself at full length upon the handkerchief,
+with the remainder of which he lapped me up to the head for further
+security, and in this manner carried me home to his house. There he
+called his wife, and showed me to her; but she screamed and ran back,
+as women in England do at the sight of a toad or a spider. However,
+when she had a while seen my behaviour, and how well I observed the
+signs her husband made, she was soon reconciled, and by degrees grew
+extremely tender of me.
+
+It was about twelve at noon, and a servant brought in dinner. It was
+only one substantial dish of meat (fit for the plain condition of a
+husbandman,) in a dish of about four-and-twenty feet diameter. The
+company were, the farmer and his wife, three children, and an old
+grandmother. When they were sat down, the farmer placed me at some
+distance from him on the table, which was thirty feet high from the
+floor. I was in a terrible fright, and kept as far as I could from the
+edge, for fear of falling. The wife minced a bit of meat, then crumbled
+some bread on a trencher, and placed it before me. I made her a low
+bow, took out my knife and fork, and fell to eat, which gave them
+exceeding delight. The mistress sent her maid for a small dram cup,
+which held about two gallons, and filled it with drink; I took up the
+vessel with much difficulty in both hands, and in a most respectful
+manner drank to her ladyship’s health, expressing the words as loud as
+I could in English, which made the company laugh so heartily, that I
+was almost deafened with the noise. This liquor tasted like a small
+cider, and was not unpleasant. Then the master made me a sign to come
+to his trencher side; but as I walked on the table, being in great
+surprise all the time, as the indulgent reader will easily conceive and
+excuse, I happened to stumble against a crust, and fell flat on my
+face, but received no hurt. I got up immediately, and observing the
+good people to be in much concern, I took my hat (which I held under my
+arm out of good manners,) and waving it over my head, made three
+huzzas, to show I had got no mischief by my fall. But advancing forward
+towards my master (as I shall henceforth call him,) his youngest son,
+who sat next to him, an arch boy of about ten years old, took me up by
+the legs, and held me so high in the air, that I trembled every limb:
+but his father snatched me from him, and at the same time gave him such
+a box on the left ear, as would have felled an European troop of horse
+to the earth, ordering him to be taken from the table. But being afraid
+the boy might owe me a spite, and well remembering how mischievous all
+children among us naturally are to sparrows, rabbits, young kittens,
+and puppy dogs, I fell on my knees, and pointing to the boy, made my
+master to understand, as well as I could, that I desired his son might
+be pardoned. The father complied, and the lad took his seat again,
+whereupon I went to him, and kissed his hand, which my master took, and
+made him stroke me gently with it.
+
+In the midst of dinner, my mistress’s favourite cat leaped into her
+lap. I heard a noise behind me like that of a dozen stocking-weavers at
+work; and turning my head, I found it proceeded from the purring of
+that animal, who seemed to be three times larger than an ox, as I
+computed by the view of her head, and one of her paws, while her
+mistress was feeding and stroking her. The fierceness of this
+creature’s countenance altogether discomposed me; though I stood at the
+farther end of the table, above fifty feet off; and although my
+mistress held her fast, for fear she might give a spring, and seize me
+in her talons. But it happened there was no danger, for the cat took
+not the least notice of me when my master placed me within three yards
+of her. And as I have been always told, and found true by experience in
+my travels, that flying or discovering fear before a fierce animal, is
+a certain way to make it pursue or attack you, so I resolved, in this
+dangerous juncture, to show no manner of concern. I walked with
+intrepidity five or six times before the very head of the cat, and came
+within half a yard of her; whereupon she drew herself back, as if she
+were more afraid of me: I had less apprehension concerning the dogs,
+whereof three or four came into the room, as it is usual in farmers’
+houses; one of which was a mastiff, equal in bulk to four elephants,
+and another a greyhound, somewhat taller than the mastiff, but not so
+large.
+
+When dinner was almost done, the nurse came in with a child of a year
+old in her arms, who immediately spied me, and began a squall that you
+might have heard from London Bridge to Chelsea, after the usual oratory
+of infants, to get me for a plaything. The mother, out of pure
+indulgence, took me up, and put me towards the child, who presently
+seized me by the middle, and got my head into his mouth, where I roared
+so loud that the urchin was frighted, and let me drop, and I should
+infallibly have broke my neck, if the mother had not held her apron
+under me. The nurse, to quiet her babe, made use of a rattle which was
+a kind of hollow vessel filled with great stones, and fastened by a
+cable to the child’s waist: but all in vain; so that she was forced to
+apply the last remedy by giving it suck. I must confess no object ever
+disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous breast, which I
+cannot tell what to compare with, so as to give the curious reader an
+idea of its bulk, shape, and colour. It stood prominent six feet, and
+could not be less than sixteen in circumference. The nipple was about
+half the bigness of my head, and the hue both of that and the dug, so
+varied with spots, pimples, and freckles, that nothing could appear
+more nauseous: for I had a near sight of her, she sitting down, the
+more conveniently to give suck, and I standing on the table. This made
+me reflect upon the fair skins of our English ladies, who appear so
+beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size, and their
+defects not to be seen but through a magnifying glass; where we find by
+experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough, and coarse,
+and ill-coloured.
+
+I remember when I was at Lilliput, the complexion of those diminutive
+people appeared to me the fairest in the world; and talking upon this
+subject with a person of learning there, who was an intimate friend of
+mine, he said that my face appeared much fairer and smoother when he
+looked on me from the ground, than it did upon a nearer view, when I
+took him up in my hand, and brought him close, which he confessed was
+at first a very shocking sight. He said, “he could discover great holes
+in my skin; that the stumps of my beard were ten times stronger than
+the bristles of a boar, and my complexion made up of several colours
+altogether disagreeable:” although I must beg leave to say for myself,
+that I am as fair as most of my sex and country, and very little
+sunburnt by all my travels. On the other side, discoursing of the
+ladies in that emperor’s court, he used to tell me, “one had freckles;
+another too wide a mouth; a third too large a nose;” nothing of which I
+was able to distinguish. I confess this reflection was obvious enough;
+which, however, I could not forbear, lest the reader might think those
+vast creatures were actually deformed: for I must do them the justice
+to say, they are a comely race of people, and particularly the features
+of my master’s countenance, although he was but a farmer, when I beheld
+him from the height of sixty feet, appeared very well proportioned.
+
+When dinner was done, my master went out to his labourers, and, as I
+could discover by his voice and gesture, gave his wife strict charge to
+take care of me. I was very much tired, and disposed to sleep, which my
+mistress perceiving, she put me on her own bed, and covered me with a
+clean white handkerchief, but larger and coarser than the mainsail of a
+man of war.
+
+I slept about two hours, and dreamt I was at home with my wife and
+children, which aggravated my sorrows when I awaked, and found myself
+alone in a vast room, between two and three hundred feet wide, and
+above two hundred high, lying in a bed twenty yards wide. My mistress
+was gone about her household affairs, and had locked me in. The bed was
+eight yards from the floor. Some natural necessities required me to get
+down; I durst not presume to call; and if I had, it would have been in
+vain, with such a voice as mine, at so great a distance from the room
+where I lay to the kitchen where the family kept. While I was under
+these circumstances, two rats crept up the curtains, and ran smelling
+backwards and forwards on the bed. One of them came up almost to my
+face, whereupon I rose in a fright, and drew out my hanger to defend
+myself. These horrible animals had the boldness to attack me on both
+sides, and one of them held his forefeet at my collar; but I had the
+good fortune to rip up his belly before he could do me any mischief. He
+fell down at my feet; and the other, seeing the fate of his comrade,
+made his escape, but not without one good wound on the back, which I
+gave him as he fled, and made the blood run trickling from him. After
+this exploit, I walked gently to and fro on the bed, to recover my
+breath and loss of spirits. These creatures were of the size of a large
+mastiff, but infinitely more nimble and fierce; so that if I had taken
+off my belt before I went to sleep, I must have infallibly been torn to
+pieces and devoured. I measured the tail of the dead rat, and found it
+to be two yards long, wanting an inch; but it went against my stomach
+to drag the carcass off the bed, where it lay still bleeding; I
+observed it had yet some life, but with a strong slash across the neck,
+I thoroughly despatched it.
+
+Soon after my mistress came into the room, who seeing me all bloody,
+ran and took me up in her hand. I pointed to the dead rat, smiling, and
+making other signs to show I was not hurt; whereat she was extremely
+rejoiced, calling the maid to take up the dead rat with a pair of
+tongs, and throw it out of the window. Then she set me on a table,
+where I showed her my hanger all bloody, and wiping it on the lappet of
+my coat, returned it to the scabbard. I was pressed to do more than one
+thing which another could not do for me, and therefore endeavoured to
+make my mistress understand, that I desired to be set down on the
+floor; which after she had done, my bashfulness would not suffer me to
+express myself farther, than by pointing to the door, and bowing
+several times. The good woman, with much difficulty, at last perceived
+what I would be at, and taking me up again in her hand, walked into the
+garden, where she set me down. I went on one side about two hundred
+yards, and beckoning to her not to look or to follow me, I hid myself
+between two leaves of sorrel, and there discharged the necessities of
+nature.
+
+I hope the gentle reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and the
+like particulars, which, however insignificant they may appear to
+groveling vulgar minds, yet will certainly help a philosopher to
+enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of
+public as well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting
+this and other accounts of my travels to the world; wherein I have been
+chiefly studious of truth, without affecting any ornaments of learning
+or of style. But the whole scene of this voyage made so strong an
+impression on my mind, and is so deeply fixed in my memory, that, in
+committing it to paper I did not omit one material circumstance:
+however, upon a strict review, I blotted out several passages of less
+moment which were in my first copy, for fear of being censured as
+tedious and trifling, whereof travellers are often, perhaps not without
+justice, accused.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+A description of the farmer’s daughter. The author carried to a
+market-town, and then to the metropolis. The particulars of his
+journey.
+
+
+My mistress had a daughter of nine years old, a child of towardly parts
+for her age, very dexterous at her needle, and skilful in dressing her
+baby. Her mother and she contrived to fit up the baby’s cradle for me
+against night: the cradle was put into a small drawer of a cabinet, and
+the drawer placed upon a hanging shelf for fear of the rats. This was
+my bed all the time I staid with those people, though made more
+convenient by degrees, as I began to learn their language and make my
+wants known. This young girl was so handy, that after I had once or
+twice pulled off my clothes before her, she was able to dress and
+undress me, though I never gave her that trouble when she would let me
+do either myself. She made me seven shirts, and some other linen, of as
+fine cloth as could be got, which indeed was coarser than sackcloth;
+and these she constantly washed for me with her own hands. She was
+likewise my school-mistress, to teach me the language: when I pointed
+to any thing, she told me the name of it in her own tongue, so that in
+a few days I was able to call for whatever I had a mind to. She was
+very good-natured, and not above forty feet high, being little for her
+age. She gave me the name of _Grildrig_, which the family took up, and
+afterwards the whole kingdom. The word imports what the Latins call
+_nanunculus_, the Italians _homunceletino_, and the English _mannikin_.
+To her I chiefly owe my preservation in that country: we never parted
+while I was there; I called her my _Glumdalclitch_, or little nurse;
+and should be guilty of great ingratitude, if I omitted this honourable
+mention of her care and affection towards me, which I heartily wish it
+lay in my power to requite as she deserves, instead of being the
+innocent, but unhappy instrument of her disgrace, as I have too much
+reason to fear.
+
+It now began to be known and talked of in the neighbourhood, that my
+master had found a strange animal in the field, about the bigness of a
+_splacnuck_, but exactly shaped in every part like a human creature;
+which it likewise imitated in all its actions; seemed to speak in a
+little language of its own, had already learned several words of
+theirs, went erect upon two legs, was tame and gentle, would come when
+it was called, do whatever it was bid, had the finest limbs in the
+world, and a complexion fairer than a nobleman’s daughter of three
+years old. Another farmer, who lived hard by, and was a particular
+friend of my master, came on a visit on purpose to inquire into the
+truth of this story. I was immediately produced, and placed upon a
+table, where I walked as I was commanded, drew my hanger, put it up
+again, made my reverence to my master’s guest, asked him in his own
+language how he did, and told him _he was welcome_, just as my little
+nurse had instructed me. This man, who was old and dim-sighted, put on
+his spectacles to behold me better; at which I could not forbear
+laughing very heartily, for his eyes appeared like the full moon
+shining into a chamber at two windows. Our people, who discovered the
+cause of my mirth, bore me company in laughing, at which the old fellow
+was fool enough to be angry and out of countenance. He had the
+character of a great miser; and, to my misfortune, he well deserved it,
+by the cursed advice he gave my master, to show me as a sight upon a
+market-day in the next town, which was half an hour’s riding, about
+two-and-twenty miles from our house. I guessed there was some mischief
+when I observed my master and his friend whispering together, sometimes
+pointing at me; and my fears made me fancy that I overheard and
+understood some of their words. But the next morning Glumdalclitch, my
+little nurse, told me the whole matter, which she had cunningly picked
+out from her mother. The poor girl laid me on her bosom, and fell a
+weeping with shame and grief. She apprehended some mischief would
+happen to me from rude vulgar folks, who might squeeze me to death, or
+break one of my limbs by taking me in their hands. She had also
+observed how modest I was in my nature, how nicely I regarded my
+honour, and what an indignity I should conceive it, to be exposed for
+money as a public spectacle, to the meanest of the people. She said,
+her papa and mamma had promised that Grildrig should be hers; but now
+she found they meant to serve her as they did last year, when they
+pretended to give her a lamb, and yet, as soon as it was fat, sold it
+to a butcher. For my own part, I may truly affirm, that I was less
+concerned than my nurse. I had a strong hope, which never left me, that
+I should one day recover my liberty: and as to the ignominy of being
+carried about for a monster, I considered myself to be a perfect
+stranger in the country, and that such a misfortune could never be
+charged upon me as a reproach, if ever I should return to England,
+since the king of Great Britain himself, in my condition, must have
+undergone the same distress.
+
+My master, pursuant to the advice of his friend, carried me in a box
+the next market-day to the neighbouring town, and took along with him
+his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion behind him. The box was
+close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a
+few gimlet holes to let in air. The girl had been so careful as to put
+the quilt of her baby’s bed into it, for me to lie down on. However, I
+was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though it was but
+of half an hour: for the horse went about forty feet at every step and
+trotted so high, that the agitation was equal to the rising and falling
+of a ship in a great storm, but much more frequent. Our journey was
+somewhat farther than from London to St. Alban’s. My master alighted at
+an inn which he used to frequent; and after consulting a while with the
+inn-keeper, and making some necessary preparations, he hired the
+_grultrud_, or crier, to give notice through the town of a strange
+creature to be seen at the sign of the Green Eagle, not so big as a
+_splacnuck_ (an animal in that country very finely shaped, about six
+feet long,) and in every part of the body resembling a human creature,
+could speak several words, and perform a hundred diverting tricks.
+
+I was placed upon a table in the largest room of the inn, which might
+be near three hundred feet square. My little nurse stood on a low stool
+close to the table, to take care of me, and direct what I should do. My
+master, to avoid a crowd, would suffer only thirty people at a time to
+see me. I walked about on the table as the girl commanded; she asked me
+questions, as far as she knew my understanding of the language reached,
+and I answered them as loud as I could. I turned about several times to
+the company, paid my humble respects, said _they were welcome_, and
+used some other speeches I had been taught. I took up a thimble filled
+with liquor, which Glumdalclitch had given me for a cup, and drank
+their health, I drew out my hanger, and flourished with it after the
+manner of fencers in England. My nurse gave me a part of a straw, which
+I exercised as a pike, having learnt the art in my youth. I was that
+day shown to twelve sets of company, and as often forced to act over
+again the same fopperies, till I was half dead with weariness and
+vexation; for those who had seen me made such wonderful reports, that
+the people were ready to break down the doors to come in. My master,
+for his own interest, would not suffer any one to touch me except my
+nurse; and to prevent danger, benches were set round the table at such
+a distance as to put me out of every body’s reach. However, an unlucky
+school-boy aimed a hazel nut directly at my head, which very narrowly
+missed me; otherwise it came with so much violence, that it would have
+infallibly knocked out my brains, for it was almost as large as a small
+pumpkin, but I had the satisfaction to see the young rogue well beaten,
+and turned out of the room.
+
+My master gave public notice that he would show me again the next
+market-day; and in the meantime he prepared a convenient vehicle for
+me, which he had reason enough to do; for I was so tired with my first
+journey, and with entertaining company for eight hours together, that I
+could hardly stand upon my legs, or speak a word. It was at least three
+days before I recovered my strength; and that I might have no rest at
+home, all the neighbouring gentlemen from a hundred miles round,
+hearing of my fame, came to see me at my master’s own house. There
+could not be fewer than thirty persons with their wives and children
+(for the country is very populous;) and my master demanded the rate of
+a full room whenever he showed me at home, although it were only to a
+single family; so that for some time I had but little ease every day of
+the week (except Wednesday, which is their Sabbath,) although I were
+not carried to the town.
+
+My master, finding how profitable I was likely to be, resolved to carry
+me to the most considerable cities of the kingdom. Having therefore
+provided himself with all things necessary for a long journey, and
+settled his affairs at home, he took leave of his wife, and upon the
+17th of August, 1703, about two months after my arrival, we set out for
+the metropolis, situated near the middle of that empire, and about
+three thousand miles distance from our house. My master made his
+daughter Glumdalclitch ride behind him. She carried me on her lap, in a
+box tied about her waist. The girl had lined it on all sides with the
+softest cloth she could get, well quilted underneath, furnished it with
+her baby’s bed, provided me with linen and other necessaries, and made
+everything as convenient as she could. We had no other company but a
+boy of the house, who rode after us with the luggage.
+
+My master’s design was to show me in all the towns by the way, and to
+step out of the road for fifty or a hundred miles, to any village, or
+person of quality’s house, where he might expect custom. We made easy
+journeys, of not above seven or eight score miles a day; for
+Glumdalclitch, on purpose to spare me, complained she was tired with
+the trotting of the horse. She often took me out of my box, at my own
+desire, to give me air, and show me the country, but always held me
+fast by a leading-string. We passed over five or six rivers, many
+degrees broader and deeper than the Nile or the Ganges: and there was
+hardly a rivulet so small as the Thames at London Bridge. We were ten
+weeks in our journey, and I was shown in eighteen large towns, besides
+many villages, and private families.
+
+On the 26th day of October we arrived at the metropolis, called in
+their language _Lorbrulgrud_, or Pride of the Universe. My master took
+a lodging in the principal street of the city, not far from the royal
+palace, and put out bills in the usual form, containing an exact
+description of my person and parts. He hired a large room between three
+and four hundred feet wide. He provided a table sixty feet in diameter,
+upon which I was to act my part, and pallisadoed it round three feet
+from the edge, and as many high, to prevent my falling over. I was
+shown ten times a day, to the wonder and satisfaction of all people. I
+could now speak the language tolerably well, and perfectly understood
+every word, that was spoken to me. Besides, I had learnt their
+alphabet, and could make a shift to explain a sentence here and there;
+for Glumdalclitch had been my instructor while we were at home, and at
+leisure hours during our journey. She carried a little book in her
+pocket, not much larger than a Sanson’s Atlas; it was a common treatise
+for the use of young girls, giving a short account of their religion:
+out of this she taught me my letters, and interpreted the words.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The author sent for to court. The queen buys him of his master the
+farmer, and presents him to the king. He disputes with his majesty’s
+great scholars. An apartment at court provided for the author. He is in
+high favour with the queen. He stands up for the honour of his own
+country. His quarrels with the queen’s dwarf.
+
+
+The frequent labours I underwent every day, made, in a few weeks, a
+very considerable change in my health: the more my master got by me,
+the more insatiable he grew. I had quite lost my stomach, and was
+almost reduced to a skeleton. The farmer observed it, and concluding I
+must soon die, resolved to make as good a hand of me as he could. While
+he was thus reasoning and resolving with himself, a _sardral_, or
+gentleman-usher, came from court, commanding my master to carry me
+immediately thither for the diversion of the queen and her ladies. Some
+of the latter had already been to see me, and reported strange things
+of my beauty, behaviour, and good sense. Her majesty, and those who
+attended her, were beyond measure delighted with my demeanour. I fell
+on my knees, and begged the honour of kissing her imperial foot; but
+this gracious princess held out her little finger towards me, after I
+was set on the table, which I embraced in both my arms, and put the tip
+of it with the utmost respect to my lip. She made me some general
+questions about my country and my travels, which I answered as
+distinctly, and in as few words as I could. She asked, “whether I could
+be content to live at court?” I bowed down to the board of the table,
+and humbly answered “that I was my master’s slave: but, if I were at my
+own disposal, I should be proud to devote my life to her majesty’s
+service.” She then asked my master, “whether he was willing to sell me
+at a good price?” He, who apprehended I could not live a month, was
+ready enough to part with me, and demanded a thousand pieces of gold,
+which were ordered him on the spot, each piece being about the bigness
+of eight hundred moidores; but allowing for the proportion of all
+things between that country and Europe, and the high price of gold
+among them, was hardly so great a sum as a thousand guineas would be in
+England. I then said to the queen, “since I was now her majesty’s most
+humble creature and vassal, I must beg the favour, that Glumdalclitch,
+who had always tended me with so much care and kindness, and understood
+to do it so well, might be admitted into her service, and continue to
+be my nurse and instructor.”
+
+Her majesty agreed to my petition, and easily got the farmer’s consent,
+who was glad enough to have his daughter preferred at court, and the
+poor girl herself was not able to hide her joy. My late master
+withdrew, bidding me farewell, and saying he had left me in a good
+service; to which I replied not a word, only making him a slight bow.
+
+The queen observed my coldness; and, when the farmer was gone out of
+the apartment, asked me the reason. I made bold to tell her majesty,
+“that I owed no other obligation to my late master, than his not
+dashing out the brains of a poor harmless creature, found by chance in
+his fields: which obligation was amply recompensed, by the gain he had
+made in showing me through half the kingdom, and the price he had now
+sold me for. That the life I had since led was laborious enough to kill
+an animal of ten times my strength. That my health was much impaired,
+by the continual drudgery of entertaining the rabble every hour of the
+day; and that, if my master had not thought my life in danger, her
+majesty would not have got so cheap a bargain. But as I was out of all
+fear of being ill-treated under the protection of so great and good an
+empress, the ornament of nature, the darling of the world, the delight
+of her subjects, the phœnix of the creation, so I hoped my late
+master’s apprehensions would appear to be groundless; for I already
+found my spirits revive, by the influence of her most august presence.”
+
+This was the sum of my speech, delivered with great improprieties and
+hesitation. The latter part was altogether framed in the style peculiar
+to that people, whereof I learned some phrases from Glumdalclitch,
+while she was carrying me to court.
+
+The queen, giving great allowance for my defectiveness in speaking,
+was, however, surprised at so much wit and good sense in so diminutive
+an animal. She took me in her own hand, and carried me to the king, who
+was then retired to his cabinet. His majesty, a prince of much gravity
+and austere countenance, not well observing my shape at first view,
+asked the queen after a cold manner “how long it was since she grew
+fond of a _splacnuck_?” for such it seems he took me to be, as I lay
+upon my breast in her majesty’s right hand. But this princess, who has
+an infinite deal of wit and humour, set me gently on my feet upon the
+scrutoire, and commanded me to give his majesty an account of myself,
+which I did in a very few words: and Glumdalclitch who attended at the
+cabinet door, and could not endure I should be out of her sight, being
+admitted, confirmed all that had passed from my arrival at her father’s
+house.
+
+The king, although he be as learned a person as any in his dominions,
+had been educated in the study of philosophy, and particularly
+mathematics; yet when he observed my shape exactly, and saw me walk
+erect, before I began to speak, conceived I might be a piece of
+clock-work (which is in that country arrived to a very great
+perfection) contrived by some ingenious artist. But when he heard my
+voice, and found what I delivered to be regular and rational, he could
+not conceal his astonishment. He was by no means satisfied with the
+relation I gave him of the manner I came into his kingdom, but thought
+it a story concerted between Glumdalclitch and her father, who had
+taught me a set of words to make me sell at a better price. Upon this
+imagination, he put several other questions to me, and still received
+rational answers: no otherwise defective than by a foreign accent, and
+an imperfect knowledge in the language, with some rustic phrases which
+I had learned at the farmer’s house, and did not suit the polite style
+of a court.
+
+His majesty sent for three great scholars, who were then in their
+weekly waiting, according to the custom in that country. These
+gentlemen, after they had a while examined my shape with much nicety,
+were of different opinions concerning me. They all agreed that I could
+not be produced according to the regular laws of nature, because I was
+not framed with a capacity of preserving my life, either by swiftness,
+or climbing of trees, or digging holes in the earth. They observed by
+my teeth, which they viewed with great exactness, that I was a
+carnivorous animal; yet most quadrupeds being an overmatch for me, and
+field mice, with some others, too nimble, they could not imagine how I
+should be able to support myself, unless I fed upon snails and other
+insects, which they offered, by many learned arguments, to evince that
+I could not possibly do. One of these virtuosi seemed to think that I
+might be an embryo, or abortive birth. But this opinion was rejected by
+the other two, who observed my limbs to be perfect and finished; and
+that I had lived several years, as it was manifest from my beard, the
+stumps whereof they plainly discovered through a magnifying glass. They
+would not allow me to be a dwarf, because my littleness was beyond all
+degrees of comparison; for the queen’s favourite dwarf, the smallest
+ever known in that kingdom, was near thirty feet high. After much
+debate, they concluded unanimously, that I was only _relplum scalcath_,
+which is interpreted literally _lusus naturæ_; a determination exactly
+agreeable to the modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors,
+disdaining the old evasion of occult causes, whereby the followers of
+Aristotle endeavoured in vain to disguise their ignorance, have
+invented this wonderful solution of all difficulties, to the
+unspeakable advancement of human knowledge.
+
+After this decisive conclusion, I entreated to be heard a word or two.
+I applied myself to the king, and assured his majesty, “that I came
+from a country which abounded with several millions of both sexes, and
+of my own stature; where the animals, trees, and houses, were all in
+proportion, and where, by consequence, I might be as able to defend
+myself, and to find sustenance, as any of his majesty’s subjects could
+do here; which I took for a full answer to those gentlemen’s
+arguments.” To this they only replied with a smile of contempt, saying,
+“that the farmer had instructed me very well in my lesson.” The king,
+who had a much better understanding, dismissing his learned men, sent
+for the farmer, who by good fortune was not yet gone out of town.
+Having therefore first examined him privately, and then confronted him
+with me and the young girl, his majesty began to think that what we
+told him might possibly be true. He desired the queen to order that a
+particular care should be taken of me; and was of opinion that
+Glumdalclitch should still continue in her office of tending me,
+because he observed we had a great affection for each other. A
+convenient apartment was provided for her at court: she had a sort of
+governess appointed to take care of her education, a maid to dress her,
+and two other servants for menial offices; but the care of me was
+wholly appropriated to herself. The queen commanded her own
+cabinet-maker to contrive a box, that might serve me for a bedchamber,
+after the model that Glumdalclitch and I should agree upon. This man
+was a most ingenious artist, and according to my direction, in three
+weeks finished for me a wooden chamber of sixteen feet square, and
+twelve high, with sash-windows, a door, and two closets, like a London
+bed-chamber. The board, that made the ceiling, was to be lifted up and
+down by two hinges, to put in a bed ready furnished by her majesty’s
+upholsterer, which Glumdalclitch took out every day to air, made it
+with her own hands, and letting it down at night, locked up the roof
+over me. A nice workman, who was famous for little curiosities,
+undertook to make me two chairs, with backs and frames, of a substance
+not unlike ivory, and two tables, with a cabinet to put my things in.
+The room was quilted on all sides, as well as the floor and the
+ceiling, to prevent any accident from the carelessness of those who
+carried me, and to break the force of a jolt, when I went in a coach. I
+desired a lock for my door, to prevent rats and mice from coming in.
+The smith, after several attempts, made the smallest that ever was seen
+among them, for I have known a larger at the gate of a gentleman’s
+house in England. I made a shift to keep the key in a pocket of my own,
+fearing Glumdalclitch might lose it. The queen likewise ordered the
+thinnest silks that could be gotten, to make me clothes, not much
+thicker than an English blanket, very cumbersome till I was accustomed
+to them. They were after the fashion of the kingdom, partly resembling
+the Persian, and partly the Chinese, and are a very grave and decent
+habit.
+
+The queen became so fond of my company, that she could not dine without
+me. I had a table placed upon the same at which her majesty ate, just
+at her left elbow, and a chair to sit on. Glumdalclitch stood on a
+stool on the floor near my table, to assist and take care of me. I had
+an entire set of silver dishes and plates, and other necessaries,
+which, in proportion to those of the queen, were not much bigger than
+what I have seen in a London toy-shop for the furniture of a
+baby-house: these my little nurse kept in her pocket in a silver box,
+and gave me at meals as I wanted them, always cleaning them herself. No
+person dined with the queen but the two princesses royal, the eldest
+sixteen years old, and the younger at that time thirteen and a month.
+Her majesty used to put a bit of meat upon one of my dishes, out of
+which I carved for myself, and her diversion was to see me eat in
+miniature: for the queen (who had indeed but a weak stomach) took up,
+at one mouthful, as much as a dozen English farmers could eat at a
+meal, which to me was for some time a very nauseous sight. She would
+craunch the wing of a lark, bones and all, between her teeth, although
+it were nine times as large as that of a full-grown turkey; and put a
+bit of bread into her mouth as big as two twelve-penny loaves. She
+drank out of a golden cup, above a hogshead at a draught. Her knives
+were twice as long as a scythe, set straight upon the handle. The
+spoons, forks, and other instruments, were all in the same proportion.
+I remember when Glumdalclitch carried me, out of curiosity, to see some
+of the tables at court, where ten or a dozen of those enormous knives
+and forks were lifted up together, I thought I had never till then
+beheld so terrible a sight.
+
+It is the custom, that every Wednesday (which, as I have observed, is
+their Sabbath) the king and queen, with the royal issue of both sexes,
+dine together in the apartment of his majesty, to whom I was now become
+a great favourite; and at these times, my little chair and table were
+placed at his left hand, before one of the salt-cellars. This prince
+took a pleasure in conversing with me, inquiring into the manners,
+religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe; wherein I gave him
+the best account I was able. His apprehension was so clear, and his
+judgment so exact, that he made very wise reflections and observations
+upon all I said. But I confess, that, after I had been a little too
+copious in talking of my own beloved country, of our trade and wars by
+sea and land, of our schisms in religion, and parties in the state; the
+prejudices of his education prevailed so far, that he could not forbear
+taking me up in his right hand, and stroking me gently with the other,
+after a hearty fit of laughing, asked me, “whether I was a whig or
+tory?” Then turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a
+white staff, near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, he
+observed “how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be
+mimicked by such diminutive insects as I: and yet,” says he, “I dare
+engage these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour;
+they contrive little nests and burrows, that they call houses and
+cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they
+fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray!” And thus he continued
+on, while my colour came and went several times, with indignation, to
+hear our noble country, the mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of
+France, the arbitress of Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour, and
+truth, the pride and envy of the world, so contemptuously treated.
+
+But as I was not in a condition to resent injuries, so upon mature
+thoughts I began to doubt whether I was injured or no. For, after
+having been accustomed several months to the sight and converse of this
+people, and observed every object upon which I cast my eyes to be of
+proportionable magnitude, the horror I had at first conceived from
+their bulk and aspect was so far worn off, that if I had then beheld a
+company of English lords and ladies in their finery and birth-day
+clothes, acting their several parts in the most courtly manner of
+strutting, and bowing, and prating, to say the truth, I should have
+been strongly tempted to laugh as much at them as the king and his
+grandees did at me. Neither, indeed, could I forbear smiling at myself,
+when the queen used to place me upon her hand towards a looking-glass,
+by which both our persons appeared before me in full view together; and
+there could be nothing more ridiculous than the comparison; so that I
+really began to imagine myself dwindled many degrees below my usual
+size.
+
+Nothing angered and mortified me so much as the queen’s dwarf; who
+being of the lowest stature that was ever in that country (for I verily
+think he was not full thirty feet high), became so insolent at seeing a
+creature so much beneath him, that he would always affect to swagger
+and look big as he passed by me in the queen’s antechamber, while I was
+standing on some table talking with the lords or ladies of the court,
+and he seldom failed of a smart word or two upon my littleness; against
+which I could only revenge myself by calling him brother, challenging
+him to wrestle, and such repartees as are usually in the mouths of
+court pages. One day, at dinner, this malicious little cub was so
+nettled with something I had said to him, that, raising himself upon
+the frame of her majesty’s chair, he took me up by the middle, as I was
+sitting down, not thinking any harm, and let me drop into a large
+silver bowl of cream, and then ran away as fast as he could. I fell
+over head and ears, and, if I had not been a good swimmer, it might
+have gone very hard with me; for Glumdalclitch in that instant happened
+to be at the other end of the room, and the queen was in such a fright,
+that she wanted presence of mind to assist me. But my little nurse ran
+to my relief, and took me out, after I had swallowed above a quart of
+cream. I was put to bed: however, I received no other damage than the
+loss of a suit of clothes, which was utterly spoiled. The dwarf was
+soundly whipt, and as a farther punishment, forced to drink up the bowl
+of cream into which he had thrown me: neither was he ever restored to
+favour; for soon after the queen bestowed him on a lady of high
+quality, so that I saw him no more, to my very great satisfaction; for
+I could not tell to what extremities such a malicious urchin might have
+carried his resentment.
+
+He had before served me a scurvy trick, which set the queen a-laughing,
+although at the same time she was heartily vexed, and would have
+immediately cashiered him, if I had not been so generous as to
+intercede. Her majesty had taken a marrow-bone upon her plate, and,
+after knocking out the marrow, placed the bone again in the dish erect,
+as it stood before; the dwarf, watching his opportunity, while
+Glumdalclitch was gone to the side-board, mounted the stool that she
+stood on to take care of me at meals, took me up in both hands, and
+squeezing my legs together, wedged them into the marrow bone above my
+waist, where I stuck for some time, and made a very ridiculous figure.
+I believe it was near a minute before any one knew what was become of
+me; for I thought it below me to cry out. But, as princes seldom get
+their meat hot, my legs were not scalded, only my stockings and
+breeches in a sad condition. The dwarf, at my entreaty, had no other
+punishment than a sound whipping.
+
+I was frequently rallied by the queen upon account of my fearfulness;
+and she used to ask me whether the people of my country were as great
+cowards as myself? The occasion was this: the kingdom is much pestered
+with flies in summer; and these odious insects, each of them as big as
+a Dunstable lark, hardly gave me any rest while I sat at dinner, with
+their continual humming and buzzing about mine ears. They would
+sometimes alight upon my victuals, and leave their loathsome excrement,
+or spawn behind, which to me was very visible, though not to the
+natives of that country, whose large optics were not so acute as mine,
+in viewing smaller objects. Sometimes they would fix upon my nose, or
+forehead, where they stung me to the quick, smelling very offensively;
+and I could easily trace that viscous matter, which, our naturalists
+tell us, enables those creatures to walk with their feet upwards upon a
+ceiling. I had much ado to defend myself against these detestable
+animals, and could not forbear starting when they came on my face. It
+was the common practice of the dwarf, to catch a number of these
+insects in his hand, as schoolboys do among us, and let them out
+suddenly under my nose, on purpose to frighten me, and divert the
+queen. My remedy was to cut them in pieces with my knife, as they flew
+in the air, wherein my dexterity was much admired.
+
+I remember, one morning, when Glumdalclitch had set me in a box upon a
+window, as she usually did in fair days to give me air (for I durst not
+venture to let the box be hung on a nail out of the window, as we do
+with cages in England), after I had lifted up one of my sashes, and sat
+down at my table to eat a piece of sweet cake for my breakfast, above
+twenty wasps, allured by the smell, came flying into the room, humming
+louder than the drones of as many bagpipes. Some of them seized my
+cake, and carried it piecemeal away; others flew about my head and
+face, confounding me with the noise, and putting me in the utmost
+terror of their stings. However, I had the courage to rise and draw my
+hanger, and attack them in the air. I dispatched four of them, but the
+rest got away, and I presently shut my window. These insects were as
+large as partridges: I took out their stings, found them an inch and a
+half long, and as sharp as needles. I carefully preserved them all; and
+having since shown them, with some other curiosities, in several parts
+of Europe, upon my return to England I gave three of them to Gresham
+College, and kept the fourth for myself.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The country described. A proposal for correcting modern maps. The
+king’s palace; and some account of the metropolis. The author’s way of
+travelling. The chief temple described.
+
+
+I now intend to give the reader a short description of this country, as
+far as I travelled in it, which was not above two thousand miles round
+Lorbrulgrud, the metropolis. For the queen, whom I always attended,
+never went farther when she accompanied the king in his progresses, and
+there staid till his majesty returned from viewing his frontiers. The
+whole extent of this prince’s dominions reaches about six thousand
+miles in length, and from three to five in breadth: whence I cannot but
+conclude, that our geographers of Europe are in a great error, by
+supposing nothing but sea between Japan and California; for it was ever
+my opinion, that there must be a balance of earth to counterpoise the
+great continent of Tartary; and therefore they ought to correct their
+maps and charts, by joining this vast tract of land to the north-west
+parts of America, wherein I shall be ready to lend them my assistance.
+
+The kingdom is a peninsula, terminated to the north-east by a ridge of
+mountains thirty miles high, which are altogether impassable, by reason
+of the volcanoes upon the tops: neither do the most learned know what
+sort of mortals inhabit beyond those mountains, or whether they be
+inhabited at all. On the three other sides, it is bounded by the ocean.
+There is not one seaport in the whole kingdom: and those parts of the
+coasts into which the rivers issue, are so full of pointed rocks, and
+the sea generally so rough, that there is no venturing with the
+smallest of their boats; so that these people are wholly excluded from
+any commerce with the rest of the world. But the large rivers are full
+of vessels, and abound with excellent fish; for they seldom get any
+from the sea, because the sea fish are of the same size with those in
+Europe, and consequently not worth catching; whereby it is manifest,
+that nature, in the production of plants and animals of so
+extraordinary a bulk, is wholly confined to this continent, of which I
+leave the reasons to be determined by philosophers. However, now and
+then they take a whale that happens to be dashed against the rocks,
+which the common people feed on heartily. These whales I have known so
+large, that a man could hardly carry one upon his shoulders; and
+sometimes, for curiosity, they are brought in hampers to Lorbrulgrud; I
+saw one of them in a dish at the king’s table, which passed for a
+rarity, but I did not observe he was fond of it; for I think, indeed,
+the bigness disgusted him, although I have seen one somewhat larger in
+Greenland.
+
+The country is well inhabited, for it contains fifty-one cities, near a
+hundred walled towns, and a great number of villages. To satisfy my
+curious reader, it may be sufficient to describe Lorbrulgrud. This city
+stands upon almost two equal parts, on each side the river that passes
+through. It contains above eighty thousand houses, and about six
+hundred thousand inhabitants. It is in length three _glomglungs_ (which
+make about fifty-four English miles,) and two and a half in breadth; as
+I measured it myself in the royal map made by the king’s order, which
+was laid on the ground on purpose for me, and extended a hundred feet:
+I paced the diameter and circumference several times barefoot, and,
+computing by the scale, measured it pretty exactly.
+
+The king’s palace is no regular edifice, but a heap of buildings, about
+seven miles round: the chief rooms are generally two hundred and forty
+feet high, and broad and long in proportion. A coach was allowed to
+Glumdalclitch and me, wherein her governess frequently took her out to
+see the town, or go among the shops; and I was always of the party,
+carried in my box; although the girl, at my own desire, would often
+take me out, and hold me in her hand, that I might more conveniently
+view the houses and the people, as we passed along the streets. I
+reckoned our coach to be about a square of Westminster-hall, but not
+altogether so high: however, I cannot be very exact. One day the
+governess ordered our coachman to stop at several shops, where the
+beggars, watching their opportunity, crowded to the sides of the coach,
+and gave me the most horrible spectacle that ever a European eye
+beheld. There was a woman with a cancer in her breast, swelled to a
+monstrous size, full of holes, in two or three of which I could have
+easily crept, and covered my whole body. There was a fellow with a wen
+in his neck, larger than five wool-packs; and another, with a couple of
+wooden legs, each about twenty feet high. But the most hateful sight of
+all, was the lice crawling on their clothes. I could see distinctly the
+limbs of these vermin with my naked eye, much better than those of a
+European louse through a microscope, and their snouts with which they
+rooted like swine. They were the first I had ever beheld, and I should
+have been curious enough to dissect one of them, if I had had proper
+instruments, which I unluckily left behind me in the ship, although,
+indeed, the sight was so nauseous, that it perfectly turned my stomach.
+
+Besides the large box in which I was usually carried, the queen ordered
+a smaller one to be made for me, of about twelve feet square, and ten
+high, for the convenience of travelling; because the other was somewhat
+too large for Glumdalclitch’s lap, and cumbersome in the coach; it was
+made by the same artist, whom I directed in the whole contrivance. This
+travelling-closet was an exact square, with a window in the middle of
+three of the squares, and each window was latticed with iron wire on
+the outside, to prevent accidents in long journeys. On the fourth side,
+which had no window, two strong staples were fixed, through which the
+person that carried me, when I had a mind to be on horseback, put a
+leathern belt, and buckled it about his waist. This was always the
+office of some grave trusty servant, in whom I could confide, whether I
+attended the king and queen in their progresses, or were disposed to
+see the gardens, or pay a visit to some great lady or minister of state
+in the court, when Glumdalclitch happened to be out of order; for I
+soon began to be known and esteemed among the greatest officers, I
+suppose more upon account of their majesties’ favour, than any merit of
+my own. In journeys, when I was weary of the coach, a servant on
+horseback would buckle on my box, and place it upon a cushion before
+him; and there I had a full prospect of the country on three sides,
+from my three windows. I had, in this closet, a field-bed and a
+hammock, hung from the ceiling, two chairs and a table, neatly screwed
+to the floor, to prevent being tossed about by the agitation of the
+horse or the coach. And having been long used to sea-voyages, those
+motions, although sometimes very violent, did not much discompose me.
+
+Whenever I had a mind to see the town, it was always in my
+travelling-closet; which Glumdalclitch held in her lap in a kind of
+open sedan, after the fashion of the country, borne by four men, and
+attended by two others in the queen’s livery. The people, who had often
+heard of me, were very curious to crowd about the sedan, and the girl
+was complaisant enough to make the bearers stop, and to take me in her
+hand, that I might be more conveniently seen.
+
+I was very desirous to see the chief temple, and particularly the tower
+belonging to it, which is reckoned the highest in the kingdom.
+Accordingly one day my nurse carried me thither, but I may truly say I
+came back disappointed; for the height is not above three thousand
+feet, reckoning from the ground to the highest pinnacle top; which,
+allowing for the difference between the size of those people and us in
+Europe, is no great matter for admiration, nor at all equal in
+proportion (if I rightly remember) to Salisbury steeple. But, not to
+detract from a nation, to which, during my life, I shall acknowledge
+myself extremely obliged, it must be allowed, that whatever this famous
+tower wants in height, is amply made up in beauty and strength: for the
+walls are near a hundred feet thick, built of hewn stone, whereof each
+is about forty feet square, and adorned on all sides with statues of
+gods and emperors, cut in marble, larger than the life, placed in their
+several niches. I measured a little finger which had fallen down from
+one of these statues, and lay unperceived among some rubbish, and found
+it exactly four feet and an inch in length. Glumdalclitch wrapped it up
+in her handkerchief, and carried it home in her pocket, to keep among
+other trinkets, of which the girl was very fond, as children at her age
+usually are.
+
+The king’s kitchen is indeed a noble building, vaulted at top, and
+about six hundred feet high. The great oven is not so wide, by ten
+paces, as the cupola at St. Paul’s: for I measured the latter on
+purpose, after my return. But if I should describe the kitchen grate,
+the prodigious pots and kettles, the joints of meat turning on the
+spits, with many other particulars, perhaps I should be hardly
+believed; at least a severe critic would be apt to think I enlarged a
+little, as travellers are often suspected to do. To avoid which censure
+I fear I have run too much into the other extreme; and that if this
+treatise should happen to be translated into the language of
+Brobdingnag (which is the general name of that kingdom,) and
+transmitted thither, the king and his people would have reason to
+complain that I had done them an injury, by a false and diminutive
+representation.
+
+His majesty seldom keeps above six hundred horses in his stables: they
+are generally from fifty-four to sixty feet high. But, when he goes
+abroad on solemn days, he is attended, for state, by a military guard
+of five hundred horse, which, indeed, I thought was the most splendid
+sight that could be ever beheld, till I saw part of his army in
+battalia, whereof I shall find another occasion to speak.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Several adventures that happened to the author. The execution of a
+criminal. The author shows his skill in navigation.
+
+
+I should have lived happy enough in that country, if my littleness had
+not exposed me to several ridiculous and troublesome accidents; some of
+which I shall venture to relate. Glumdalclitch often carried me into
+the gardens of the court in my smaller box, and would sometimes take me
+out of it, and hold me in her hand, or set me down to walk. I remember,
+before the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one day into those
+gardens, and my nurse having set me down, he and I being close
+together, near some dwarf apple trees, I must needs show my wit, by a
+silly allusion between him and the trees, which happens to hold in
+their language as it does in ours. Whereupon, the malicious rogue,
+watching his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook
+it directly over my head, by which a dozen apples, each of them near as
+large as a Bristol barrel, came tumbling about my ears; one of them hit
+me on the back as I chanced to stoop, and knocked me down flat on my
+face; but I received no other hurt, and the dwarf was pardoned at my
+desire, because I had given the provocation.
+
+Another day, Glumdalclitch left me on a smooth grass-plot to divert
+myself, while she walked at some distance with her governess. In the
+meantime, there suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail, that I was
+immediately by the force of it, struck to the ground: and when I was
+down, the hailstones gave me such cruel bangs all over the body, as if
+I had been pelted with tennis-balls; however, I made a shift to creep
+on all fours, and shelter myself, by lying flat on my face, on the
+lee-side of a border of lemon-thyme, but so bruised from head to foot,
+that I could not go abroad in ten days. Neither is this at all to be
+wondered at, because nature, in that country, observing the same
+proportion through all her operations, a hailstone is near eighteen
+hundred times as large as one in Europe; which I can assert upon
+experience, having been so curious as to weigh and measure them.
+
+But a more dangerous accident happened to me in the same garden, when
+my little nurse, believing she had put me in a secure place (which I
+often entreated her to do, that I might enjoy my own thoughts,) and
+having left my box at home, to avoid the trouble of carrying it, went
+to another part of the garden with her governess and some ladies of her
+acquaintance. While she was absent, and out of hearing, a small white
+spaniel that belonged to one of the chief gardeners, having got by
+accident into the garden, happened to range near the place where I lay:
+the dog, following the scent, came directly up, and taking me in his
+mouth, ran straight to his master wagging his tail, and set me gently
+on the ground. By good fortune he had been so well taught, that I was
+carried between his teeth without the least hurt, or even tearing my
+clothes. But the poor gardener, who knew me well, and had a great
+kindness for me, was in a terrible fright: he gently took me up in both
+his hands, and asked me how I did? but I was so amazed and out of
+breath, that I could not speak a word. In a few minutes I came to
+myself, and he carried me safe to my little nurse, who, by this time,
+had returned to the place where she left me, and was in cruel agonies
+when I did not appear, nor answer when she called. She severely
+reprimanded the gardener on account of his dog. But the thing was
+hushed up, and never known at court, for the girl was afraid of the
+queen’s anger; and truly, as to myself, I thought it would not be for
+my reputation, that such a story should go about.
+
+This accident absolutely determined Glumdalclitch never to trust me
+abroad for the future out of her sight. I had been long afraid of this
+resolution, and therefore concealed from her some little unlucky
+adventures, that happened in those times when I was left by myself.
+Once a kite, hovering over the garden, made a stoop at me, and if I had
+not resolutely drawn my hanger, and run under a thick espalier, he
+would have certainly carried me away in his talons. Another time,
+walking to the top of a fresh mole-hill, I fell to my neck in the hole,
+through which that animal had cast up the earth, and coined some lie,
+not worth remembering, to excuse myself for spoiling my clothes. I
+likewise broke my right shin against the shell of a snail, which I
+happened to stumble over, as I was walking alone and thinking on poor
+England.
+
+I cannot tell whether I were more pleased or mortified to observe, in
+those solitary walks, that the smaller birds did not appear to be at
+all afraid of me, but would hop about within a yard’s distance, looking
+for worms and other food, with as much indifference and security as if
+no creature at all were near them. I remember, a thrush had the
+confidence to snatch out of my hand, with his bill, a piece of cake
+that Glumdalclitch had just given me for my breakfast. When I attempted
+to catch any of these birds, they would boldly turn against me,
+endeavouring to peck my fingers, which I durst not venture within their
+reach; and then they would hop back unconcerned, to hunt for worms or
+snails, as they did before. But one day, I took a thick cudgel, and
+threw it with all my strength so luckily, at a linnet, that I knocked
+him down, and seizing him by the neck with both my hands, ran with him
+in triumph to my nurse. However, the bird, who had only been stunned,
+recovering himself gave me so many boxes with his wings, on both sides
+of my head and body, though I held him at arm’s length, and was out of
+the reach of his claws, that I was twenty times thinking to let him go.
+But I was soon relieved by one of our servants, who wrung off the
+bird’s neck, and I had him next day for dinner, by the queen’s command.
+This linnet, as near as I can remember, seemed to be somewhat larger
+than an English swan.
+
+The maids of honour often invited Glumdalclitch to their apartments,
+and desired she would bring me along with her, on purpose to have the
+pleasure of seeing and touching me. They would often strip me naked
+from top to toe, and lay me at full length in their bosoms; wherewith I
+was much disgusted because, to say the truth, a very offensive smell
+came from their skins; which I do not mention, or intend, to the
+disadvantage of those excellent ladies, for whom I have all manner of
+respect; but I conceive that my sense was more acute in proportion to
+my littleness, and that those illustrious persons were no more
+disagreeable to their lovers, or to each other, than people of the same
+quality are with us in England. And, after all, I found their natural
+smell was much more supportable, than when they used perfumes, under
+which I immediately swooned away. I cannot forget, that an intimate
+friend of mine in Lilliput, took the freedom in a warm day, when I had
+used a good deal of exercise, to complain of a strong smell about me,
+although I am as little faulty that way, as most of my sex: but I
+suppose his faculty of smelling was as nice with regard to me, as mine
+was to that of this people. Upon this point, I cannot forbear doing
+justice to the queen my mistress, and Glumdalclitch my nurse, whose
+persons were as sweet as those of any lady in England.
+
+That which gave me most uneasiness among these maids of honour (when my
+nurse carried me to visit them) was, to see them use me without any
+manner of ceremony, like a creature who had no sort of consequence: for
+they would strip themselves to the skin, and put on their smocks in my
+presence, while I was placed on their toilet, directly before their
+naked bodies, which I am sure to me was very far from being a tempting
+sight, or from giving me any other emotions than those of horror and
+disgust: their skins appeared so coarse and uneven, so variously
+coloured, when I saw them near, with a mole here and there as broad as
+a trencher, and hairs hanging from it thicker than packthreads, to say
+nothing farther concerning the rest of their persons. Neither did they
+at all scruple, while I was by, to discharge what they had drank, to
+the quantity of at least two hogsheads, in a vessel that held above
+three tuns. The handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant,
+frolicsome girl of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of
+her nipples, with many other tricks, wherein the reader will excuse me
+for not being over particular. But I was so much displeased, that I
+entreated Glumdalclitch to contrive some excuse for not seeing that
+young lady any more.
+
+One day, a young gentleman, who was nephew to my nurse’s governess,
+came and pressed them both to see an execution. It was of a man, who
+had murdered one of that gentleman’s intimate acquaintance.
+Glumdalclitch was prevailed on to be of the company, very much against
+her inclination, for she was naturally tender-hearted: and, as for
+myself, although I abhorred such kind of spectacles, yet my curiosity
+tempted me to see something that I thought must be extraordinary. The
+malefactor was fixed in a chair upon a scaffold erected for that
+purpose, and his head cut off at one blow, with a sword of about forty
+feet long. The veins and arteries spouted up such a prodigious quantity
+of blood, and so high in the air, that the great _jet d’eau_ at
+Versailles was not equal to it for the time it lasted: and the head,
+when it fell on the scaffold floor, gave such a bounce as made me
+start, although I was at least half an English mile distant.
+
+The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-voyages, and took
+all occasions to divert me when I was melancholy, asked me whether I
+understood how to handle a sail or an oar, and whether a little
+exercise of rowing might not be convenient for my health? I answered,
+that I understood both very well: for although my proper employment had
+been to be surgeon or doctor to the ship, yet often, upon a pinch, I
+was forced to work like a common mariner. But I could not see how this
+could be done in their country, where the smallest wherry was equal to
+a first-rate man of war among us; and such a boat as I could manage
+would never live in any of their rivers. Her majesty said, if I would
+contrive a boat, her own joiner should make it, and she would provide a
+place for me to sail in. The fellow was an ingenious workman, and by my
+instructions, in ten days, finished a pleasure-boat with all its
+tackling, able conveniently to hold eight Europeans. When it was
+finished, the queen was so delighted, that she ran with it in her lap
+to the king, who ordered it to be put into a cistern full of water,
+with me in it, by way of trial, where I could not manage my two sculls,
+or little oars, for want of room. But the queen had before contrived
+another project. She ordered the joiner to make a wooden trough of
+three hundred feet long, fifty broad, and eight deep; which, being well
+pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor, along the wall,
+in an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let
+out the water, when it began to grow stale; and two servants could
+easily fill it in half an hour. Here I often used to row for my own
+diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought
+themselves well entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I
+would put up my sail, and then my business was only to steer, while the
+ladies gave me a gale with their fans; and, when they were weary, some
+of their pages would blow my sail forward with their breath, while I
+showed my art by steering starboard or larboard as I pleased. When I
+had done, Glumdalclitch always carried back my boat into her closet,
+and hung it on a nail to dry.
+
+In this exercise I once met an accident, which had like to have cost me
+my life; for, one of the pages having put my boat into the trough, the
+governess who attended Glumdalclitch very officiously lifted me up, to
+place me in the boat: but I happened to slip through her fingers, and
+should infallibly have fallen down forty feet upon the floor, if, by
+the luckiest chance in the world, I had not been stopped by a
+corking-pin that stuck in the good gentlewoman’s stomacher; the head of
+the pin passing between my shirt and the waistband of my breeches, and
+thus I was held by the middle in the air, till Glumdalclitch ran to my
+relief.
+
+Another time, one of the servants, whose office it was to fill my
+trough every third day with fresh water, was so careless as to let a
+huge frog (not perceiving it) slip out of his pail. The frog lay
+concealed till I was put into my boat, but then, seeing a
+resting-place, climbed up, and made it lean so much on one side, that I
+was forced to balance it with all my weight on the other, to prevent
+overturning. When the frog was got in, it hopped at once half the
+length of the boat, and then over my head, backward and forward,
+daubing my face and clothes with its odious slime. The largeness of its
+features made it appear the most deformed animal that can be conceived.
+However, I desired Glumdalclitch to let me deal with it alone. I banged
+it a good while with one of my sculls, and at last forced it to leap
+out of the boat.
+
+But the greatest danger I ever underwent in that kingdom, was from a
+monkey, who belonged to one of the clerks of the kitchen. Glumdalclitch
+had locked me up in her closet, while she went somewhere upon business,
+or a visit. The weather being very warm, the closet-window was left
+open, as well as the windows and the door of my bigger box, in which I
+usually lived, because of its largeness and conveniency. As I sat
+quietly meditating at my table, I heard something bounce in at the
+closet-window, and skip about from one side to the other: whereat,
+although I was much alarmed, yet I ventured to look out, but not
+stirring from my seat; and then I saw this frolicsome animal frisking
+and leaping up and down, till at last he came to my box, which he
+seemed to view with great pleasure and curiosity, peeping in at the
+door and every window. I retreated to the farther corner of my room; or
+box; but the monkey looking in at every side, put me in such a fright,
+that I wanted presence of mind to conceal myself under the bed, as I
+might easily have done. After some time spent in peeping, grinning, and
+chattering, he at last espied me; and reaching one of his paws in at
+the door, as a cat does when she plays with a mouse, although I often
+shifted place to avoid him, he at length seized the lappet of my coat
+(which being made of that country silk, was very thick and strong), and
+dragged me out. He took me up in his right fore-foot and held me as a
+nurse does a child she is going to suckle, just as I have seen the same
+sort of creature do with a kitten in Europe; and when I offered to
+struggle he squeezed me so hard, that I thought it more prudent to
+submit. I have good reason to believe, that he took me for a young one
+of his own species, by his often stroking my face very gently with his
+other paw. In these diversions he was interrupted by a noise at the
+closet door, as if somebody were opening it: whereupon he suddenly
+leaped up to the window at which he had come in, and thence upon the
+leads and gutters, walking upon three legs, and holding me in the
+fourth, till he clambered up to a roof that was next to ours. I heard
+Glumdalclitch give a shriek at the moment he was carrying me out. The
+poor girl was almost distracted: that quarter of the palace was all in
+an uproar; the servants ran for ladders; the monkey was seen by
+hundreds in the court, sitting upon the ridge of a building, holding me
+like a baby in one of his forepaws, and feeding me with the other, by
+cramming into my mouth some victuals he had squeezed out of the bag on
+one side of his chaps, and patting me when I would not eat; whereat
+many of the rabble below could not forbear laughing; neither do I think
+they justly ought to be blamed, for, without question, the sight was
+ridiculous enough to every body but myself. Some of the people threw up
+stones, hoping to drive the monkey down; but this was strictly
+forbidden, or else, very probably, my brains had been dashed out.
+
+The ladders were now applied, and mounted by several men; which the
+monkey observing, and finding himself almost encompassed, not being
+able to make speed enough with his three legs, let me drop on a ridge
+tile, and made his escape. Here I sat for some time, five hundred yards
+from the ground, expecting every moment to be blown down by the wind,
+or to fall by my own giddiness, and come tumbling over and over from
+the ridge to the eaves; but an honest lad, one of my nurse’s footmen,
+climbed up, and putting me into his breeches pocket, brought me down
+safe.
+
+I was almost choked with the filthy stuff the monkey had crammed down
+my throat: but my dear little nurse picked it out of my mouth with a
+small needle, and then I fell a-vomiting, which gave me great relief.
+Yet I was so weak and bruised in the sides with the squeezes given me
+by this odious animal, that I was forced to keep my bed a fortnight.
+The king, queen, and all the court, sent every day to inquire after my
+health; and her majesty made me several visits during my sickness. The
+monkey was killed, and an order made, that no such animal should be
+kept about the palace.
+
+When I attended the king after my recovery, to return him thanks for
+his favours, he was pleased to rally me a good deal upon this
+adventure. He asked me, “what my thoughts and speculations were, while
+I lay in the monkey’s paw; how I liked the victuals he gave me; his
+manner of feeding; and whether the fresh air on the roof had sharpened
+my stomach.” He desired to know, “what I would have done upon such an
+occasion in my own country.” I told his majesty, “that in Europe we had
+no monkeys, except such as were brought for curiosity from other
+places, and so small, that I could deal with a dozen of them together,
+if they presumed to attack me. And as for that monstrous animal with
+whom I was so lately engaged (it was indeed as large as an elephant),
+if my fears had suffered me to think so far as to make use of my
+hanger,” (looking fiercely, and clapping my hand on the hilt, as I
+spoke) “when he poked his paw into my chamber, perhaps I should have
+given him such a wound, as would have made him glad to withdraw it with
+more haste than he put it in.” This I delivered in a firm tone, like a
+person who was jealous lest his courage should be called in question.
+However, my speech produced nothing else beside a loud laughter, which
+all the respect due to his majesty from those about him could not make
+them contain. This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man
+to endeavour to do himself honour among those who are out of all degree
+of equality or comparison with him. And yet I have seen the moral of my
+own behaviour very frequent in England since my return; where a little
+contemptible varlet, without the least title to birth, person, wit, or
+common sense, shall presume to look with importance, and put himself
+upon a foot with the greatest persons of the kingdom.
+
+I was every day furnishing the court with some ridiculous story: and
+Glumdalclitch, although she loved me to excess, yet was arch enough to
+inform the queen, whenever I committed any folly that she thought would
+be diverting to her majesty. The girl, who had been out of order, was
+carried by her governess to take the air about an hour’s distance, or
+thirty miles from town. They alighted out of the coach near a small
+foot-path in a field, and Glumdalclitch setting down my travelling box,
+I went out of it to walk. There was a cow-dung in the path, and I must
+need try my activity by attempting to leap over it. I took a run, but
+unfortunately jumped short, and found myself just in the middle up to
+my knees. I waded through with some difficulty, and one of the footmen
+wiped me as clean as he could with his handkerchief, for I was filthily
+bemired; and my nurse confined me to my box, till we returned home;
+where the queen was soon informed of what had passed, and the footmen
+spread it about the court: so that all the mirth for some days was at
+my expense.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Several contrivances of the author to please the king and queen. He
+shows his skill in music. The king inquires into the state of England,
+which the author relates to him. The king’s observations thereon.
+
+
+I used to attend the king’s levee once or twice a week, and had often
+seen him under the barber’s hand, which indeed was at first very
+terrible to behold; for the razor was almost twice as long as an
+ordinary scythe. His majesty, according to the custom of the country,
+was only shaved twice a week. I once prevailed on the barber to give me
+some of the suds or lather, out of which I picked forty or fifty of the
+strongest stumps of hair. I then took a piece of fine wood, and cut it
+like the back of a comb, making several holes in it at equal distances
+with as small a needle as I could get from Glumdalclitch. I fixed in
+the stumps so artificially, scraping and sloping them with my knife
+toward the points, that I made a very tolerable comb; which was a
+seasonable supply, my own being so much broken in the teeth, that it
+was almost useless: neither did I know any artist in that country so
+nice and exact, as would undertake to make me another.
+
+And this puts me in mind of an amusement, wherein I spent many of my
+leisure hours. I desired the queen’s woman to save for me the combings
+of her majesty’s hair, whereof in time I got a good quantity; and
+consulting with my friend the cabinet-maker, who had received general
+orders to do little jobs for me, I directed him to make two
+chair-frames, no larger than those I had in my box, and to bore little
+holes with a fine awl, round those parts where I designed the backs and
+seats; through these holes I wove the strongest hairs I could pick out,
+just after the manner of cane chairs in England. When they were
+finished, I made a present of them to her majesty; who kept them in her
+cabinet, and used to show them for curiosities, as indeed they were the
+wonder of every one that beheld them. The queen would have me sit upon
+one of these chairs, but I absolutely refused to obey her, protesting I
+would rather die than place a dishonourable part of my body on those
+precious hairs, that once adorned her majesty’s head. Of these hairs
+(as I had always a mechanical genius) I likewise made a neat little
+purse, about five feet long, with her majesty’s name deciphered in gold
+letters, which I gave to Glumdalclitch, by the queen’s consent. To say
+the truth, it was more for show than use, being not of strength to bear
+the weight of the larger coins, and therefore she kept nothing in it
+but some little toys that girls are fond of.
+
+The king, who delighted in music, had frequent concerts at court, to
+which I was sometimes carried, and set in my box on a table to hear
+them: but the noise was so great that I could hardly distinguish the
+tunes. I am confident that all the drums and trumpets of a royal army,
+beating and sounding together just at your ears, could not equal it. My
+practice was to have my box removed from the place where the performers
+sat, as far as I could, then to shut the doors and windows of it, and
+draw the window curtains; after which I found their music not
+disagreeable.
+
+I had learned in my youth to play a little upon the spinet.
+Glumdalclitch kept one in her chamber, and a master attended twice a
+week to teach her: I called it a spinet, because it somewhat resembled
+that instrument, and was played upon in the same manner. A fancy came
+into my head, that I would entertain the king and queen with an English
+tune upon this instrument. But this appeared extremely difficult: for
+the spinet was near sixty feet long, each key being almost a foot wide,
+so that with my arms extended I could not reach to above five keys, and
+to press them down required a good smart stroke with my fist, which
+would be too great a labour, and to no purpose. The method I contrived
+was this: I prepared two round sticks, about the bigness of common
+cudgels; they were thicker at one end than the other, and I covered the
+thicker ends with pieces of a mouse’s skin, that by rapping on them I
+might neither damage the tops of the keys nor interrupt the sound.
+Before the spinet a bench was placed, about four feet below the keys,
+and I was put upon the bench. I ran sideling upon it, that way and
+this, as fast as I could, banging the proper keys with my two sticks,
+and made a shift to play a jig, to the great satisfaction of both their
+majesties; but it was the most violent exercise I ever underwent; and
+yet I could not strike above sixteen keys, nor consequently play the
+bass and treble together, as other artists do; which was a great
+disadvantage to my performance.
+
+The king, who, as I before observed, was a prince of excellent
+understanding, would frequently order that I should be brought in my
+box, and set upon the table in his closet: he would then command me to
+bring one of my chairs out of the box, and sit down within three yards
+distance upon the top of the cabinet, which brought me almost to a
+level with his face. In this manner I had several conversations with
+him. I one day took the freedom to tell his majesty, “that the contempt
+he discovered towards Europe, and the rest of the world, did not seem
+answerable to those excellent qualities of mind that he was master of;
+that reason did not extend itself with the bulk of the body; on the
+contrary, we observed in our country, that the tallest persons were
+usually the least provided with it; that among other animals, bees and
+ants had the reputation of more industry, art, and sagacity, than many
+of the larger kinds; and that, as inconsiderable as he took me to be, I
+hoped I might live to do his majesty some signal service.” The king
+heard me with attention, and began to conceive a much better opinion of
+me than he had ever before. He desired “I would give him as exact an
+account of the government of England as I possibly could; because, as
+fond as princes commonly are of their own customs (for so he
+conjectured of other monarchs, by my former discourses), he should be
+glad to hear of any thing that might deserve imitation.”
+
+Imagine with thyself, courteous reader, how often I then wished for the
+tongue of Demosthenes or Cicero, that might have enabled me to
+celebrate the praise of my own dear native country in a style equal to
+its merits and felicity.
+
+I began my discourse by informing his majesty, that our dominions
+consisted of two islands, which composed three mighty kingdoms, under
+one sovereign, beside our plantations in America. I dwelt long upon the
+fertility of our soil, and the temperature of our climate. I then spoke
+at large upon the constitution of an English parliament; partly made up
+of an illustrious body called the House of Peers; persons of the
+noblest blood, and of the most ancient and ample patrimonies. I
+described that extraordinary care always taken of their education in
+arts and arms, to qualify them for being counsellors both to the king
+and kingdom; to have a share in the legislature; to be members of the
+highest court of judicature, whence there can be no appeal; and to be
+champions always ready for the defence of their prince and country, by
+their valour, conduct, and fidelity. That these were the ornament and
+bulwark of the kingdom, worthy followers of their most renowned
+ancestors, whose honour had been the reward of their virtue, from which
+their posterity were never once known to degenerate. To these were
+joined several holy persons, as part of that assembly, under the title
+of bishops, whose peculiar business is to take care of religion, and of
+those who instruct the people therein. These were searched and sought
+out through the whole nation, by the prince and his wisest counsellors,
+among such of the priesthood as were most deservedly distinguished by
+the sanctity of their lives, and the depth of their erudition; who were
+indeed the spiritual fathers of the clergy and the people.
+
+That the other part of the parliament consisted of an assembly called
+the House of Commons, who were all principal gentlemen, freely picked
+and culled out by the people themselves, for their great abilities and
+love of their country, to represent the wisdom of the whole nation. And
+that these two bodies made up the most august assembly in Europe; to
+whom, in conjunction with the prince, the whole legislature is
+committed.
+
+I then descended to the courts of justice; over which the judges, those
+venerable sages and interpreters of the law, presided, for determining
+the disputed rights and properties of men, as well as for the
+punishment of vice and protection of innocence. I mentioned the prudent
+management of our treasury; the valour and achievements of our forces,
+by sea and land. I computed the number of our people, by reckoning how
+many millions there might be of each religious sect, or political party
+among us. I did not omit even our sports and pastimes, or any other
+particular which I thought might redound to the honour of my country.
+And I finished all with a brief historical account of affairs and
+events in England for about a hundred years past.
+
+This conversation was not ended under five audiences, each of several
+hours; and the king heard the whole with great attention, frequently
+taking notes of what I spoke, as well as memorandums of what questions
+he intended to ask me.
+
+When I had put an end to these long discourses, his majesty, in a sixth
+audience, consulting his notes, proposed many doubts, queries, and
+objections, upon every article. He asked, “What methods were used to
+cultivate the minds and bodies of our young nobility, and in what kind
+of business they commonly spent the first and teachable parts of their
+lives? What course was taken to supply that assembly, when any noble
+family became extinct? What qualifications were necessary in those who
+are to be created new lords: whether the humour of the prince, a sum of
+money to a court lady, or a design of strengthening a party opposite to
+the public interest, ever happened to be the motive in those
+advancements? What share of knowledge these lords had in the laws of
+their country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to decide
+the properties of their fellow-subjects in the last resort? Whether
+they were always so free from avarice, partialities, or want, that a
+bribe, or some other sinister view, could have no place among them?
+Whether those holy lords I spoke of were always promoted to that rank
+upon account of their knowledge in religious matters, and the sanctity
+of their lives; had never been compliers with the times, while they
+were common priests; or slavish prostitute chaplains to some nobleman,
+whose opinions they continued servilely to follow, after they were
+admitted into that assembly?”
+
+He then desired to know, “What arts were practised in electing those
+whom I called commoners: whether a stranger, with a strong purse, might
+not influence the vulgar voters to choose him before their own
+landlord, or the most considerable gentleman in the neighbourhood? How
+it came to pass, that people were so violently bent upon getting into
+this assembly, which I allowed to be a great trouble and expense, often
+to the ruin of their families, without any salary or pension? because
+this appeared such an exalted strain of virtue and public spirit, that
+his majesty seemed to doubt it might possibly not be always sincere.”
+And he desired to know, “Whether such zealous gentlemen could have any
+views of refunding themselves for the charges and trouble they were at
+by sacrificing the public good to the designs of a weak and vicious
+prince, in conjunction with a corrupted ministry?” He multiplied his
+questions, and sifted me thoroughly upon every part of this head,
+proposing numberless inquiries and objections, which I think it not
+prudent or convenient to repeat.
+
+Upon what I said in relation to our courts of justice, his majesty
+desired to be satisfied in several points: and this I was the better
+able to do, having been formerly almost ruined by a long suit in
+chancery, which was decreed for me with costs. He asked, “What time was
+usually spent in determining between right and wrong, and what degree
+of expense? Whether advocates and orators had liberty to plead in
+causes manifestly known to be unjust, vexatious, or oppressive? Whether
+party, in religion or politics, were observed to be of any weight in
+the scale of justice? Whether those pleading orators were persons
+educated in the general knowledge of equity, or only in provincial,
+national, and other local customs? Whether they or their judges had any
+part in penning those laws, which they assumed the liberty of
+interpreting, and glossing upon at their pleasure? Whether they had
+ever, at different times, pleaded for and against the same cause, and
+cited precedents to prove contrary opinions? Whether they were a rich
+or a poor corporation? Whether they received any pecuniary reward for
+pleading, or delivering their opinions? And particularly, whether they
+were ever admitted as members in the lower senate?”
+
+He fell next upon the management of our treasury; and said, “he thought
+my memory had failed me, because I computed our taxes at about five or
+six millions a year, and when I came to mention the issues, he found
+they sometimes amounted to more than double; for the notes he had taken
+were very particular in this point, because he hoped, as he told me,
+that the knowledge of our conduct might be useful to him, and he could
+not be deceived in his calculations. But, if what I told him were true,
+he was still at a loss how a kingdom could run out of its estate, like
+a private person.” He asked me, “who were our creditors; and where we
+found money to pay them?” He wondered to hear me talk of such
+chargeable and expensive wars; “that certainly we must be a quarrelsome
+people, or live among very bad neighbours, and that our generals must
+needs be richer than our kings.” He asked, what business we had out of
+our own islands, unless upon the score of trade, or treaty, or to
+defend the coasts with our fleet?” Above all, he was amazed to hear me
+talk of a mercenary standing army, in the midst of peace, and among a
+free people. He said, “if we were governed by our own consent, in the
+persons of our representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were
+afraid, or against whom we were to fight; and would hear my opinion,
+whether a private man’s house might not be better defended by himself,
+his children, and family, than by half-a-dozen rascals, picked up at a
+venture in the streets for small wages, who might get a hundred times
+more by cutting their throats?”
+
+He laughed at my “odd kind of arithmetic,” as he was pleased to call
+it, “in reckoning the numbers of our people, by a computation drawn
+from the several sects among us, in religion and politics.” He said,
+“he knew no reason why those, who entertain opinions prejudicial to the
+public, should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to
+conceal them. And as it was tyranny in any government to require the
+first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second: for a man may be
+allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for
+cordials.”
+
+He observed, “that among the diversions of our nobility and gentry, I
+had mentioned gaming: he desired to know at what age this entertainment
+was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time
+it employed; whether it ever went so high as to affect their fortunes;
+whether mean, vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might not
+arrive at great riches, and sometimes keep our very nobles in
+dependence, as well as habituate them to vile companions, wholly take
+them from the improvement of their minds, and force them, by the losses
+they received, to learn and practise that infamous dexterity upon
+others?”
+
+He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of
+our affairs during the last century; protesting “it was only a heap of
+conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments,
+the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy,
+perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and
+ambition, could produce.”
+
+His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the
+sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the
+answers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me
+gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget,
+nor the manner he spoke them in: “My little friend Grildrig, you have
+made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly
+proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients
+for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted,
+and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting,
+confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an
+institution, which, in its original, might have been tolerable, but
+these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by
+corruptions. It does not appear, from all you have said, how any one
+perfection is required toward the procurement of any one station among
+you; much less, that men are ennobled on account of their virtue; that
+priests are advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers, for their
+conduct or valour; judges, for their integrity; senators, for the love
+of their country; or counsellors for their wisdom. As for yourself,”
+continued the king, “who have spent the greatest part of your life in
+travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped
+many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own
+relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted
+from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most
+pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to
+crawl upon the surface of the earth.”
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The author’s love of his country. He makes a proposal of much advantage
+to the king, which is rejected. The king’s great ignorance in politics.
+The learning of that country very imperfect and confined. The laws, and
+military affairs, and parties in the state.
+
+
+Nothing but an extreme love of truth could have hindered me from
+concealing this part of my story. It was in vain to discover my
+resentments, which were always turned into ridicule; and I was forced
+to rest with patience, while my noble and beloved country was so
+injuriously treated. I am as heartily sorry as any of my readers can
+possibly be, that such an occasion was given: but this prince happened
+to be so curious and inquisitive upon every particular, that it could
+not consist either with gratitude or good manners, to refuse giving him
+what satisfaction I was able. Yet thus much I may be allowed to say in
+my own vindication, that I artfully eluded many of his questions, and
+gave to every point a more favourable turn, by many degrees, than the
+strictness of truth would allow. For I have always borne that laudable
+partiality to my own country, which Dionysius Halicarnassensis, with so
+much justice, recommends to an historian: I would hide the frailties
+and deformities of my political mother, and place her virtues and
+beauties in the most advantageous light. This was my sincere endeavour
+in those many discourses I had with that monarch, although it
+unfortunately failed of success.
+
+But great allowances should be given to a king, who lives wholly
+secluded from the rest of the world, and must therefore be altogether
+unacquainted with the manners and customs that most prevail in other
+nations: the want of which knowledge will ever produce many prejudices,
+and a certain narrowness of thinking, from which we, and the politer
+countries of Europe, are wholly exempted. And it would be hard indeed,
+if so remote a prince’s notions of virtue and vice were to be offered
+as a standard for all mankind.
+
+To confirm what I have now said, and further to show the miserable
+effects of a confined education, I shall here insert a passage, which
+will hardly obtain belief. In hopes to ingratiate myself further into
+his majesty’s favour, I told him of “an invention, discovered between
+three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into a heap
+of which, the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in
+a moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up
+in the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than thunder.
+That a proper quantity of this powder rammed into a hollow tube of
+brass or iron, according to its bigness, would drive a ball of iron or
+lead, with such violence and speed, as nothing was able to sustain its
+force. That the largest balls thus discharged, would not only destroy
+whole ranks of an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the
+ground, sink down ships, with a thousand men in each, to the bottom of
+the sea, and when linked together by a chain, would cut through masts
+and rigging, divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste
+before them. That we often put this powder into large hollow balls of
+iron, and discharged them by an engine into some city we were
+besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear the houses to pieces,
+burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing out the brains of all
+who came near. That I knew the ingredients very well, which were cheap
+and common; I understood the manner of compounding them, and could
+direct his workmen how to make those tubes, of a size proportionable to
+all other things in his majesty’s kingdom, and the largest need not be
+above a hundred feet long; twenty or thirty of which tubes, charged
+with the proper quantity of powder and balls, would batter down the
+walls of the strongest town in his dominions in a few hours, or destroy
+the whole metropolis, if ever it should pretend to dispute his absolute
+commands.” This I humbly offered to his majesty, as a small tribute of
+acknowledgment, in turn for so many marks that I had received, of his
+royal favour and protection.
+
+The king was struck with horror at the description I had given of those
+terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. “He was amazed, how so
+impotent and grovelling an insect as I” (these were his expressions)
+“could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner, as to
+appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which I
+had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines;
+whereof,” he said, “some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been
+the first contriver. As for himself, he protested, that although few
+things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature,
+yet he would rather lose half his kingdom, than be privy to such a
+secret; which he commanded me, as I valued any life, never to mention
+any more.”
+
+A strange effect of narrow principles and views! that a prince
+possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love, and esteem;
+of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed with
+admirable talents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from a
+nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception,
+let slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have made him
+absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his
+people! Neither do I say this, with the least intention to detract from
+the many virtues of that excellent king, whose character, I am
+sensible, will, on this account, be very much lessened in the opinion
+of an English reader: but I take this defect among them to have risen
+from their ignorance, by not having hitherto reduced politics into a
+science, as the more acute wits of Europe have done. For, I remember
+very well, in a discourse one day with the king, when I happened to
+say, “there were several thousand books among us written upon the art
+of government,” it gave him (directly contrary to my intention) a very
+mean opinion of our understandings. He professed both to abominate and
+despise all mystery, refinement, and intrigue, either in a prince or a
+minister. He could not tell what I meant by secrets of state, where an
+enemy, or some rival nation, were not in the case. He confined the
+knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds, to common sense and
+reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and
+criminal causes; with some other obvious topics, which are not worth
+considering. And he gave it for his opinion, “that whoever could make
+two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground
+where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do
+more essential service to his country, than the whole race of
+politicians put together.”
+
+The learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in
+morality, history, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they must be
+allowed to excel. But the last of these is wholly applied to what may
+be useful in life, to the improvement of agriculture, and all
+mechanical arts; so that among us, it would be little esteemed. And as
+to ideas, entities, abstractions, and transcendentals, I could never
+drive the least conception into their heads.
+
+No law in that country must exceed in words the number of letters in
+their alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty. But indeed few
+of them extend even to that length. They are expressed in the most
+plain and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial enough
+to discover above one interpretation: and to write a comment upon any
+law, is a capital crime. As to the decision of civil causes, or
+proceedings against criminals, their precedents are so few, that they
+have little reason to boast of any extraordinary skill in either.
+
+They have had the art of printing, as well as the Chinese, time out of
+mind: but their libraries are not very large; for that of the king,
+which is reckoned the largest, does not amount to above a thousand
+volumes, placed in a gallery of twelve hundred feet long, whence I had
+liberty to borrow what books I pleased. The queen’s joiner had
+contrived in one of Glumdalclitch’s rooms, a kind of wooden machine
+five-and-twenty feet high, formed like a standing ladder; the steps
+were each fifty feet long. It was indeed a moveable pair of stairs, the
+lowest end placed at ten feet distance from the wall of the chamber.
+The book I had a mind to read, was put up leaning against the wall: I
+first mounted to the upper step of the ladder, and turning my face
+towards the book, began at the top of the page, and so walking to the
+right and left about eight or ten paces, according to the length of the
+lines, till I had gotten a little below the level of my eyes, and then
+descending gradually till I came to the bottom: after which I mounted
+again, and began the other page in the same manner, and so turned over
+the leaf, which I could easily do with both my hands, for it was as
+thick and stiff as a pasteboard, and in the largest folios not above
+eighteen or twenty feet long.
+
+Their style is clear, masculine, and smooth, but not florid; for they
+avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words, or using various
+expressions. I have perused many of their books, especially those in
+history and morality. Among the rest, I was much diverted with a little
+old treatise, which always lay in Glumdalclitch’s bed chamber, and
+belonged to her governess, a grave elderly gentlewoman, who dealt in
+writings of morality and devotion. The book treats of the weakness of
+humankind, and is in little esteem, except among the women and the
+vulgar. However, I was curious to see what an author of that country
+could say upon such a subject. This writer went through all the usual
+topics of European moralists, showing “how diminutive, contemptible,
+and helpless an animal was man in his own nature; how unable to defend
+himself from inclemencies of the air, or the fury of wild beasts: how
+much he was excelled by one creature in strength, by another in speed,
+by a third in foresight, by a fourth in industry.” He added, “that
+nature was degenerated in these latter declining ages of the world, and
+could now produce only small abortive births, in comparison of those in
+ancient times.” He said “it was very reasonable to think, not only that
+the species of men were originally much larger, but also that there
+must have been giants in former ages; which, as it is asserted by
+history and tradition, so it has been confirmed by huge bones and
+skulls, casually dug up in several parts of the kingdom, far exceeding
+the common dwindled race of men in our days.” He argued, “that the very
+laws of nature absolutely required we should have been made, in the
+beginning of a size more large and robust; not so liable to destruction
+from every little accident, of a tile falling from a house, or a stone
+cast from the hand of a boy, or being drowned in a little brook.” From
+this way of reasoning, the author drew several moral applications,
+useful in the conduct of life, but needless here to repeat. For my own
+part, I could not avoid reflecting how universally this talent was
+spread, of drawing lectures in morality, or indeed rather matter of
+discontent and repining, from the quarrels we raise with nature. And I
+believe, upon a strict inquiry, those quarrels might be shown as
+ill-grounded among us as they are among that people.
+
+As to their military affairs, they boast that the king’s army consists
+of a hundred and seventy-six thousand foot, and thirty-two thousand
+horse: if that may be called an army, which is made up of tradesmen in
+the several cities, and farmers in the country, whose commanders are
+only the nobility and gentry, without pay or reward. They are indeed
+perfect enough in their exercises, and under very good discipline,
+wherein I saw no great merit; for how should it be otherwise, where
+every farmer is under the command of his own landlord, and every
+citizen under that of the principal men in his own city, chosen after
+the manner of Venice, by ballot?
+
+I have often seen the militia of Lorbrulgrud drawn out to exercise, in
+a great field near the city of twenty miles square. They were in all
+not above twenty-five thousand foot, and six thousand horse; but it was
+impossible for me to compute their number, considering the space of
+ground they took up. A cavalier, mounted on a large steed, might be
+about ninety feet high. I have seen this whole body of horse, upon a
+word of command, draw their swords at once, and brandish them in the
+air. Imagination can figure nothing so grand, so surprising, and so
+astonishing! It looked as if ten thousand flashes of lightning were
+darting at the same time from every quarter of the sky.
+
+I was curious to know how this prince, to whose dominions there is no
+access from any other country, came to think of armies, or to teach his
+people the practice of military discipline. But I was soon informed,
+both by conversation and reading their histories; for, in the course of
+many ages, they have been troubled with the same disease to which the
+whole race of mankind is subject; the nobility often contending for
+power, the people for liberty, and the king for absolute dominion. All
+which, however happily tempered by the laws of that kingdom, have been
+sometimes violated by each of the three parties, and have more than
+once occasioned civil wars; the last whereof was happily put an end to
+by this prince’s grandfather, in a general composition; and the
+militia, then settled with common consent, has been ever since kept in
+the strictest duty.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The king and queen make a progress to the frontiers. The author attends
+them. The manner in which he leaves the country very particularly
+related. He returns to England.
+
+
+I had always a strong impulse that I should some time recover my
+liberty, though it was impossible to conjecture by what means, or to
+form any project with the least hope of succeeding. The ship in which I
+sailed, was the first ever known to be driven within sight of that
+coast, and the king had given strict orders, that if at any time
+another appeared, it should be taken ashore, and with all its crew and
+passengers brought in a tumbril to Lorbrulgrud. He was strongly bent to
+get me a woman of my own size, by whom I might propagate the breed: but
+I think I should rather have died than undergone the disgrace of
+leaving a posterity to be kept in cages, like tame canary-birds, and
+perhaps, in time, sold about the kingdom, to persons of quality, for
+curiosities. I was indeed treated with much kindness: I was the
+favourite of a great king and queen, and the delight of the whole
+court; but it was upon such a foot as ill became the dignity of
+humankind. I could never forget those domestic pledges I had left
+behind me. I wanted to be among people, with whom I could converse upon
+even terms, and walk about the streets and fields without being afraid
+of being trod to death like a frog or a young puppy. But my deliverance
+came sooner than I expected, and in a manner not very common; the whole
+story and circumstances of which I shall faithfully relate.
+
+I had now been two years in this country; and about the beginning of
+the third, Glumdalclitch and I attended the king and queen, in a
+progress to the south coast of the kingdom. I was carried, as usual, in
+my travelling-box, which as I have already described, was a very
+convenient closet, of twelve feet wide. And I had ordered a hammock to
+be fixed, by silken ropes from the four corners at the top, to break
+the jolts, when a servant carried me before him on horseback, as I
+sometimes desired; and would often sleep in my hammock, while we were
+upon the road. On the roof of my closet, not directly over the middle
+of the hammock, I ordered the joiner to cut out a hole of a foot
+square, to give me air in hot weather, as I slept; which hole I shut at
+pleasure with a board that drew backward and forward through a groove.
+
+When we came to our journey’s end, the king thought proper to pass a
+few days at a palace he has near Flanflasnic, a city within eighteen
+English miles of the seaside. Glumdalclitch and I were much fatigued: I
+had gotten a small cold, but the poor girl was so ill as to be confined
+to her chamber. I longed to see the ocean, which must be the only scene
+of my escape, if ever it should happen. I pretended to be worse than I
+really was, and desired leave to take the fresh air of the sea, with a
+page, whom I was very fond of, and who had sometimes been trusted with
+me. I shall never forget with what unwillingness Glumdalclitch
+consented, nor the strict charge she gave the page to be careful of me,
+bursting at the same time into a flood of tears, as if she had some
+forboding of what was to happen. The boy took me out in my box, about
+half an hour’s walk from the palace, towards the rocks on the
+sea-shore. I ordered him to set me down, and lifting up one of my
+sashes, cast many a wistful melancholy look towards the sea. I found
+myself not very well, and told the page that I had a mind to take a nap
+in my hammock, which I hoped would do me good. I got in, and the boy
+shut the window close down, to keep out the cold. I soon fell asleep,
+and all I can conjecture is, while I slept, the page, thinking no
+danger could happen, went among the rocks to look for birds’ eggs,
+having before observed him from my window searching about, and picking
+up one or two in the clefts. Be that as it will, I found myself
+suddenly awaked with a violent pull upon the ring, which was fastened
+at the top of my box for the conveniency of carriage. I felt my box
+raised very high in the air, and then borne forward with prodigious
+speed. The first jolt had like to have shaken me out of my hammock, but
+afterward the motion was easy enough. I called out several times, as
+loud as I could raise my voice, but all to no purpose. I looked towards
+my windows, and could see nothing but the clouds and sky. I heard a
+noise just over my head, like the clapping of wings, and then began to
+perceive the woful condition I was in; that some eagle had got the ring
+of my box in his beak, with an intent to let it fall on a rock, like a
+tortoise in a shell, and then pick out my body, and devour it: for the
+sagacity and smell of this bird enables him to discover his quarry at a
+great distance, though better concealed than I could be within a
+two-inch board.
+
+In a little time, I observed the noise and flutter of wings to increase
+very fast, and my box was tossed up and down, like a sign in a windy
+day. I heard several bangs or buffets, as I thought given to the eagle
+(for such I am certain it must have been that held the ring of my box
+in his beak), and then, all on a sudden, felt myself falling
+perpendicularly down, for above a minute, but with such incredible
+swiftness, that I almost lost my breath. My fall was stopped by a
+terrible squash, that sounded louder to my ears than the cataract of
+Niagara; after which, I was quite in the dark for another minute, and
+then my box began to rise so high, that I could see light from the tops
+of the windows. I now perceived I was fallen into the sea. My box, by
+the weight of my body, the goods that were in, and the broad plates of
+iron fixed for strength at the four corners of the top and bottom,
+floated about five feet deep in water. I did then, and do now suppose,
+that the eagle which flew away with my box was pursued by two or three
+others, and forced to let me drop, while he defended himself against
+the rest, who hoped to share in the prey. The plates of iron fastened
+at the bottom of the box (for those were the strongest) preserved the
+balance while it fell, and hindered it from being broken on the surface
+of the water. Every joint of it was well grooved; and the door did not
+move on hinges, but up and down like a sash, which kept my closet so
+tight that very little water came in. I got with much difficulty out of
+my hammock, having first ventured to draw back the slip-board on the
+roof already mentioned, contrived on purpose to let in air, for want of
+which I found myself almost stifled.
+
+How often did I then wish myself with my dear Glumdalclitch, from whom
+one single hour had so far divided me! And I may say with truth, that
+in the midst of my own misfortunes I could not forbear lamenting my
+poor nurse, the grief she would suffer for my loss, the displeasure of
+the queen, and the ruin of her fortune. Perhaps many travellers have
+not been under greater difficulties and distress than I was at this
+juncture, expecting every moment to see my box dashed to pieces, or at
+least overset by the first violent blast, or rising wave. A breach in
+one single pane of glass would have been immediate death: nor could any
+thing have preserved the windows, but the strong lattice wires placed
+on the outside, against accidents in travelling. I saw the water ooze
+in at several crannies, although the leaks were not considerable, and I
+endeavoured to stop them as well as I could. I was not able to lift up
+the roof of my closet, which otherwise I certainly should have done,
+and sat on the top of it; where I might at least preserve myself some
+hours longer, than by being shut up (as I may call it) in the hold. Or
+if I escaped these dangers for a day or two, what could I expect but a
+miserable death of cold and hunger? I was four hours under these
+circumstances, expecting, and indeed wishing, every moment to be my
+last.
+
+I have already told the reader that there were two strong staples fixed
+upon that side of my box which had no window, and into which the
+servant, who used to carry me on horseback, would put a leathern belt,
+and buckle it about his waist. Being in this disconsolate state, I
+heard, or at least thought I heard, some kind of grating noise on that
+side of my box where the staples were fixed; and soon after I began to
+fancy that the box was pulled or towed along the sea; for I now and
+then felt a sort of tugging, which made the waves rise near the tops of
+my windows, leaving me almost in the dark. This gave me some faint
+hopes of relief, although I was not able to imagine how it could be
+brought about. I ventured to unscrew one of my chairs, which were
+always fastened to the floor; and having made a hard shift to screw it
+down again, directly under the slipping-board that I had lately opened,
+I mounted on the chair, and putting my mouth as near as I could to the
+hole, I called for help in a loud voice, and in all the languages I
+understood. I then fastened my handkerchief to a stick I usually
+carried, and thrusting it up the hole, waved it several times in the
+air, that if any boat or ship were near, the seamen might conjecture
+some unhappy mortal to be shut up in the box.
+
+I found no effect from all I could do, but plainly perceived my closet
+to be moved along; and in the space of an hour, or better, that side of
+the box where the staples were, and had no windows, struck against
+something that was hard. I apprehended it to be a rock, and found
+myself tossed more than ever. I plainly heard a noise upon the cover of
+my closet, like that of a cable, and the grating of it as it passed
+through the ring. I then found myself hoisted up, by degrees, at least
+three feet higher than I was before. Whereupon I again thrust up my
+stick and handkerchief, calling for help till I was almost hoarse. In
+return to which, I heard a great shout repeated three times, giving me
+such transports of joy as are not to be conceived but by those who feel
+them. I now heard a trampling over my head, and somebody calling
+through the hole with a loud voice, in the English tongue, “If there be
+any body below, let them speak.” I answered, “I was an Englishman,
+drawn by ill fortune into the greatest calamity that ever any creature
+underwent, and begged, by all that was moving, to be delivered out of
+the dungeon I was in.” The voice replied, “I was safe, for my box was
+fastened to their ship; and the carpenter should immediately come and
+saw a hole in the cover, large enough to pull me out.” I answered,
+“that was needless, and would take up too much time; for there was no
+more to be done, but let one of the crew put his finger into the ring,
+and take the box out of the sea into the ship, and so into the
+captain’s cabin.” Some of them, upon hearing me talk so wildly, thought
+I was mad: others laughed; for indeed it never came into my head, that
+I was now got among people of my own stature and strength. The
+carpenter came, and in a few minutes sawed a passage about four feet
+square, then let down a small ladder, upon which I mounted, and thence
+was taken into the ship in a very weak condition.
+
+The sailors were all in amazement, and asked me a thousand questions,
+which I had no inclination to answer. I was equally confounded at the
+sight of so many pigmies, for such I took them to be, after having so
+long accustomed my eyes to the monstrous objects I had left. But the
+captain, Mr. Thomas Wilcocks, an honest worthy Shropshire man,
+observing I was ready to faint, took me into his cabin, gave me a
+cordial to comfort me, and made me turn in upon his own bed, advising
+me to take a little rest, of which I had great need. Before I went to
+sleep, I gave him to understand that I had some valuable furniture in
+my box, too good to be lost: a fine hammock, a handsome field-bed, two
+chairs, a table, and a cabinet; that my closet was hung on all sides,
+or rather quilted, with silk and cotton; that if he would let one of
+the crew bring my closet into his cabin, I would open it there before
+him, and show him my goods. The captain, hearing me utter these
+absurdities, concluded I was raving; however (I suppose to pacify me)
+he promised to give order as I desired, and going upon deck, sent some
+of his men down into my closet, whence (as I afterwards found) they
+drew up all my goods, and stripped off the quilting; but the chairs,
+cabinet, and bedstead, being screwed to the floor, were much damaged by
+the ignorance of the seamen, who tore them up by force. Then they
+knocked off some of the boards for the use of the ship, and when they
+had got all they had a mind for, let the hull drop into the sea, which
+by reason of many breaches made in the bottom and sides, sunk to
+rights. And, indeed, I was glad not to have been a spectator of the
+havoc they made, because I am confident it would have sensibly touched
+me, by bringing former passages into my mind, which I would rather have
+forgot.
+
+I slept some hours, but perpetually disturbed with dreams of the place
+I had left, and the dangers I had escaped. However, upon waking, I
+found myself much recovered. It was now about eight o’clock at night,
+and the captain ordered supper immediately, thinking I had already
+fasted too long. He entertained me with great kindness, observing me
+not to look wildly, or talk inconsistently: and, when we were left
+alone, desired I would give him a relation of my travels, and by what
+accident I came to be set adrift, in that monstrous wooden chest. He
+said “that about twelve o’clock at noon, as he was looking through his
+glass, he spied it at a distance, and thought it was a sail, which he
+had a mind to make, being not much out of his course, in hopes of
+buying some biscuit, his own beginning to fall short. That upon coming
+nearer, and finding his error, he sent out his long-boat to discover
+what it was; that his men came back in a fright, swearing they had seen
+a swimming house. That he laughed at their folly, and went himself in
+the boat, ordering his men to take a strong cable along with them. That
+the weather being calm, he rowed round me several times, observed my
+windows and wire lattices that defended them. That he discovered two
+staples upon one side, which was all of boards, without any passage for
+light. He then commanded his men to row up to that side, and fastening
+a cable to one of the staples, ordered them to tow my chest, as they
+called it, toward the ship. When it was there, he gave directions to
+fasten another cable to the ring fixed in the cover, and to raise up my
+chest with pulleys, which all the sailors were not able to do above two
+or three feet.” He said, “they saw my stick and handkerchief thrust out
+of the hole, and concluded that some unhappy man must be shut up in the
+cavity.” I asked, “whether he or the crew had seen any prodigious birds
+in the air, about the time he first discovered me.” To which he
+answered, “that discoursing this matter with the sailors while I was
+asleep, one of them said, he had observed three eagles flying towards
+the north, but remarked nothing of their being larger than the usual
+size:” which I suppose must be imputed to the great height they were
+at; and he could not guess the reason of my question. I then asked the
+captain, “how far he reckoned we might be from land?” He said, “by the
+best computation he could make, we were at least a hundred leagues.” I
+assured him, “that he must be mistaken by almost half, for I had not
+left the country whence I came above two hours before I dropped into
+the sea.” Whereupon he began again to think that my brain was
+disturbed, of which he gave me a hint, and advised me to go to bed in a
+cabin he had provided. I assured him, “I was well refreshed with his
+good entertainment and company, and as much in my senses as ever I was
+in my life.” He then grew serious, and desired to ask me freely,
+“whether I were not troubled in my mind by the consciousness of some
+enormous crime, for which I was punished, at the command of some
+prince, by exposing me in that chest; as great criminals, in other
+countries, have been forced to sea in a leaky vessel, without
+provisions: for although he should be sorry to have taken so ill a man
+into his ship, yet he would engage his word to set me safe ashore, in
+the first port where we arrived.” He added, “that his suspicions were
+much increased by some very absurd speeches I had delivered at first to
+his sailors, and afterwards to himself, in relation to my closet or
+chest, as well as by my odd looks and behaviour while I was at supper.”
+
+I begged his patience to hear me tell my story, which I faithfully did,
+from the last time I left England, to the moment he first discovered
+me. And, as truth always forces its way into rational minds, so this
+honest worthy gentleman, who had some tincture of learning, and very
+good sense, was immediately convinced of my candour and veracity. But
+further to confirm all I had said, I entreated him to give order that
+my cabinet should be brought, of which I had the key in my pocket; for
+he had already informed me how the seamen disposed of my closet. I
+opened it in his own presence, and showed him the small collection of
+rarities I made in the country from which I had been so strangely
+delivered. There was the comb I had contrived out of the stumps of the
+king’s beard, and another of the same materials, but fixed into a
+paring of her majesty’s thumb-nail, which served for the back. There
+was a collection of needles and pins, from a foot to half a yard long;
+four wasp stings, like joiner’s tacks; some combings of the queen’s
+hair; a gold ring, which one day she made me a present of, in a most
+obliging manner, taking it from her little finger, and throwing it over
+my head like a collar. I desired the captain would please to accept
+this ring in return for his civilities; which he absolutely refused. I
+showed him a corn that I had cut off with my own hand, from a maid of
+honour’s toe; it was about the bigness of Kentish pippin, and grown so
+hard, that when I returned to England, I got it hollowed into a cup,
+and set in silver. Lastly, I desired him to see the breeches I had then
+on, which were made of a mouse’s skin.
+
+I could force nothing on him but a footman’s tooth, which I observed
+him to examine with great curiosity, and found he had a fancy for it.
+He received it with abundance of thanks, more than such a trifle could
+deserve. It was drawn by an unskilful surgeon, in a mistake, from one
+of Glumdalclitch’s men, who was afflicted with the tooth-ache, but it
+was as sound as any in his head. I got it cleaned, and put it into my
+cabinet. It was about a foot long, and four inches in diameter.
+
+The captain was very well satisfied with this plain relation I had
+given him, and said, “he hoped, when we returned to England, I would
+oblige the world by putting it on paper, and making it public.” My
+answer was, “that we were overstocked with books of travels: that
+nothing could now pass which was not extraordinary; wherein I doubted
+some authors less consulted truth, than their own vanity, or interest,
+or the diversion of ignorant readers; that my story could contain
+little beside common events, without those ornamental descriptions of
+strange plants, trees, birds, and other animals; or of the barbarous
+customs and idolatry of savage people, with which most writers abound.
+However, I thanked him for his good opinion, and promised to take the
+matter into my thoughts.”
+
+He said “he wondered at one thing very much, which was, to hear me
+speak so loud;” asking me “whether the king or queen of that country
+were thick of hearing?” I told him, “it was what I had been used to for
+above two years past, and that I admired as much at the voices of him
+and his men, who seemed to me only to whisper, and yet I could hear
+them well enough. But, when I spoke in that country, it was like a man
+talking in the streets, to another looking out from the top of a
+steeple, unless when I was placed on a table, or held in any person’s
+hand.” I told him, “I had likewise observed another thing, that, when I
+first got into the ship, and the sailors stood all about me, I thought
+they were the most little contemptible creatures I had ever beheld.”
+For indeed, while I was in that prince’s country, I could never endure
+to look in a glass, after my eyes had been accustomed to such
+prodigious objects, because the comparison gave me so despicable a
+conceit of myself. The captain said, “that while we were at supper, he
+observed me to look at every thing with a sort of wonder, and that I
+often seemed hardly able to contain my laughter, which he knew not well
+how to take, but imputed it to some disorder in my brain.” I answered,
+“it was very true; and I wondered how I could forbear, when I saw his
+dishes of the size of a silver three-pence, a leg of pork hardly a
+mouthful, a cup not so big as a nut-shell;” and so I went on,
+describing the rest of his household-stuff and provisions, after the
+same manner. For, although the queen had ordered a little equipage of
+all things necessary for me, while I was in her service, yet my ideas
+were wholly taken up with what I saw on every side of me, and I winked
+at my own littleness, as people do at their own faults. The captain
+understood my raillery very well, and merrily replied with the old
+English proverb, “that he doubted my eyes were bigger than my belly,
+for he did not observe my stomach so good, although I had fasted all
+day;” and, continuing in his mirth, protested “he would have gladly
+given a hundred pounds, to have seen my closet in the eagle’s bill, and
+afterwards in its fall from so great a height into the sea; which would
+certainly have been a most astonishing object, worthy to have the
+description of it transmitted to future ages:” and the comparison of
+Phaeton was so obvious, that he could not forbear applying it, although
+I did not much admire the conceit.
+
+The captain having been at Tonquin, was, in his return to England,
+driven north-eastward to the latitude of 44 degrees, and longitude of
+143. But meeting a trade-wind two days after I came on board him, we
+sailed southward a long time, and coasting New Holland, kept our course
+west-south-west, and then south-south-west, till we doubled the Cape of
+Good Hope. Our voyage was very prosperous, but I shall not trouble the
+reader with a journal of it. The captain called in at one or two ports,
+and sent in his long-boat for provisions and fresh water; but I never
+went out of the ship till we came into the Downs, which was on the
+third day of June, 1706, about nine months after my escape. I offered
+to leave my goods in security for payment of my freight: but the
+captain protested he would not receive one farthing. We took a kind
+leave of each other, and I made him promise he would come to see me at
+my house in Redriff. I hired a horse and guide for five shillings,
+which I borrowed of the captain.
+
+As I was on the road, observing the littleness of the houses, the
+trees, the cattle, and the people, I began to think myself in Lilliput.
+I was afraid of trampling on every traveller I met, and often called
+aloud to have them stand out of the way, so that I had like to have
+gotten one or two broken heads for my impertinence.
+
+When I came to my own house, for which I was forced to inquire, one of
+the servants opening the door, I bent down to go in, (like a goose
+under a gate,) for fear of striking my head. My wife ran out to embrace
+me, but I stooped lower than her knees, thinking she could otherwise
+never be able to reach my mouth. My daughter kneeled to ask my
+blessing, but I could not see her till she arose, having been so long
+used to stand with my head and eyes erect to above sixty feet; and then
+I went to take her up with one hand by the waist. I looked down upon
+the servants, and one or two friends who were in the house, as if they
+had been pigmies and I a giant. I told my wife, “she had been too
+thrifty, for I found she had starved herself and her daughter to
+nothing.” In short, I behaved myself so unaccountably, that they were
+all of the captain’s opinion when he first saw me, and concluded I had
+lost my wits. This I mention as an instance of the great power of habit
+and prejudice.
+
+In a little time, I and my family and friends came to a right
+understanding: but my wife protested “I should never go to sea any
+more;” although my evil destiny so ordered, that she had not power to
+hinder me, as the reader may know hereafter. In the mean time, I here
+conclude the second part of my unfortunate voyages.
+
+
+PART III. A VOYAGE TO LAPUTA, BALNIBARBI, GLUBBDUBDRIB, LUGGNAGG AND
+JAPAN.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The author sets out on his third voyage. Is taken by pirates. The
+malice of a Dutchman. His arrival at an island. He is received into
+Laputa.
+
+
+I had not been at home above ten days, when Captain William Robinson, a
+Cornish man, commander of the Hopewell, a stout ship of three hundred
+tons, came to my house. I had formerly been surgeon of another ship
+where he was master, and a fourth part owner, in a voyage to the
+Levant. He had always treated me more like a brother, than an inferior
+officer; and, hearing of my arrival, made me a visit, as I apprehended
+only out of friendship, for nothing passed more than what is usual
+after long absences. But repeating his visits often, expressing his joy
+to find me in good health, asking, “whether I were now settled for
+life?” adding, “that he intended a voyage to the East Indies in two
+months,” at last he plainly invited me, though with some apologies, to
+be surgeon of the ship; “that I should have another surgeon under me,
+beside our two mates; that my salary should be double to the usual pay;
+and that having experienced my knowledge in sea-affairs to be at least
+equal to his, he would enter into any engagement to follow my advice,
+as much as if I had shared in the command.”
+
+He said so many other obliging things, and I knew him to be so honest a
+man, that I could not reject this proposal; the thirst I had of seeing
+the world, notwithstanding my past misfortunes, continuing as violent
+as ever. The only difficulty that remained, was to persuade my wife,
+whose consent however I at last obtained, by the prospect of advantage
+she proposed to her children.
+
+We set out the 5th day of August, 1706, and arrived at Fort St. George
+the 11th of April, 1707. We staid there three weeks to refresh our
+crew, many of whom were sick. From thence we went to Tonquin, where the
+captain resolved to continue some time, because many of the goods he
+intended to buy were not ready, nor could he expect to be dispatched in
+several months. Therefore, in hopes to defray some of the charges he
+must be at, he bought a sloop, loaded it with several sorts of goods,
+wherewith the Tonquinese usually trade to the neighbouring islands, and
+putting fourteen men on board, whereof three were of the country, he
+appointed me master of the sloop, and gave me power to traffic, while
+he transacted his affairs at Tonquin.
+
+We had not sailed above three days, when a great storm arising, we were
+driven five days to the north-north-east, and then to the east: after
+which we had fair weather, but still with a pretty strong gale from the
+west. Upon the tenth day we were chased by two pirates, who soon
+overtook us; for my sloop was so deep laden, that she sailed very slow,
+neither were we in a condition to defend ourselves.
+
+We were boarded about the same time by both the pirates, who entered
+furiously at the head of their men; but finding us all prostrate upon
+our faces (for so I gave order), they pinioned us with strong ropes,
+and setting guard upon us, went to search the sloop.
+
+I observed among them a Dutchman, who seemed to be of some authority,
+though he was not commander of either ship. He knew us by our
+countenances to be Englishmen, and jabbering to us in his own language,
+swore we should be tied back to back and thrown into the sea. I spoke
+Dutch tolerably well; I told him who we were, and begged him, in
+consideration of our being Christians and Protestants, of neighbouring
+countries in strict alliance, that he would move the captains to take
+some pity on us. This inflamed his rage; he repeated his threatenings,
+and turning to his companions, spoke with great vehemence in the
+Japanese language, as I suppose, often using the word _Christianos_.
+
+The largest of the two pirate ships was commanded by a Japanese
+captain, who spoke a little Dutch, but very imperfectly. He came up to
+me, and after several questions, which I answered in great humility, he
+said, “we should not die.” I made the captain a very low bow, and then,
+turning to the Dutchman, said, “I was sorry to find more mercy in a
+heathen, than in a brother christian.” But I had soon reason to repent
+those foolish words: for that malicious reprobate, having often
+endeavoured in vain to persuade both the captains that I might be
+thrown into the sea (which they would not yield to, after the promise
+made me that I should not die), however, prevailed so far, as to have a
+punishment inflicted on me, worse, in all human appearance, than death
+itself. My men were sent by an equal division into both the pirate
+ships, and my sloop new manned. As to myself, it was determined that I
+should be set adrift in a small canoe, with paddles and a sail, and
+four days’ provisions; which last, the Japanese captain was so kind to
+double out of his own stores, and would permit no man to search me. I
+got down into the canoe, while the Dutchman, standing upon the deck,
+loaded me with all the curses and injurious terms his language could
+afford.
+
+About an hour before we saw the pirates I had taken an observation, and
+found we were in the latitude of 46 N. and longitude of 183. When I was
+at some distance from the pirates, I discovered, by my pocket-glass,
+several islands to the south-east. I set up my sail, the wind being
+fair, with a design to reach the nearest of those islands, which I made
+a shift to do, in about three hours. It was all rocky: however I got
+many birds’ eggs; and, striking fire, I kindled some heath and dry
+sea-weed, by which I roasted my eggs. I ate no other supper, being
+resolved to spare my provisions as much as I could. I passed the night
+under the shelter of a rock, strewing some heath under me, and slept
+pretty well.
+
+The next day I sailed to another island, and thence to a third and
+fourth, sometimes using my sail, and sometimes my paddles. But, not to
+trouble the reader with a particular account of my distresses, let it
+suffice, that on the fifth day I arrived at the last island in my
+sight, which lay south-south-east to the former.
+
+This island was at a greater distance than I expected, and I did not
+reach it in less than five hours. I encompassed it almost round, before
+I could find a convenient place to land in; which was a small creek,
+about three times the wideness of my canoe. I found the island to be
+all rocky, only a little intermingled with tufts of grass, and
+sweet-smelling herbs. I took out my small provisions and after having
+refreshed myself, I secured the remainder in a cave, whereof there were
+great numbers; I gathered plenty of eggs upon the rocks, and got a
+quantity of dry sea-weed, and parched grass, which I designed to kindle
+the next day, and roast my eggs as well as I could, for I had about me
+my flint, steel, match, and burning-glass. I lay all night in the cave
+where I had lodged my provisions. My bed was the same dry grass and
+sea-weed which I intended for fuel. I slept very little, for the
+disquiets of my mind prevailed over my weariness, and kept me awake. I
+considered how impossible it was to preserve my life in so desolate a
+place, and how miserable my end must be: yet found myself so listless
+and desponding, that I had not the heart to rise; and before I could
+get spirits enough to creep out of my cave, the day was far advanced. I
+walked awhile among the rocks: the sky was perfectly clear, and the sun
+so hot, that I was forced to turn my face from it: when all on a sudden
+it became obscure, as I thought, in a manner very different from what
+happens by the interposition of a cloud. I turned back, and perceived a
+vast opaque body between me and the sun moving forwards towards the
+island: it seemed to be about two miles high, and hid the sun six or
+seven minutes; but I did not observe the air to be much colder, or the
+sky more darkened, than if I had stood under the shade of a mountain.
+As it approached nearer over the place where I was, it appeared to be a
+firm substance, the bottom flat, smooth, and shining very bright, from
+the reflection of the sea below. I stood upon a height about two
+hundred yards from the shore, and saw this vast body descending almost
+to a parallel with me, at less than an English mile distance. I took
+out my pocket perspective, and could plainly discover numbers of people
+moving up and down the sides of it, which appeared to be sloping; but
+what those people were doing I was not able to distinguish.
+
+The natural love of life gave me some inward motion of joy, and I was
+ready to entertain a hope that this adventure might, some way or other,
+help to deliver me from the desolate place and condition I was in. But
+at the same time the reader can hardly conceive my astonishment, to
+behold an island in the air, inhabited by men, who were able (as it
+should seem) to raise or sink, or put it into progressive motion, as
+they pleased. But not being at that time in a disposition to
+philosophise upon this phenomenon, I rather chose to observe what
+course the island would take, because it seemed for a while to stand
+still. Yet soon after, it advanced nearer, and I could see the sides of
+it encompassed with several gradations of galleries, and stairs, at
+certain intervals, to descend from one to the other. In the lowest
+gallery, I beheld some people fishing with long angling rods, and
+others looking on. I waved my cap (for my hat was long since worn out)
+and my handkerchief toward the island; and upon its nearer approach, I
+called and shouted with the utmost strength of my voice; and then
+looking circumspectly, I beheld a crowd gather to that side which was
+most in my view. I found by their pointing towards me and to each
+other, that they plainly discovered me, although they made no return to
+my shouting. But I could see four or five men running in great haste,
+up the stairs, to the top of the island, who then disappeared. I
+happened rightly to conjecture, that these were sent for orders to some
+person in authority upon this occasion.
+
+The number of people increased, and, in less than half an hour, the
+island was moved and raised in such a manner, that the lowest gallery
+appeared in a parallel of less than a hundred yards distance from the
+height where I stood. I then put myself in the most supplicating
+posture, and spoke in the humblest accent, but received no answer.
+Those who stood nearest over against me, seemed to be persons of
+distinction, as I supposed by their habit. They conferred earnestly
+with each other, looking often upon me. At length one of them called
+out in a clear, polite, smooth dialect, not unlike in sound to the
+Italian: and therefore I returned an answer in that language, hoping at
+least that the cadence might be more agreeable to his ears. Although
+neither of us understood the other, yet my meaning was easily known,
+for the people saw the distress I was in.
+
+They made signs for me to come down from the rock, and go towards the
+shore, which I accordingly did; and the flying island being raised to a
+convenient height, the verge directly over me, a chain was let down
+from the lowest gallery, with a seat fastened to the bottom, to which I
+fixed myself, and was drawn up by pulleys.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The humours and dispositions of the Laputians described. An account of
+their learning. Of the king and his court. The author’s reception
+there. The inhabitants subject to fear and disquietudes. An account of
+the women.
+
+
+At my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of people, but those who
+stood nearest seemed to be of better quality. They beheld me with all
+the marks and circumstances of wonder; neither indeed was I much in
+their debt, having never till then seen a race of mortals so singular
+in their shapes, habits, and countenances. Their heads were all
+reclined, either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned
+inward, and the other directly up to the zenith. Their outward garments
+were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars; interwoven
+with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords,
+and many other instruments of music, unknown to us in Europe. I
+observed, here and there, many in the habit of servants, with a blown
+bladder, fastened like a flail to the end of a stick, which they
+carried in their hands. In each bladder was a small quantity of dried
+peas, or little pebbles, as I was afterwards informed. With these
+bladders, they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who
+stood near them, of which practice I could not then conceive the
+meaning. It seems the minds of these people are so taken up with
+intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the
+discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction
+upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons
+who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is
+_climenole_) in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk
+abroad, or make visits, without him. And the business of this officer
+is, when two, three, or more persons are in company, gently to strike
+with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of
+him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. This flapper is
+likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and
+upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always
+so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling
+down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in
+the streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the
+kennel.
+
+It was necessary to give the reader this information, without which he
+would be at the same loss with me to understand the proceedings of
+these people, as they conducted me up the stairs to the top of the
+island, and from thence to the royal palace. While we were ascending,
+they forgot several times what they were about, and left me to myself,
+till their memories were again roused by their flappers; for they
+appeared altogether unmoved by the sight of my foreign habit and
+countenance, and by the shouts of the vulgar, whose thoughts and minds
+were more disengaged.
+
+At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber of
+presence, where I saw the king seated on his throne, attended on each
+side by persons of prime quality. Before the throne, was a large table
+filled with globes and spheres, and mathematical instruments of all
+kinds. His majesty took not the least notice of us, although our
+entrance was not without sufficient noise, by the concourse of all
+persons belonging to the court. But he was then deep in a problem; and
+we attended at least an hour, before he could solve it. There stood by
+him, on each side, a young page with flaps in their hands, and when
+they saw he was at leisure, one of them gently struck his mouth, and
+the other his right ear; at which he startled like one awaked on the
+sudden, and looking towards me and the company I was in, recollected
+the occasion of our coming, whereof he had been informed before. He
+spoke some words, whereupon immediately a young man with a flap came up
+to my side, and flapped me gently on the right ear; but I made signs,
+as well as I could, that I had no occasion for such an instrument;
+which, as I afterwards found, gave his majesty, and the whole court, a
+very mean opinion of my understanding. The king, as far as I could
+conjecture, asked me several questions, and I addressed myself to him
+in all the languages I had. When it was found I could neither
+understand nor be understood, I was conducted by his order to an
+apartment in his palace (this prince being distinguished above all his
+predecessors for his hospitality to strangers), where two servants were
+appointed to attend me. My dinner was brought, and four persons of
+quality, whom I remembered to have seen very near the king’s person,
+did me the honour to dine with me. We had two courses, of three dishes
+each. In the first course, there was a shoulder of mutton cut into an
+equilateral triangle, a piece of beef into a rhomboides, and a pudding
+into a cycloid. The second course was two ducks trussed up in the form
+of fiddles; sausages and puddings resembling flutes and hautboys, and a
+breast of veal in the shape of a harp. The servants cut our bread into
+cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and several other mathematical
+figures.
+
+While we were at dinner, I made bold to ask the names of several things
+in their language, and those noble persons, by the assistance of their
+flappers, delighted to give me answers, hoping to raise my admiration
+of their great abilities if I could be brought to converse with them. I
+was soon able to call for bread and drink, or whatever else I wanted.
+
+After dinner my company withdrew, and a person was sent to me by the
+king’s order, attended by a flapper. He brought with him pen, ink, and
+paper, and three or four books, giving me to understand by signs, that
+he was sent to teach me the language. We sat together four hours, in
+which time I wrote down a great number of words in columns, with the
+translations over against them; I likewise made a shift to learn
+several short sentences; for my tutor would order one of my servants to
+fetch something, to turn about, to make a bow, to sit, or to stand, or
+walk, and the like. Then I took down the sentence in writing. He showed
+me also, in one of his books, the figures of the sun, moon, and stars,
+the zodiac, the tropics, and polar circles, together with the
+denominations of many planes and solids. He gave me the names and
+descriptions of all the musical instruments, and the general terms of
+art in playing on each of them. After he had left me, I placed all my
+words, with their interpretations, in alphabetical order. And thus, in
+a few days, by the help of a very faithful memory, I got some insight
+into their language. The word, which I interpret the flying or floating
+island, is in the original _Laputa_, whereof I could never learn the
+true etymology. _Lap_, in the old obsolete language, signifies high;
+and _untuh_, a governor; from which they say, by corruption, was
+derived _Laputa_, from _Lapuntuh_. But I do not approve of this
+derivation, which seems to be a little strained. I ventured to offer to
+the learned among them a conjecture of my own, that Laputa was _quasi
+lap outed_; _lap_, signifying properly, the dancing of the sunbeams in
+the sea, and _outed_, a wing; which, however, I shall not obtrude, but
+submit to the judicious reader.
+
+Those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill I was clad,
+ordered a tailor to come next morning, and take measure for a suit of
+clothes. This operator did his office after a different manner from
+those of his trade in Europe. He first took my altitude by a quadrant,
+and then, with a rule and compasses, described the dimensions and
+outlines of my whole body, all which he entered upon paper; and in six
+days brought my clothes very ill made, and quite out of shape, by
+happening to mistake a figure in the calculation. But my comfort was,
+that I observed such accidents very frequent, and little regarded.
+
+During my confinement for want of clothes, and by an indisposition that
+held me some days longer, I much enlarged my dictionary; and when I
+went next to court, was able to understand many things the king spoke,
+and to return him some kind of answers. His majesty had given orders,
+that the island should move north-east and by east, to the vertical
+point over Lagado, the metropolis of the whole kingdom below, upon the
+firm earth. It was about ninety leagues distant, and our voyage lasted
+four days and a half. I was not in the least sensible of the
+progressive motion made in the air by the island. On the second
+morning, about eleven o’clock, the king himself in person, attended by
+his nobility, courtiers, and officers, having prepared all their
+musical instruments, played on them for three hours without
+intermission, so that I was quite stunned with the noise; neither could
+I possibly guess the meaning, till my tutor informed me. He said that,
+the people of their island had their ears adapted to hear “the music of
+the spheres, which always played at certain periods, and the court was
+now prepared to bear their part, in whatever instrument they most
+excelled.”
+
+In our journey towards Lagado, the capital city, his majesty ordered
+that the island should stop over certain towns and villages, from
+whence he might receive the petitions of his subjects. And to this
+purpose, several packthreads were let down, with small weights at the
+bottom. On these packthreads the people strung their petitions, which
+mounted up directly, like the scraps of paper fastened by schoolboys at
+the end of the string that holds their kite. Sometimes we received wine
+and victuals from below, which were drawn up by pulleys.
+
+The knowledge I had in mathematics gave me great assistance in
+acquiring their phraseology, which depended much upon that science, and
+music; and in the latter I was not unskilled. Their ideas are
+perpetually conversant in lines and figures. If they would, for
+example, praise the beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they
+describe it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other
+geometrical terms, or by words of art drawn from music, needless here
+to repeat. I observed in the king’s kitchen all sorts of mathematical
+and musical instruments, after the figures of which they cut up the
+joints that were served to his majesty’s table.
+
+Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevel, without one right
+angle in any apartment; and this defect arises from the contempt they
+bear to practical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and mechanic;
+those instructions they give being too refined for the intellects of
+their workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes. And although they
+are dexterous enough upon a piece of paper, in the management of the
+rule, the pencil, and the divider, yet in the common actions and
+behaviour of life, I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy
+people, nor so slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other
+subjects, except those of mathematics and music. They are very bad
+reasoners, and vehemently given to opposition, unless when they happen
+to be of the right opinion, which is seldom their case. Imagination,
+fancy, and invention, they are wholly strangers to, nor have any words
+in their language, by which those ideas can be expressed; the whole
+compass of their thoughts and mind being shut up within the two
+forementioned sciences.
+
+Most of them, and especially those who deal in the astronomical part,
+have great faith in judicial astrology, although they are ashamed to
+own it publicly. But what I chiefly admired, and thought altogether
+unaccountable, was the strong disposition I observed in them towards
+news and politics, perpetually inquiring into public affairs, giving
+their judgments in matters of state, and passionately disputing every
+inch of a party opinion. I have indeed observed the same disposition
+among most of the mathematicians I have known in Europe, although I
+could never discover the least analogy between the two sciences; unless
+those people suppose, that because the smallest circle has as many
+degrees as the largest, therefore the regulation and management of the
+world require no more abilities than the handling and turning of a
+globe; but I rather take this quality to spring from a very common
+infirmity of human nature, inclining us to be most curious and
+conceited in matters where we have least concern, and for which we are
+least adapted by study or nature.
+
+These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a
+minute’s peace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes
+which very little affect the rest of mortals. Their apprehensions arise
+from several changes they dread in the celestial bodies: for instance,
+that the earth, by the continual approaches of the sun towards it,
+must, in course of time, be absorbed, or swallowed up; that the face of
+the sun, will, by degrees, be encrusted with its own effluvia, and give
+no more light to the world; that the earth very narrowly escaped a
+brush from the tail of the last comet, which would have infallibly
+reduced it to ashes; and that the next, which they have calculated for
+one-and-thirty years hence, will probably destroy us. For if, in its
+perihelion, it should approach within a certain degree of the sun (as
+by their calculations they have reason to dread) it will receive a
+degree of heat ten thousand times more intense than that of red hot
+glowing iron, and in its absence from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten
+hundred thousand and fourteen miles long, through which, if the earth
+should pass at the distance of one hundred thousand miles from the
+nucleus, or main body of the comet, it must in its passage be set on
+fire, and reduced to ashes: that the sun, daily spending its rays
+without any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed
+and annihilated; which must be attended with the destruction of this
+earth, and of all the planets that receive their light from it.
+
+They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these, and
+the like impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in
+their beds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures and amusements
+of life. When they meet an acquaintance in the morning, the first
+question is about the sun’s health, how he looked at his setting and
+rising, and what hopes they have to avoid the stroke of the approaching
+comet. This conversation they are apt to run into with the same temper
+that boys discover in delighting to hear terrible stories of spirits
+and hobgoblins, which they greedily listen to, and dare not go to bed
+for fear.
+
+The women of the island have abundance of vivacity: they contemn their
+husbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof there is
+always a considerable number from the continent below, attending at
+court, either upon affairs of the several towns and corporations, or
+their own particular occasions, but are much despised, because they
+want the same endowments. Among these the ladies choose their gallants:
+but the vexation is, that they act with too much ease and security; for
+the husband is always so rapt in speculation, that the mistress and
+lover may proceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he
+be but provided with paper and implements, and without his flapper at
+his side.
+
+The wives and daughters lament their confinement to the island,
+although I think it the most delicious spot of ground in the world; and
+although they live here in the greatest plenty and magnificence, and
+are allowed to do whatever they please, they long to see the world, and
+take the diversions of the metropolis, which they are not allowed to do
+without a particular license from the king; and this is not easy to be
+obtained, because the people of quality have found, by frequent
+experience, how hard it is to persuade their women to return from
+below. I was told that a great court lady, who had several children,—is
+married to the prime minister, the richest subject in the kingdom, a
+very graceful person, extremely fond of her, and lives in the finest
+palace of the island,—went down to Lagado on the pretence of health,
+there hid herself for several months, till the king sent a warrant to
+search for her; and she was found in an obscure eating-house all in
+rags, having pawned her clothes to maintain an old deformed footman,
+who beat her every day, and in whose company she was taken, much
+against her will. And although her husband received her with all
+possible kindness, and without the least reproach, she soon after
+contrived to steal down again, with all her jewels, to the same
+gallant, and has not been heard of since.
+
+This may perhaps pass with the reader rather for an European or English
+story, than for one of a country so remote. But he may please to
+consider, that the caprices of womankind are not limited by any climate
+or nation, and that they are much more uniform, than can be easily
+imagined.
+
+In about a month’s time, I had made a tolerable proficiency in their
+language, and was able to answer most of the king’s questions, when I
+had the honour to attend him. His majesty discovered not the least
+curiosity to inquire into the laws, government, history, religion, or
+manners of the countries where I had been; but confined his questions
+to the state of mathematics, and received the account I gave him with
+great contempt and indifference, though often roused by his flapper on
+each side.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A phenomenon solved by modern philosophy and astronomy. The Laputians’
+great improvements in the latter. The king’s method of suppressing
+insurrections.
+
+
+I desired leave of this prince to see the curiosities of the island,
+which he was graciously pleased to grant, and ordered my tutor to
+attend me. I chiefly wanted to know, to what cause, in art or in
+nature, it owed its several motions, whereof I will now give a
+philosophical account to the reader.
+
+The flying or floating island is exactly circular, its diameter 7837
+yards, or about four miles and a half, and consequently contains ten
+thousand acres. It is three hundred yards thick. The bottom, or under
+surface, which appears to those who view it below, is one even regular
+plate of adamant, shooting up to the height of about two hundred yards.
+Above it lie the several minerals in their usual order, and over all is
+a coat of rich mould, ten or twelve feet deep. The declivity of the
+upper surface, from the circumference to the centre, is the natural
+cause why all the dews and rains, which fall upon the island, are
+conveyed in small rivulets toward the middle, where they are emptied
+into four large basins, each of about half a mile in circuit, and two
+hundred yards distant from the centre. From these basins the water is
+continually exhaled by the sun in the daytime, which effectually
+prevents their overflowing. Besides, as it is in the power of the
+monarch to raise the island above the region of clouds and vapours, he
+can prevent the falling of dews and rain whenever he pleases. For the
+highest clouds cannot rise above two miles, as naturalists agree, at
+least they were never known to do so in that country.
+
+At the centre of the island there is a chasm about fifty yards in
+diameter, whence the astronomers descend into a large dome, which is
+therefore called _flandona gagnole_, or the astronomer’s cave, situated
+at the depth of a hundred yards beneath the upper surface of the
+adamant. In this cave are twenty lamps continually burning, which, from
+the reflection of the adamant, cast a strong light into every part. The
+place is stored with great variety of sextants, quadrants, telescopes,
+astrolabes, and other astronomical instruments. But the greatest
+curiosity, upon which the fate of the island depends, is a loadstone of
+a prodigious size, in shape resembling a weaver’s shuttle. It is in
+length six yards, and in the thickest part at least three yards over.
+This magnet is sustained by a very strong axle of adamant passing
+through its middle, upon which it plays, and is poised so exactly that
+the weakest hand can turn it. It is hooped round with a hollow cylinder
+of adamant, four feet deep, as many thick, and twelve yards in
+diameter, placed horizontally, and supported by eight adamantine feet,
+each six yards high. In the middle of the concave side, there is a
+groove twelve inches deep, in which the extremities of the axle are
+lodged, and turned round as there is occasion.
+
+The stone cannot be removed from its place by any force, because the
+hoop and its feet are one continued piece with that body of adamant
+which constitutes the bottom of the island.
+
+By means of this loadstone, the island is made to rise and fall, and
+move from one place to another. For, with respect to that part of the
+earth over which the monarch presides, the stone is endued at one of
+its sides with an attractive power, and at the other with a repulsive.
+Upon placing the magnet erect, with its attracting end towards the
+earth, the island descends; but when the repelling extremity points
+downwards, the island mounts directly upwards. When the position of the
+stone is oblique, the motion of the island is so too. For in this
+magnet, the forces always act in lines parallel to its direction.
+
+By this oblique motion, the island is conveyed to different parts of
+the monarch’s dominions. To explain the manner of its progress, let _A_
+_B_ represent a line drawn across the dominions of Balnibarbi, let the
+line _c_ _d_ represent the loadstone, of which let _d_ be the repelling
+end, and _c_ the attracting end, the island being over _C_; let the
+stone be placed in the position _c_ _d_, with its repelling end
+downwards; then the island will be driven upwards obliquely towards
+_D_. When it is arrived at _D_, let the stone be turned upon its axle,
+till its attracting end points towards _E_, and then the island will be
+carried obliquely towards _E_; where, if the stone be again turned upon
+its axle till it stands in the position _E_ _F_, with its repelling
+point downwards, the island will rise obliquely towards _F_, where, by
+directing the attracting end towards _G_, the island may be carried to
+_G_, and from _G_ to _H_, by turning the stone, so as to make its
+repelling extremity to point directly downward. And thus, by changing
+the situation of the stone, as often as there is occasion, the island
+is made to rise and fall by turns in an oblique direction, and by those
+alternate risings and fallings (the obliquity being not considerable)
+is conveyed from one part of the dominions to the other.
+
+But it must be observed, that this island cannot move beyond the extent
+of the dominions below, nor can it rise above the height of four miles.
+For which the astronomers (who have written large systems concerning
+the stone) assign the following reason: that the magnetic virtue does
+not extend beyond the distance of four miles, and that the mineral,
+which acts upon the stone in the bowels of the earth, and in the sea
+about six leagues distant from the shore, is not diffused through the
+whole globe, but terminated with the limits of the king’s dominions;
+and it was easy, from the great advantage of such a superior situation,
+for a prince to bring under his obedience whatever country lay within
+the attraction of that magnet.
+
+When the stone is put parallel to the plane of the horizon, the island
+stands still; for in that case the extremities of it, being at equal
+distance from the earth, act with equal force, the one in drawing
+downwards, the other in pushing upwards, and consequently no motion can
+ensue.
+
+This loadstone is under the care of certain astronomers, who, from time
+to time, give it such positions as the monarch directs. They spend the
+greatest part of their lives in observing the celestial bodies, which
+they do by the assistance of glasses, far excelling ours in goodness.
+For, although their largest telescopes do not exceed three feet, they
+magnify much more than those of a hundred with us, and show the stars
+with greater clearness. This advantage has enabled them to extend their
+discoveries much further than our astronomers in Europe; for they have
+made a catalogue of ten thousand fixed stars, whereas the largest of
+ours do not contain above one third part of that number. They have
+likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve
+about Mars; whereof the innermost is distant from the centre of the
+primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost, five;
+the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in
+twenty-one and a half; so that the squares of their periodical times
+are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distance
+from the centre of Mars; which evidently shows them to be governed by
+the same law of gravitation that influences the other heavenly bodies.
+
+They have observed ninety-three different comets, and settled their
+periods with great exactness. If this be true (and they affirm it with
+great confidence) it is much to be wished, that their observations were
+made public, whereby the theory of comets, which at present is very
+lame and defective, might be brought to the same perfection with other
+arts of astronomy.
+
+The king would be the most absolute prince in the universe, if he could
+but prevail on a ministry to join with him; but these having their
+estates below on the continent, and considering that the office of a
+favourite has a very uncertain tenure, would never consent to the
+enslaving of their country.
+
+If any town should engage in rebellion or mutiny, fall into violent
+factions, or refuse to pay the usual tribute, the king has two methods
+of reducing them to obedience. The first and the mildest course is, by
+keeping the island hovering over such a town, and the lands about it,
+whereby he can deprive them of the benefit of the sun and the rain, and
+consequently afflict the inhabitants with dearth and diseases. And if
+the crime deserve it, they are at the same time pelted from above with
+great stones, against which they have no defence but by creeping into
+cellars or caves, while the roofs of their houses are beaten to pieces.
+But if they still continue obstinate, or offer to raise insurrections,
+he proceeds to the last remedy, by letting the island drop directly
+upon their heads, which makes a universal destruction both of houses
+and men. However, this is an extremity to which the prince is seldom
+driven, neither indeed is he willing to put it in execution; nor dare
+his ministers advise him to an action, which, as it would render them
+odious to the people, so it would be a great damage to their own
+estates, which all lie below; for the island is the king’s demesne.
+
+But there is still indeed a more weighty reason, why the kings of this
+country have been always averse from executing so terrible an action,
+unless upon the utmost necessity. For, if the town intended to be
+destroyed should have in it any tall rocks, as it generally falls out
+in the larger cities, a situation probably chosen at first with a view
+to prevent such a catastrophe; or if it abound in high spires, or
+pillars of stone, a sudden fall might endanger the bottom or under
+surface of the island, which, although it consist, as I have said, of
+one entire adamant, two hundred yards thick, might happen to crack by
+too great a shock, or burst by approaching too near the fires from the
+houses below, as the backs, both of iron and stone, will often do in
+our chimneys. Of all this the people are well apprised, and understand
+how far to carry their obstinacy, where their liberty or property is
+concerned. And the king, when he is highest provoked, and most
+determined to press a city to rubbish, orders the island to descend
+with great gentleness, out of a pretence of tenderness to his people,
+but, indeed, for fear of breaking the adamantine bottom; in which case,
+it is the opinion of all their philosophers, that the loadstone could
+no longer hold it up, and the whole mass would fall to the ground.
+
+About three years before my arrival among them, while the king was in
+his progress over his dominions, there happened an extraordinary
+accident which had like to have put a period to the fate of that
+monarchy, at least as it is now instituted. Lindalino, the second city
+in the kingdom, was the first his majesty visited in his progress.
+Three days after his departure the inhabitants, who had often
+complained of great oppressions, shut the town gates, seized on the
+governor, and with incredible speed and labour erected four large
+towers, one at every corner of the city (which is an exact square),
+equal in height to a strong pointed rock that stands directly in the
+centre of the city. Upon the top of each tower, as well as upon the
+rock, they fixed a great loadstone, and in case their design should
+fail, they had provided a vast quantity of the most combustible fuel,
+hoping to burst therewith the adamantine bottom of the island, if the
+loadstone project should miscarry.
+
+It was eight months before the king had perfect notice that the
+Lindalinians were in rebellion. He then commanded that the island
+should be wafted over the city. The people were unanimous, and had laid
+in store of provisions, and a great river runs through the middle of
+the town. The king hovered over them several days to deprive them of
+the sun and the rain. He ordered many packthreads to be let down, yet
+not a person offered to send up a petition, but instead thereof very
+bold demands, the redress of all their grievances, great immunities,
+the choice of their own governor, and other the like exorbitances. Upon
+which his majesty commanded all the inhabitants of the island to cast
+great stones from the lower gallery into the town; but the citizens had
+provided against this mischief by conveying their persons and effects
+into the four towers, and other strong buildings, and vaults
+underground.
+
+The king being now determined to reduce this proud people, ordered that
+the island should descend gently within forty yards of the top of the
+towers and rock. This was accordingly done; but the officers employed
+in that work found the descent much speedier than usual, and by turning
+the loadstone could not without great difficulty keep it in a firm
+position, but found the island inclining to fall. They sent the king
+immediate intelligence of this astonishing event, and begged his
+majesty’s permission to raise the island higher; the king consented, a
+general council was called, and the officers of the loadstone ordered
+to attend. One of the oldest and expertest among them obtained leave to
+try an experiment, he took a strong line of an hundred yards, and the
+island being raised over the town above the attracting power they had
+felt, he fastened a piece of adamant to the end of his line, which had
+in it a mixture of iron mineral, of the same nature with that whereof
+the bottom or lower surface of the island is composed, and from the
+lower gallery let it down slowly towards the top of the towers. The
+adamant was not descended four yards, before the officer felt it drawn
+so strongly downwards that he could hardly pull it back, he then threw
+down several small pieces of adamant, and observed that they were all
+violently attracted by the top of the tower. The same experiment was
+made on the other three towers, and on the rock with the same effect.
+
+This incident broke entirely the king’s measures, and (to dwell no
+longer on other circumstances) he was forced to give the town their own
+conditions.
+
+I was assured by a great minister that if the island had descended so
+near the town as not to be able to raise itself, the citizens were
+determined to fix it for ever, to kill the king and all his servants,
+and entirely change the government.
+
+By a fundamental law of this realm, neither the king, nor either of his
+two eldest sons, are permitted to leave the island; nor the queen, till
+she is past child-bearing.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The author leaves Laputa; is conveyed to Balnibarbi; arrives at the
+metropolis. A description of the metropolis, and the country adjoining.
+The author hospitably received by a great lord. His conversation with
+that lord.
+
+
+Although I cannot say that I was ill treated in this island, yet I must
+confess I thought myself too much neglected, not without some degree of
+contempt; for neither prince nor people appeared to be curious in any
+part of knowledge, except mathematics and music, wherein I was far
+their inferior, and upon that account very little regarded.
+
+On the other side, after having seen all the curiosities of the island,
+I was very desirous to leave it, being heartily weary of those people.
+They were indeed excellent in two sciences for which I have great
+esteem, and wherein I am not unversed; but, at the same time, so
+abstracted and involved in speculation, that I never met with such
+disagreeable companions. I conversed only with women, tradesmen,
+flappers, and court-pages, during two months of my abode there; by
+which, at last, I rendered myself extremely contemptible; yet these
+were the only people from whom I could ever receive a reasonable
+answer.
+
+I had obtained, by hard study, a good degree of knowledge in their
+language; I was weary of being confined to an island where I received
+so little countenance, and resolved to leave it with the first
+opportunity.
+
+There was a great lord at court, nearly related to the king, and for
+that reason alone used with respect. He was universally reckoned the
+most ignorant and stupid person among them. He had performed many
+eminent services for the crown, had great natural and acquired parts,
+adorned with integrity and honour; but so ill an ear for music, that
+his detractors reported, “he had been often known to beat time in the
+wrong place;” neither could his tutors, without extreme difficulty,
+teach him to demonstrate the most easy proposition in the mathematics.
+He was pleased to show me many marks of favour, often did me the honour
+of a visit, desired to be informed in the affairs of Europe, the laws
+and customs, the manners and learning of the several countries where I
+had travelled. He listened to me with great attention, and made very
+wise observations on all I spoke. He had two flappers attending him for
+state, but never made use of them, except at court and in visits of
+ceremony, and would always command them to withdraw, when we were alone
+together.
+
+I entreated this illustrious person, to intercede in my behalf with his
+majesty, for leave to depart; which he accordingly did, as he was
+pleased to tell me, with regret: for indeed he had made me several
+offers very advantageous, which, however, I refused, with expressions
+of the highest acknowledgment.
+
+On the 16th day of February I took leave of his majesty and the court.
+The king made me a present to the value of about two hundred pounds
+English, and my protector, his kinsman, as much more, together with a
+letter of recommendation to a friend of his in Lagado, the metropolis.
+The island being then hovering over a mountain about two miles from it,
+I was let down from the lowest gallery, in the same manner as I had
+been taken up.
+
+The continent, as far as it is subject to the monarch of the flying
+island, passes under the general name of _Balnibarbi_; and the
+metropolis, as I said before, is called _Lagado_. I felt some little
+satisfaction in finding myself on firm ground. I walked to the city
+without any concern, being clad like one of the natives, and
+sufficiently instructed to converse with them. I soon found out the
+person’s house to whom I was recommended, presented my letter from his
+friend the grandee in the island, and was received with much kindness.
+This great lord, whose name was Munodi, ordered me an apartment in his
+own house, where I continued during my stay, and was entertained in a
+most hospitable manner.
+
+The next morning after my arrival, he took me in his chariot to see the
+town, which is about half the bigness of London; but the houses very
+strangely built, and most of them out of repair. The people in the
+streets walked fast, looked wild, their eyes fixed, and were generally
+in rags. We passed through one of the town gates, and went about three
+miles into the country, where I saw many labourers working with several
+sorts of tools in the ground, but was not able to conjecture what they
+were about; neither did I observe any expectation either of corn or
+grass, although the soil appeared to be excellent. I could not forbear
+admiring at these odd appearances, both in town and country; and I made
+bold to desire my conductor, that he would be pleased to explain to me,
+what could be meant by so many busy heads, hands, and faces, both in
+the streets and the fields, because I did not discover any good effects
+they produced; but, on the contrary, I never knew a soil so unhappily
+cultivated, houses so ill contrived and so ruinous, or a people whose
+countenances and habit expressed so much misery and want.
+
+This lord Munodi was a person of the first rank, and had been some
+years governor of Lagado; but, by a cabal of ministers, was discharged
+for insufficiency. However, the king treated him with tenderness, as a
+well-meaning man, but of a low contemptible understanding.
+
+When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he
+made no further answer than by telling me, “that I had not been long
+enough among them to form a judgment; and that the different nations of
+the world had different customs;” with other common topics to the same
+purpose. But, when we returned to his palace, he asked me “how I liked
+the building, what absurdities I observed, and what quarrel I had with
+the dress or looks of his domestics?” This he might safely do; because
+every thing about him was magnificent, regular, and polite. I answered,
+“that his excellency’s prudence, quality, and fortune, had exempted him
+from those defects, which folly and beggary had produced in others.” He
+said, “if I would go with him to his country-house, about twenty miles
+distant, where his estate lay, there would be more leisure for this
+kind of conversation.” I told his excellency “that I was entirely at
+his disposal;” and accordingly we set out next morning.
+
+During our journey he made me observe the several methods used by
+farmers in managing their lands, which to me were wholly unaccountable;
+for, except in some very few places, I could not discover one ear of
+corn or blade of grass. But, in three hours travelling, the scene was
+wholly altered; we came into a most beautiful country; farmers’ houses,
+at small distances, neatly built; the fields enclosed, containing
+vineyards, corn-grounds, and meadows. Neither do I remember to have
+seen a more delightful prospect. His excellency observed my countenance
+to clear up; he told me, with a sigh, “that there his estate began, and
+would continue the same, till we should come to his house: that his
+countrymen ridiculed and despised him, for managing his affairs no
+better, and for setting so ill an example to the kingdom; which,
+however, was followed by very few, such as were old, and wilful, and
+weak like himself.”
+
+We came at length to the house, which was indeed a noble structure,
+built according to the best rules of ancient architecture. The
+fountains, gardens, walks, avenues, and groves, were all disposed with
+exact judgment and taste. I gave due praises to every thing I saw,
+whereof his excellency took not the least notice till after supper;
+when, there being no third companion, he told me with a very melancholy
+air “that he doubted he must throw down his houses in town and country,
+to rebuild them after the present mode; destroy all his plantations,
+and cast others into such a form as modern usage required, and give the
+same directions to all his tenants, unless he would submit to incur the
+censure of pride, singularity, affectation, ignorance, caprice, and
+perhaps increase his majesty’s displeasure; that the admiration I
+appeared to be under would cease or diminish, when he had informed me
+of some particulars which, probably, I never heard of at court, the
+people there being too much taken up in their own speculations, to have
+regard to what passed here below.”
+
+The sum of his discourse was to this effect: “That about forty years
+ago, certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or
+diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very
+little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired
+in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to
+dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of
+putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot.
+To this end, they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of
+projectors in Lagado; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the
+people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom
+without such an academy. In these colleges the professors contrive new
+rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments, and
+tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one
+man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of
+materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All the
+fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think
+fit to choose, and increase a hundred fold more than they do at
+present; with innumerable other happy proposals. The only inconvenience
+is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in
+the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in
+ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of
+being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon
+prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair: that
+as for himself, being not of an enterprising spirit, he was content to
+go on in the old forms, to live in the houses his ancestors had built,
+and act as they did, in every part of life, without innovation: that
+some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same, but
+were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as enemies to art,
+ignorant, and ill common-wealth’s men, preferring their own ease and
+sloth before the general improvement of their country.”
+
+His lordship added, “That he would not, by any further particulars,
+prevent the pleasure I should certainly take in viewing the grand
+academy, whither he was resolved I should go.” He only desired me to
+observe a ruined building, upon the side of a mountain about three
+miles distant, of which he gave me this account: “That he had a very
+convenient mill within half a mile of his house, turned by a current
+from a large river, and sufficient for his own family, as well as a
+great number of his tenants; that about seven years ago, a club of
+those projectors came to him with proposals to destroy this mill, and
+build another on the side of that mountain, on the long ridge whereof a
+long canal must be cut, for a repository of water, to be conveyed up by
+pipes and engines to supply the mill, because the wind and air upon a
+height agitated the water, and thereby made it fitter for motion, and
+because the water, descending down a declivity, would turn the mill
+with half the current of a river whose course is more upon a level.” He
+said, “that being then not very well with the court, and pressed by
+many of his friends, he complied with the proposal; and after employing
+a hundred men for two years, the work miscarried, the projectors went
+off, laying the blame entirely upon him, railing at him ever since, and
+putting others upon the same experiment, with equal assurance of
+success, as well as equal disappointment.”
+
+In a few days we came back to town; and his excellency, considering the
+bad character he had in the academy, would not go with me himself, but
+recommended me to a friend of his, to bear me company thither. My lord
+was pleased to represent me as a great admirer of projects, and a
+person of much curiosity and easy belief; which, indeed, was not
+without truth; for I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger
+days.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The author permitted to see the grand academy of Lagado. The academy
+largely described. The arts wherein the professors employ themselves.
+
+
+This academy is not an entire single building, but a continuation of
+several houses on both sides of a street, which growing waste, was
+purchased and applied to that use.
+
+I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the
+academy. Every room has in it one or more projectors; and I believe I
+could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.
+
+The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face,
+his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His
+clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He had been
+eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers,
+which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm
+the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that,
+in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor’s gardens
+with sunshine, at a reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock
+was low, and entreated me “to give him something as an encouragement to
+ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for
+cucumbers.” I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me
+with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from
+all who go to see them.
+
+I went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost
+overcome with a horrible stink. My conductor pressed me forward,
+conjuring me in a whisper “to give no offence, which would be highly
+resented;” and therefore I durst not so much as stop my nose. The
+projector of this cell was the most ancient student of the academy; his
+face and beard were of a pale yellow; his hands and clothes daubed over
+with filth. When I was presented to him, he gave me a close embrace, a
+compliment I could well have excused. His employment, from his first
+coming into the academy, was an operation to reduce human excrement to
+its original food, by separating the several parts, removing the
+tincture which it receives from the gall, making the odour exhale, and
+scumming off the saliva. He had a weekly allowance, from the society,
+of a vessel filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol
+barrel.
+
+I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder; who likewise
+showed me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of
+fire, which he intended to publish.
+
+There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method
+for building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward to
+the foundation; which he justified to me, by the like practice of those
+two prudent insects, the bee and the spider.
+
+There was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own
+condition: their employment was to mix colours for painters, which
+their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was
+indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in
+their lessons, and the professor himself happened to be generally
+mistaken. This artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole
+fraternity.
+
+In another apartment I was highly pleased with a projector who had
+found a device of ploughing the ground with hogs, to save the charges
+of ploughs, cattle, and labour. The method is this: in an acre of
+ground you bury, at six inches distance and eight deep, a quantity of
+acorns, dates, chestnuts, and other mast or vegetables, whereof these
+animals are fondest; then you drive six hundred or more of them into
+the field, where, in a few days, they will root up the whole ground in
+search of their food, and make it fit for sowing, at the same time
+manuring it with their dung: it is true, upon experiment, they found
+the charge and trouble very great, and they had little or no crop.
+However it is not doubted, that this invention may be capable of great
+improvement.
+
+I went into another room, where the walls and ceiling were all hung
+round with cobwebs, except a narrow passage for the artist to go in and
+out. At my entrance, he called aloud to me, “not to disturb his webs.”
+He lamented “the fatal mistake the world had been so long in, of using
+silkworms, while we had such plenty of domestic insects who infinitely
+excelled the former, because they understood how to weave, as well as
+spin.” And he proposed further, “that by employing spiders, the charge
+of dyeing silks should be wholly saved;” whereof I was fully convinced,
+when he showed me a vast number of flies most beautifully coloured,
+wherewith he fed his spiders, assuring us “that the webs would take a
+tincture from them; and as he had them of all hues, he hoped to fit
+everybody’s fancy, as soon as he could find proper food for the flies,
+of certain gums, oils, and other glutinous matter, to give a strength
+and consistence to the threads.”
+
+There was an astronomer, who had undertaken to place a sun-dial upon
+the great weathercock on the town-house, by adjusting the annual and
+diurnal motions of the earth and sun, so as to answer and coincide with
+all accidental turnings of the wind.
+
+I was complaining of a small fit of the colic, upon which my conductor
+led me into a room where a great physician resided, who was famous for
+curing that disease, by contrary operations from the same instrument.
+He had a large pair of bellows, with a long slender muzzle of ivory.
+This he conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he
+affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder. But when
+the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while
+the bellows were full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the
+patient; then withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his
+thumb strongly against the orifice of the fundament; and this being
+repeated three or four times, the adventitious wind would rush out,
+bringing the noxious along with it, (like water put into a pump), and
+the patient recovered. I saw him try both experiments upon a dog, but
+could not discern any effect from the former. After the latter the
+animal was ready to burst, and made so violent a discharge as was very
+offensive to me and my companions. The dog died on the spot, and we
+left the doctor endeavouring to recover him, by the same operation.
+
+I visited many other apartments, but shall not trouble my reader with
+all the curiosities I observed, being studious of brevity.
+
+I had hitherto seen only one side of the academy, the other being
+appropriated to the advancers of speculative learning, of whom I shall
+say something, when I have mentioned one illustrious person more, who
+is called among them “the universal artist.” He told us “he had been
+thirty years employing his thoughts for the improvement of human life.”
+He had two large rooms full of wonderful curiosities, and fifty men at
+work. Some were condensing air into a dry tangible substance, by
+extracting the nitre, and letting the aqueous or fluid particles
+percolate; others softening marble, for pillows and pin-cushions;
+others petrifying the hoofs of a living horse, to preserve them from
+foundering. The artist himself was at that time busy upon two great
+designs; the first, to sow land with chaff, wherein he affirmed the
+true seminal virtue to be contained, as he demonstrated by several
+experiments, which I was not skilful enough to comprehend. The other
+was, by a certain composition of gums, minerals, and vegetables,
+outwardly applied, to prevent the growth of wool upon two young lambs;
+and he hoped, in a reasonable time to propagate the breed of naked
+sheep, all over the kingdom.
+
+We crossed a walk to the other part of the academy, where, as I have
+already said, the projectors in speculative learning resided.
+
+The first professor I saw, was in a very large room, with forty pupils
+about him. After salutation, observing me to look earnestly upon a
+frame, which took up the greatest part of both the length and breadth
+of the room, he said, “Perhaps I might wonder to see him employed in a
+project for improving speculative knowledge, by practical and
+mechanical operations. But the world would soon be sensible of its
+usefulness; and he flattered himself, that a more noble, exalted
+thought never sprang in any other man’s head. Every one knew how
+laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences;
+whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable
+charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in
+philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without
+the least assistance from genius or study.” He then led me to the
+frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was
+twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The superficies
+was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but
+some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender
+wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper
+pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their
+language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without
+any order. The professor then desired me “to observe; for he was going
+to set his engine at work.” The pupils, at his command, took each of
+them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the
+edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole
+disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded
+six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they
+appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words
+together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four
+remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four
+times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words
+shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down.
+
+The frame
+
+
+Six hours a day the young students were employed in this labour; and
+the professor showed me several volumes in large folio, already
+collected, of broken sentences, which he intended to piece together,
+and out of those rich materials, to give the world a complete body of
+all arts and sciences; which, however, might be still improved, and
+much expedited, if the public would raise a fund for making and
+employing five hundred such frames in Lagado, and oblige the managers
+to contribute in common their several collections.
+
+He assured me “that this invention had employed all his thoughts from
+his youth; that he had emptied the whole vocabulary into his frame, and
+made the strictest computation of the general proportion there is in
+books between the numbers of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other
+parts of speech.”
+
+I made my humblest acknowledgment to this illustrious person, for his
+great communicativeness; and promised, “if ever I had the good fortune
+to return to my native country, that I would do him justice, as the
+sole inventor of this wonderful machine;” the form and contrivance of
+which I desired leave to delineate on paper, as in the figure here
+annexed. I told him, “although it were the custom of our learned in
+Europe to steal inventions from each other, who had thereby at least
+this advantage, that it became a controversy which was the right owner;
+yet I would take such caution, that he should have the honour entire,
+without a rival.”
+
+We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in
+consultation upon improving that of their own country.
+
+The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables
+into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because, in reality,
+all things imaginable are but nouns.
+
+The other project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words
+whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health,
+as well as brevity. For it is plain, that every word we speak is, in
+some degree, a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and, consequently,
+contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore
+offered, “that since words are only names for _things_, it would be
+more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were
+necessary to express a particular business they are to discourse on.”
+And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease
+as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the
+vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion unless
+they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after
+the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies
+to science are the common people. However, many of the most learned and
+wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing themselves by things; which
+has only this inconvenience attending it, that if a man’s business be
+very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged, in proportion, to
+carry a greater bundle of things upon his back, unless he can afford
+one or two strong servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of
+those sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like
+pedlars among us, who, when they met in the street, would lay down
+their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour
+together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their
+burdens, and take their leave.
+
+But for short conversations, a man may carry implements in his pockets,
+and under his arms, enough to supply him; and in his house, he cannot
+be at a loss. Therefore the room where company meet who practise this
+art, is full of all things, ready at hand, requisite to furnish matter
+for this kind of artificial converse.
+
+Another great advantage proposed by this invention was, that it would
+serve as a universal language, to be understood in all civilised
+nations, whose goods and utensils are generally of the same kind, or
+nearly resembling, so that their uses might easily be comprehended. And
+thus ambassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign princes, or
+ministers of state, to whose tongues they were utter strangers.
+
+I was at the mathematical school, where the master taught his pupils
+after a method scarce imaginable to us in Europe. The proposition, and
+demonstration, were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink composed
+of a cephalic tincture. This, the student was to swallow upon a fasting
+stomach, and for three days following, eat nothing but bread and water.
+As the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the
+proposition along with it. But the success has not hitherto been
+answerable, partly by some error in the _quantum_ or composition, and
+partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this bolus is so nauseous,
+that they generally steal aside, and discharge it upwards, before it
+can operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an
+abstinence, as the prescription requires.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A further account of the academy. The author proposes some
+improvements, which are honourably received.
+
+
+In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained; the
+professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses, which
+is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people
+were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites
+upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching
+ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great
+abilities, eminent services; of instructing princes to know their true
+interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their
+people; of choosing for employments persons qualified to exercise them,
+with many other wild, impossible chimeras, that never entered before
+into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old
+observation, “that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational,
+which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.”
+
+But, however, I shall so far do justice to this part of the Academy, as
+to acknowledge that all of them were not so visionary. There was a most
+ingenious doctor, who seemed to be perfectly versed in the whole nature
+and system of government. This illustrious person had very usefully
+employed his studies, in finding out effectual remedies for all
+diseases and corruptions to which the several kinds of public
+administration are subject, by the vices or infirmities of those who
+govern, as well as by the licentiousness of those who are to obey. For
+instance: whereas all writers and reasoners have agreed, that there is
+a strict universal resemblance between the natural and the political
+body; can there be any thing more evident, than that the health of both
+must be preserved, and the diseases cured, by the same prescriptions?
+It is allowed, that senates and great councils are often troubled with
+redundant, ebullient, and other peccant humours; with many diseases of
+the head, and more of the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous
+contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the
+right; with spleen, flatus, vertigos, and deliriums; with scrofulous
+tumours, full of fetid purulent matter; with sour frothy ructations:
+with canine appetites, and crudeness of digestion, besides many others,
+needless to mention. This doctor therefore proposed, “that upon the
+meeting of the senate, certain physicians should attend it the three
+first days of their sitting, and at the close of each day’s debate feel
+the pulses of every senator; after which, having maturely considered
+and consulted upon the nature of the several maladies, and the methods
+of cure, they should on the fourth day return to the senate house,
+attended by their apothecaries stored with proper medicines; and before
+the members sat, administer to each of them lenitives, aperitives,
+abstersives, corrosives, restringents, palliatives, laxatives,
+cephalalgics, icterics, apophlegmatics, acoustics, as their several
+cases required; and, according as these medicines should operate,
+repeat, alter, or omit them, at the next meeting.”
+
+This project could not be of any great expense to the public; and might
+in my poor opinion, be of much use for the despatch of business, in
+those countries where senates have any share in the legislative power;
+beget unanimity, shorten debates, open a few mouths which are now
+closed, and close many more which are now open; curb the petulancy of
+the young, and correct the positiveness of the old; rouse the stupid,
+and damp the pert.
+
+Again, because it is a general complaint, that the favourites of
+princes are troubled with short and weak memories; the same doctor
+proposed, “that whoever attended a first minister, after having told
+his business, with the utmost brevity and in the plainest words,
+should, at his departure, give the said minister a tweak by the nose,
+or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by
+both ears, or run a pin into his breech; or pinch his arm black and
+blue, to prevent forgetfulness; and at every levee day, repeat the same
+operation, till the business were done, or absolutely refused.”
+
+He likewise directed, “that every senator in the great council of a
+nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence
+of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if
+that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of
+the public.”
+
+When parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance
+to reconcile them. The method is this: You take a hundred leaders of
+each party; you dispose them into couples of such whose heads are
+nearest of a size; then let two nice operators saw off the occiput of
+each couple at the same time, in such a manner that the brain may be
+equally divided. Let the occiputs, thus cut off, be interchanged,
+applying each to the head of his opposite party-man. It seems indeed to
+be a work that requires some exactness, but the professor assured us,
+“that if it were dexterously performed, the cure would be infallible.”
+For he argued thus: “that the two half brains being left to debate the
+matter between themselves within the space of one skull, would soon
+come to a good understanding, and produce that moderation, as well as
+regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for in the heads of those,
+who imagine they come into the world only to watch and govern its
+motion: and as to the difference of brains, in quantity or quality,
+among those who are directors in faction,” the doctor assured us, from
+his own knowledge, that “it was a perfect trifle.”
+
+I heard a very warm debate between two professors, about the most
+commodious and effectual ways and means of raising money, without
+grieving the subject. The first affirmed, “the justest method would be,
+to lay a certain tax upon vices and folly; and the sum fixed upon every
+man to be rated, after the fairest manner, by a jury of his
+neighbours.” The second was of an opinion directly contrary; “to tax
+those qualities of body and mind, for which men chiefly value
+themselves; the rate to be more or less, according to the degrees of
+excelling; the decision whereof should be left entirely to their own
+breast.” The highest tax was upon men who are the greatest favourites
+of the other sex, and the assessments, according to the number and
+nature of the favours they have received; for which, they are allowed
+to be their own vouchers. Wit, valour, and politeness, were likewise
+proposed to be largely taxed, and collected in the same manner, by
+every person’s giving his own word for the quantum of what he
+possessed. But as to honour, justice, wisdom, and learning, they should
+not be taxed at all; because they are qualifications of so singular a
+kind, that no man will either allow them in his neighbour or value them
+in himself.
+
+The women were proposed to be taxed according to their beauty and skill
+in dressing, wherein they had the same privilege with the men, to be
+determined by their own judgment. But constancy, chastity, good sense,
+and good nature, were not rated, because they would not bear the charge
+of collecting.
+
+To keep senators in the interest of the crown, it was proposed that the
+members should raffle for employments; every man first taking an oath,
+and giving security, that he would vote for the court, whether he won
+or not; after which, the losers had, in their turn, the liberty of
+raffling upon the next vacancy. Thus, hope and expectation would be
+kept alive; none would complain of broken promises, but impute their
+disappointments wholly to fortune, whose shoulders are broader and
+stronger than those of a ministry.
+
+Another professor showed me a large paper of instructions for
+discovering plots and conspiracies against the government. He advised
+great statesmen to examine into the diet of all suspected persons;
+their times of eating; upon which side they lay in bed; with which hand
+they wipe their posteriors; take a strict view of their excrements,
+and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the
+crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts
+and designs; because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent,
+as when they are at stool, which he found by frequent experiment; for,
+in such conjunctures, when he used, merely as a trial, to consider
+which was the best way of murdering the king, his ordure would have a
+tincture of green; but quite different, when he thought only of raising
+an insurrection, or burning the metropolis.
+
+The whole discourse was written with great acuteness, containing many
+observations, both curious and useful for politicians; but, as I
+conceived, not altogether complete. This I ventured to tell the author,
+and offered, if he pleased, to supply him with some additions. He
+received my proposition with more compliance than is usual among
+writers, especially those of the projecting species, professing “he
+would be glad to receive further information.”
+
+I told him, “that in the kingdom of Tribnia, [454a] by the natives
+called Langden, [454b] where I had sojourned some time in my travels,
+the bulk of the people consist in a manner wholly of discoverers,
+witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers,
+together with their several subservient and subaltern instruments, all
+under the colours, the conduct, and the pay of ministers of state, and
+their deputies. The plots, in that kingdom, are usually the workmanship
+of those persons who desire to raise their own characters of profound
+politicians; to restore new vigour to a crazy administration; to stifle
+or divert general discontents; to fill their coffers with forfeitures;
+and raise, or sink the opinion of public credit, as either shall best
+answer their private advantage. It is first agreed and settled among
+them, what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot; then,
+effectual care is taken to secure all their letters and papers, and put
+the owners in chains. These papers are delivered to a set of artists,
+very dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words,
+syllables, and letters: for instance, they can discover a close stool,
+to signify a privy council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an
+invader; a codshead; a ——; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a
+prime minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of
+state; a chamber pot, a committee of grandees; a sieve, a court lady; a
+broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an employment; a bottomless pit, a
+treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and bells, a favourite; a broken reed,
+a court of justice; an empty tun, a general; a running sore, the
+administration. [455]
+
+“When this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which the
+learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they can
+decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus _N_. shall
+signify a plot; _B_. a regiment of horse; _L_. a fleet at sea; or,
+secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected
+paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party.
+So, for example, if I should say, in a letter to a friend, ‘Our brother
+Tom has just got the piles,’ a skilful decipherer would discover, that
+the same letters which compose that sentence, may be analysed into the
+following words, ‘Resist, a plot is brought home; The tour.’ And this
+is the anagrammatic method.”
+
+The professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these
+observations, and promised to make honourable mention of me in his
+treatise.
+
+I saw nothing in this country that could invite me to a longer
+continuance, and began to think of returning home to England.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The author leaves Lagado: arrives at Maldonada. No ship ready. He takes
+a short voyage to Glubbdubdrib. His reception by the governor.
+
+
+The continent, of which this kingdom is apart, extends itself, as I
+have reason to believe, eastward, to that unknown tract of America
+westward of California; and north, to the Pacific Ocean, which is not
+above a hundred and fifty miles from Lagado; where there is a good
+port, and much commerce with the great island of Luggnagg, situated to
+the north-west about 29 degrees north latitude, and 140 longitude. This
+island of Luggnagg stands south-eastward of Japan, about a hundred
+leagues distant. There is a strict alliance between the Japanese
+emperor and the king of Luggnagg; which affords frequent opportunities
+of sailing from one island to the other. I determined therefore to
+direct my course this way, in order to direct my return to Europe. I
+hired two mules, with a guide, to show me the way, and carry my small
+baggage. I took leave of my noble protector, who had shown me so much
+favour, and made me a generous present at my departure.
+
+My journey was without any accident or adventure worth relating. When I
+arrived at the port of Maldonada (for so it is called) there was no
+ship in the harbour bound for Luggnagg, nor likely to be in some time.
+The town is about as large as Portsmouth. I soon fell into some
+acquaintance, and was very hospitably received. A gentleman of
+distinction said to me, “that since the ships bound for Luggnagg could
+not be ready in less than a month, it might be no disagreeable
+amusement for me to take a trip to the little island of Glubbdubdrib,
+about five leagues off to the south-west.” He offered himself and a
+friend to accompany me, and that I should be provided with a small
+convenient bark for the voyage.
+
+Glubbdubdrib, as nearly as I can interpret the word, signifies the
+island of sorcerers or magicians. It is about one third as large as the
+Isle of Wight, and extremely fruitful: it is governed by the head of a
+certain tribe, who are all magicians. This tribe marries only among
+each other, and the eldest in succession is prince or governor. He has
+a noble palace, and a park of about three thousand acres, surrounded by
+a wall of hewn stone twenty feet high. In this park are several small
+enclosures for cattle, corn, and gardening.
+
+The governor and his family are served and attended by domestics of a
+kind somewhat unusual. By his skill in necromancy he has a power of
+calling whom he pleases from the dead, and commanding their service for
+twenty-four hours, but no longer; nor can he call the same persons up
+again in less than three months, except upon very extraordinary
+occasions.
+
+When we arrived at the island, which was about eleven in the morning,
+one of the gentlemen who accompanied me went to the governor, and
+desired admittance for a stranger, who came on purpose to have the
+honour of attending on his highness. This was immediately granted, and
+we all three entered the gate of the palace between two rows of guards,
+armed and dressed after a very antic manner, and with something in
+their countenances that made my flesh creep with a horror I cannot
+express. We passed through several apartments, between servants of the
+same sort, ranked on each side as before, till we came to the chamber
+of presence; where, after three profound obeisances, and a few general
+questions, we were permitted to sit on three stools, near the lowest
+step of his highness’s throne. He understood the language of
+Balnibarbi, although it was different from that of this island. He
+desired me to give him some account of my travels; and, to let me see
+that I should be treated without ceremony, he dismissed all his
+attendants with a turn of his finger; at which, to my great
+astonishment, they vanished in an instant, like visions in a dream when
+we awake on a sudden. I could not recover myself in some time, till the
+governor assured me, “that I should receive no hurt;” and observing my
+two companions to be under no concern, who had been often entertained
+in the same manner, I began to take courage, and related to his
+highness a short history of my several adventures; yet not without some
+hesitation, and frequently looking behind me to the place where I had
+seen those domestic spectres. I had the honour to dine with the
+governor, where a new set of ghosts served up the meat, and waited at
+table. I now observed myself to be less terrified than I had been in
+the morning. I stayed till sunset, but humbly desired his highness to
+excuse me for not accepting his invitation of lodging in the palace. My
+two friends and I lay at a private house in the town adjoining, which
+is the capital of this little island; and the next morning we returned
+to pay our duty to the governor, as he was pleased to command us.
+
+After this manner we continued in the island for ten days, most part of
+every day with the governor, and at night in our lodging. I soon grew
+so familiarized to the sight of spirits, that after the third or fourth
+time they gave me no emotion at all: or, if I had any apprehensions
+left, my curiosity prevailed over them. For his highness the governor
+ordered me “to call up whatever persons I would choose to name, and in
+whatever numbers, among all the dead from the beginning of the world to
+the present time, and command them to answer any questions I should
+think fit to ask; with this condition, that my questions must be
+confined within the compass of the times they lived in. And one thing I
+might depend upon, that they would certainly tell me the truth, for
+lying was a talent of no use in the lower world.”
+
+I made my humble acknowledgments to his highness for so great a favour.
+We were in a chamber, from whence there was a fair prospect into the
+park. And because my first inclination was to be entertained with
+scenes of pomp and magnificence, I desired to see Alexander the Great
+at the head of his army, just after the battle of Arbela: which, upon a
+motion of the governor’s finger, immediately appeared in a large field,
+under the window where we stood. Alexander was called up into the room:
+it was with great difficulty that I understood his Greek, and had but
+little of my own. He assured me upon his honour “that he was not
+poisoned, but died of a bad fever by excessive drinking.”
+
+Next, I saw Hannibal passing the Alps, who told me “he had not a drop
+of vinegar in his camp.”
+
+I saw Cæsar and Pompey at the head of their troops, just ready to
+engage. I saw the former, in his last great triumph. I desired that the
+senate of Rome might appear before me, in one large chamber, and an
+assembly of somewhat a later age in counterview, in another. The first
+seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demigods; the other, a knot of
+pedlars, pick-pockets, highwaymen, and bullies.
+
+The governor, at my request, gave the sign for Cæsar and Brutus to
+advance towards us. I was struck with a profound veneration at the
+sight of Brutus, and could easily discover the most consummate virtue,
+the greatest intrepidity and firmness of mind, the truest love of his
+country, and general benevolence for mankind, in every lineament of his
+countenance. I observed, with much pleasure, that these two persons
+were in good intelligence with each other; and Cæsar freely confessed
+to me, “that the greatest actions of his own life were not equal, by
+many degrees, to the glory of taking it away.” I had the honour to have
+much conversation with Brutus; and was told, “that his ancestor Junius,
+Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the younger, Sir Thomas More, and himself
+were perpetually together:” a sextumvirate, to which all the ages of
+the world cannot add a seventh.
+
+It would be tedious to trouble the reader with relating what vast
+numbers of illustrious persons were called up to gratify that
+insatiable desire I had to see the world in every period of antiquity
+placed before me. I chiefly fed my eyes with beholding the destroyers
+of tyrants and usurpers, and the restorers of liberty to oppressed and
+injured nations. But it is impossible to express the satisfaction I
+received in my own mind, after such a manner as to make it a suitable
+entertainment to the reader.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A further account of Glubbdubdrib. Ancient and modern history
+corrected.
+
+
+Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned for wit
+and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I proposed that Homer and
+Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators; but these
+were so numerous, that some hundreds were forced to attend in the
+court, and outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and could distinguish
+those two heroes, at first sight, not only from the crowd, but from
+each other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked
+very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and
+piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a
+staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice
+hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were perfect strangers to
+the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of them before;
+and I had a whisper from a ghost who shall be nameless, “that these
+commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from their
+principals, in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame and
+guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of those
+authors to posterity.” I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer,
+and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they deserved,
+for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a
+poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the account I gave him
+of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he asked them,
+“whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as themselves?”
+
+I then desired the governor to call up Descartes and Gassendi, with
+whom I prevailed to explain their systems to Aristotle. This great
+philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy,
+because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must
+do; and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus
+as palatable as he could, and the _vortices_ of Descartes, were equally
+to be exploded. He predicted the same fate to _attraction_, whereof the
+present learned are such zealous asserters. He said, “that new systems
+of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and
+even those, who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical
+principles, would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of
+vogue when that was determined.”
+
+I spent five days in conversing with many others of the ancient
+learned. I saw most of the first Roman emperors. I prevailed on the
+governor to call up Heliogabalus’s cooks to dress us a dinner, but they
+could not show us much of their skill, for want of materials. A helot
+of Agesilaus made us a dish of Spartan broth, but I was not able to get
+down a second spoonful.
+
+The two gentlemen, who conducted me to the island, were pressed by
+their private affairs to return in three days, which I employed in
+seeing some of the modern dead, who had made the greatest figure, for
+two or three hundred years past, in our own and other countries of
+Europe; and having been always a great admirer of old illustrious
+families, I desired the governor would call up a dozen or two of kings,
+with their ancestors in order for eight or nine generations. But my
+disappointment was grievous and unexpected. For, instead of a long
+train with royal diadems, I saw in one family two fiddlers, three
+spruce courtiers, and an Italian prelate. In another, a barber, an
+abbot, and two cardinals. I have too great a veneration for crowned
+heads, to dwell any longer on so nice a subject. But as to counts,
+marquises, dukes, earls, and the like, I was not so scrupulous. And I
+confess, it was not without some pleasure, that I found myself able to
+trace the particular features, by which certain families are
+distinguished, up to their originals. I could plainly discover whence
+one family derives a long chin; why a second has abounded with knaves
+for two generations, and fools for two more; why a third happened to be
+crack-brained, and a fourth to be sharpers; whence it came, what
+Polydore Virgil says of a certain great house, _Nec vir fortis_, _nec
+femina casta_; how cruelty, falsehood, and cowardice, grew to be
+characteristics by which certain families are distinguished as much as
+by their coats of arms; who first brought the pox into a noble house,
+which has lineally descended scrofulous tumours to their posterity.
+Neither could I wonder at all this, when I saw such an interruption of
+lineages, by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, fiddlers,
+players, captains, and pickpockets.
+
+I was chiefly disgusted with modern history. For having strictly
+examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes, for
+a hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by
+prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to
+cowards; the wisest counsel, to fools; sincerity, to flatterers; Roman
+virtue, to betrayers of their country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to
+sodomites; truth, to informers: how many innocent and excellent persons
+had been condemned to death or banishment by the practising of great
+ministers upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of factions:
+how many villains had been exalted to the highest places of trust,
+power, dignity, and profit: how great a share in the motions and events
+of courts, councils, and senates might be challenged by bawds, whores,
+pimps, parasites, and buffoons. How low an opinion I had of human
+wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and
+motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the
+contemptible accidents to which they owed their success.
+
+Here I discovered the roguery and ignorance of those who pretend to
+write anecdotes, or secret history; who send so many kings to their
+graves with a cup of poison; will repeat the discourse between a prince
+and chief minister, where no witness was by; unlock the thoughts and
+cabinets of ambassadors and secretaries of state; and have the
+perpetual misfortune to be mistaken. Here I discovered the true causes
+of many great events that have surprised the world; how a whore can
+govern the back-stairs, the back-stairs a council, and the council a
+senate. A general confessed, in my presence, “that he got a victory
+purely by the force of cowardice and ill conduct;” and an admiral,
+“that, for want of proper intelligence, he beat the enemy, to whom he
+intended to betray the fleet.” Three kings protested to me, “that in
+their whole reigns they never did once prefer any person of merit,
+unless by mistake, or treachery of some minister in whom they confided;
+neither would they do it if they were to live again:” and they showed,
+with great strength of reason, “that the royal throne could not be
+supported without corruption, because that positive, confident, restiff
+temper, which virtue infused into a man, was a perpetual clog to public
+business.”
+
+I had the curiosity to inquire in a particular manner, by what methods
+great numbers had procured to themselves high titles of honour, and
+prodigious estates; and I confined my inquiry to a very modern period:
+however, without grating upon present times, because I would be sure to
+give no offence even to foreigners (for I hope the reader need not be
+told, that I do not in the least intend my own country, in what I say
+upon this occasion,) a great number of persons concerned were called
+up; and, upon a very slight examination, discovered such a scene of
+infamy, that I cannot reflect upon it without some seriousness.
+Perjury, oppression, subornation, fraud, pandarism, and the like
+infirmities, were among the most excusable arts they had to mention;
+and for these I gave, as it was reasonable, great allowance. But when
+some confessed they owed their greatness and wealth to sodomy, or
+incest; others, to the prostituting of their own wives and daughters;
+others, to the betraying of their country or their prince; some, to
+poisoning; more to the perverting of justice, in order to destroy the
+innocent, I hope I may be pardoned, if these discoveries inclined me a
+little to abate of that profound veneration, which I am naturally apt
+to pay to persons of high rank, who ought to be treated with the utmost
+respect due to their sublime dignity, by us their inferiors.
+
+I had often read of some great services done to princes and states, and
+desired to see the persons by whom those services were performed. Upon
+inquiry I was told, “that their names were to be found on no record,
+except a few of them, whom history has represented as the vilest of
+rogues and traitors.” As to the rest, I had never once heard of them.
+They all appeared with dejected looks, and in the meanest habit; most
+of them telling me, “they died in poverty and disgrace, and the rest on
+a scaffold or a gibbet.”
+
+Among others, there was one person, whose case appeared a little
+singular. He had a youth about eighteen years old standing by his side.
+He told me, “he had for many years been commander of a ship; and in the
+sea fight at Actium had the good fortune to break through the enemy’s
+great line of battle, sink three of their capital ships, and take a
+fourth, which was the sole cause of Antony’s flight, and of the victory
+that ensued; that the youth standing by him, his only son, was killed
+in the action.” He added, “that upon the confidence of some merit, the
+war being at an end, he went to Rome, and solicited at the court of
+Augustus to be preferred to a greater ship, whose commander had been
+killed; but, without any regard to his pretensions, it was given to a
+boy who had never seen the sea, the son of Libertina, who waited on one
+of the emperor’s mistresses. Returning back to his own vessel, he was
+charged with neglect of duty, and the ship given to a favourite page of
+Publicola, the vice-admiral; whereupon he retired to a poor farm at a
+great distance from Rome, and there ended his life.” I was so curious
+to know the truth of this story, that I desired Agrippa might be
+called, who was admiral in that fight. He appeared, and confirmed the
+whole account: but with much more advantage to the captain, whose
+modesty had extenuated or concealed a great part of his merit.
+
+I was surprised to find corruption grown so high and so quick in that
+empire, by the force of luxury so lately introduced; which made me less
+wonder at many parallel cases in other countries, where vices of all
+kinds have reigned so much longer, and where the whole praise, as well
+as pillage, has been engrossed by the chief commander, who perhaps had
+the least title to either.
+
+As every person called up made exactly the same appearance he had done
+in the world, it gave me melancholy reflections to observe how much the
+race of humankind was degenerated among us within these hundred years
+past; how the pox, under all its consequences and denominations had
+altered every lineament of an English countenance; shortened the size
+of bodies, unbraced the nerves, relaxed the sinews and muscles,
+introduced a sallow complexion, and rendered the flesh loose and
+rancid.
+
+I descended so low, as to desire some English yeoman of the old stamp
+might be summoned to appear; once so famous for the simplicity of their
+manners, diet, and dress; for justice in their dealings; for their true
+spirit of liberty; for their valour, and love of their country. Neither
+could I be wholly unmoved, after comparing the living with the dead,
+when I considered how all these pure native virtues were prostituted
+for a piece of money by their grand-children; who, in selling their
+votes and managing at elections, have acquired every vice and
+corruption that can possibly be learned in a court.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+The author returns to Maldonada. Sails to the kingdom of Luggnagg. The
+author confined. He is sent for to court. The manner of his admittance.
+The king’s great lenity to his subjects.
+
+
+The day of our departure being come, I took leave of his highness, the
+Governor of Glubbdubdrib, and returned with my two companions to
+Maldonada, where, after a fortnight’s waiting, a ship was ready to sail
+for Luggnagg. The two gentlemen, and some others, were so generous and
+kind as to furnish me with provisions, and see me on board. I was a
+month in this voyage. We had one violent storm, and were under a
+necessity of steering westward to get into the trade wind, which holds
+for above sixty leagues. On the 21st of April, 1708, we sailed into the
+river of Clumegnig, which is a seaport town, at the south-east point of
+Luggnagg. We cast anchor within a league of the town, and made a signal
+for a pilot. Two of them came on board in less than half an hour, by
+whom we were guided between certain shoals and rocks, which are very
+dangerous in the passage, to a large basin, where a fleet may ride in
+safety within a cable’s length of the town-wall.
+
+Some of our sailors, whether out of treachery or inadvertence, had
+informed the pilots “that I was a stranger, and great traveller;”
+whereof these gave notice to a custom-house officer, by whom I was
+examined very strictly upon my landing. This officer spoke to me in the
+language of Balnibarbi, which, by the force of much commerce, is
+generally understood in that town, especially by seamen and those
+employed in the customs. I gave him a short account of some
+particulars, and made my story as plausible and consistent as I could;
+but I thought it necessary to disguise my country, and call myself a
+Hollander; because my intentions were for Japan, and I knew the Dutch
+were the only Europeans permitted to enter into that kingdom. I
+therefore told the officer, “that having been shipwrecked on the coast
+of Balnibarbi, and cast on a rock, I was received up into Laputa, or
+the flying island (of which he had often heard), and was now
+endeavouring to get to Japan, whence I might find a convenience of
+returning to my own country.” The officer said, “I must be confined
+till he could receive orders from court, for which he would write
+immediately, and hoped to receive an answer in a fortnight.” I was
+carried to a convenient lodging with a sentry placed at the door;
+however, I had the liberty of a large garden, and was treated with
+humanity enough, being maintained all the time at the king’s charge. I
+was invited by several persons, chiefly out of curiosity, because it
+was reported that I came from countries very remote, of which they had
+never heard.
+
+I hired a young man, who came in the same ship, to be an interpreter;
+he was a native of Luggnagg, but had lived some years at Maldonada, and
+was a perfect master of both languages. By his assistance, I was able
+to hold a conversation with those who came to visit me; but this
+consisted only of their questions, and my answers.
+
+The despatch came from court about the time we expected. It contained a
+warrant for conducting me and my retinue to _Traldragdubh_, or
+_Trildrogdrib_ (for it is pronounced both ways as near as I can
+remember), by a party of ten horse. All my retinue was that poor lad
+for an interpreter, whom I persuaded into my service, and, at my humble
+request, we had each of us a mule to ride on. A messenger was
+despatched half a day’s journey before us, to give the king notice of
+my approach, and to desire, “that his majesty would please to appoint a
+day and hour, when it would by his gracious pleasure that I might have
+the honour to lick the dust before his footstool.” This is the court
+style, and I found it to be more than matter of form: for, upon my
+admittance two days after my arrival, I was commanded to crawl upon my
+belly, and lick the floor as I advanced; but, on account of my being a
+stranger, care was taken to have it made so clean, that the dust was
+not offensive. However, this was a peculiar grace, not allowed to any
+but persons of the highest rank, when they desire an admittance. Nay,
+sometimes the floor is strewed with dust on purpose, when the person to
+be admitted happens to have powerful enemies at court; and I have seen
+a great lord with his mouth so crammed, that when he had crept to the
+proper distance from the throne; he was not able to speak a word.
+Neither is there any remedy; because it is capital for those who
+receive an audience to spit or wipe their mouths in his majesty’s
+presence. There is indeed another custom, which I cannot altogether
+approve of: when the king has a mind to put any of his nobles to death
+in a gentle indulgent manner, he commands the floor to be strewed with
+a certain brown powder of a deadly composition, which being licked up,
+infallibly kills him in twenty-four hours. But in justice to this
+prince’s great clemency, and the care he has of his subjects’ lives
+(wherein it were much to be wished that the Monarchs of Europe would
+imitate him), it must be mentioned for his honour, that strict orders
+are given to have the infected parts of the floor well washed after
+every such execution, which, if his domestics neglect, they are in
+danger of incurring his royal displeasure. I myself heard him give
+directions, that one of his pages should be whipped, whose turn it was
+to give notice about washing the floor after an execution, but
+maliciously had omitted it; by which neglect a young lord of great
+hopes, coming to an audience, was unfortunately poisoned, although the
+king at that time had no design against his life. But this good prince
+was so gracious as to forgive the poor page his whipping, upon promise
+that he would do so no more, without special orders.
+
+To return from this digression. When I had crept within four yards of
+the throne, I raised myself gently upon my knees, and then striking my
+forehead seven times against the ground, I pronounced the following
+words, as they had been taught me the night before, _Ickpling
+gloffthrobb squutserumm blhiop mlashnalt zwin tnodbalkguffh slhiophad
+gurdlubh asht_. This is the compliment, established by the laws of the
+land, for all persons admitted to the king’s presence. It may be
+rendered into English thus: “May your celestial majesty outlive the
+sun, eleven moons and a half!” To this the king returned some answer,
+which, although I could not understand, yet I replied as I had been
+directed: _Fluft drin yalerick dwuldom prastrad mirpush_, which
+properly signifies, “My tongue is in the mouth of my friend;” and by
+this expression was meant, that I desired leave to bring my
+interpreter; whereupon the young man already mentioned was accordingly
+introduced, by whose intervention I answered as many questions as his
+majesty could put in above an hour. I spoke in the Balnibarbian tongue,
+and my interpreter delivered my meaning in that of Luggnagg.
+
+The king was much delighted with my company, and ordered his
+_bliffmarklub_, or high-chamberlain, to appoint a lodging in the court
+for me and my interpreter; with a daily allowance for my table, and a
+large purse of gold for my common expenses.
+
+I staid three months in this country, out of perfect obedience to his
+majesty; who was pleased highly to favour me, and made me very
+honourable offers. But I thought it more consistent with prudence and
+justice to pass the remainder of my days with my wife and family.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The Luggnaggians commended. A particular description of the
+Struldbrugs, with many conversations between the author and some
+eminent persons upon that subject.
+
+
+The Luggnaggians are a polite and generous people; and although they
+are not without some share of that pride which is peculiar to all
+Eastern countries, yet they show themselves courteous to strangers,
+especially such who are countenanced by the court. I had many
+acquaintance, and among persons of the best fashion; and being always
+attended by my interpreter, the conversation we had was not
+disagreeable.
+
+One day, in much good company, I was asked by a person of quality,
+“whether I had seen any of their _struldbrugs_, or immortals?” I said,
+“I had not;” and desired he would explain to me “what he meant by such
+an appellation, applied to a mortal creature.” He told me “that
+sometimes, though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family,
+with a red circular spot in the forehead, directly over the left
+eyebrow, which was an infallible mark that it should never die.” The
+spot, as he described it, “was about the compass of a silver
+threepence, but in the course of time grew larger, and changed its
+colour; for at twelve years old it became green, so continued till five
+and twenty, then turned to a deep blue: at five and forty it grew coal
+black, and as large as an English shilling; but never admitted any
+further alteration.” He said, “these births were so rare, that he did
+not believe there could be above eleven hundred struldbrugs, of both
+sexes, in the whole kingdom; of which he computed about fifty in the
+metropolis, and, among the rest, a young girl born; about three years
+ago: that these productions were not peculiar to any family, but a mere
+effect of chance; and the children of the _struldbrugs_ themselves were
+equally mortal with the rest of the people.”
+
+I freely own myself to have been struck with inexpressible delight,
+upon hearing this account: and the person who gave it me happening to
+understand the Balnibarbian language, which I spoke very well, I could
+not forbear breaking out into expressions, perhaps a little too
+extravagant. I cried out, as in a rapture, “Happy nation, where every
+child hath at least a chance for being immortal! Happy people, who
+enjoy so many living examples of ancient virtue, and have masters ready
+to instruct them in the wisdom of all former ages! but happiest, beyond
+all comparison, are those excellent _struldbrugs_, who, being born
+exempt from that universal calamity of human nature, have their minds
+free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of spirits
+caused by the continual apprehensions of death!” I discovered my
+admiration, “that I had not observed any of these illustrious persons
+at court; the black spot on the forehead being so remarkable a
+distinction, that I could not have easily overlooked it: and it was
+impossible that his majesty, a most judicious prince, should not
+provide himself with a good number of such wise and able counsellors.
+Yet perhaps the virtue of those reverend sages was too strict for the
+corrupt and libertine manners of a court: and we often find by
+experience, that young men are too opinionated and volatile to be
+guided by the sober dictates of their seniors. However, since the king
+was pleased to allow me access to his royal person, I was resolved,
+upon the very first occasion, to deliver my opinion to him on this
+matter freely and at large, by the help of my interpreter; and whether
+he would please to take my advice or not, yet in one thing I was
+determined, that his majesty having frequently offered me an
+establishment in this country, I would, with great thankfulness, accept
+the favour, and pass my life here in the conversation of those superior
+beings the _struldbrugs_, if they would please to admit me.”
+
+The gentleman to whom I addressed my discourse, because (as I have
+already observed) he spoke the language of Balnibarbi, said to me, with
+a sort of a smile which usually arises from pity to the ignorant, “that
+he was glad of any occasion to keep me among them, and desired my
+permission to explain to the company what I had spoke.” He did so, and
+they talked together for some time in their own language, whereof I
+understood not a syllable, neither could I observe by their
+countenances, what impression my discourse had made on them. After a
+short silence, the same person told me, “that his friends and mine (so
+he thought fit to express himself) were very much pleased with the
+judicious remarks I had made on the great happiness and advantages of
+immortal life, and they were desirous to know, in a particular manner,
+what scheme of living I should have formed to myself, if it had fallen
+to my lot to have been born a _struldbrug_.”
+
+I answered, “it was easy to be eloquent on so copious and delightful a
+subject, especially to me, who had been often apt to amuse myself with
+visions of what I should do, if I were a king, a general, or a great
+lord: and upon this very case, I had frequently run over the whole
+system how I should employ myself, and pass the time, if I were sure to
+live for ever.
+
+“That, if it had been my good fortune to come into the world a
+_struldbrug_, as soon as I could discover my own happiness, by
+understanding the difference between life and death, I would first
+resolve, by all arts and methods, whatsoever, to procure myself riches.
+In the pursuit of which, by thrift and management, I might reasonably
+expect, in about two hundred years, to be the wealthiest man in the
+kingdom. In the second place, I would, from my earliest youth, apply
+myself to the study of arts and sciences, by which I should arrive in
+time to excel all others in learning. Lastly, I would carefully record
+every action and event of consequence, that happened in the public,
+impartially draw the characters of the several successions of princes
+and great ministers of state, with my own observations on every point.
+I would exactly set down the several changes in customs, language,
+fashions of dress, diet, and diversions. By all which acquirements, I
+should be a living treasure of knowledge and wisdom, and certainly
+become the oracle of the nation.
+
+“I would never marry after threescore, but live in a hospitable manner,
+yet still on the saving side. I would entertain myself in forming and
+directing the minds of hopeful young men, by convincing them, from my
+own remembrance, experience, and observation, fortified by numerous
+examples, of the usefulness of virtue in public and private life. But
+my choice and constant companions should be a set of my own immortal
+brotherhood; among whom, I would elect a dozen from the most ancient,
+down to my own contemporaries. Where any of these wanted fortunes, I
+would provide them with convenient lodges round my own estate, and have
+some of them always at my table; only mingling a few of the most
+valuable among you mortals, whom length of time would harden me to lose
+with little or no reluctance, and treat your posterity after the same
+manner; just as a man diverts himself with the annual succession of
+pinks and tulips in his garden, without regretting the loss of those
+which withered the preceding year.
+
+“These _struldbrugs_ and I would mutually communicate our observations
+and memorials, through the course of time; remark the several
+gradations by which corruption steals into the world, and oppose it in
+every step, by giving perpetual warning and instruction to mankind;
+which, added to the strong influence of our own example, would probably
+prevent that continual degeneracy of human nature so justly complained
+of in all ages.
+
+“Add to this, the pleasure of seeing the various revolutions of states
+and empires; the changes in the lower and upper world; ancient cities
+in ruins, and obscure villages become the seats of kings; famous rivers
+lessening into shallow brooks; the ocean leaving one coast dry, and
+overwhelming another; the discovery of many countries yet unknown;
+barbarity overrunning the politest nations, and the most barbarous
+become civilized. I should then see the discovery of the longitude, the
+perpetual motion, the universal medicine, and many other great
+inventions, brought to the utmost perfection.
+
+“What wonderful discoveries should we make in astronomy, by outliving
+and confirming our own predictions; by observing the progress and
+return of comets, with the changes of motion in the sun, moon, and
+stars!”
+
+I enlarged upon many other topics, which the natural desire of endless
+life, and sublunary happiness, could easily furnish me with. When I had
+ended, and the sum of my discourse had been interpreted, as before, to
+the rest of the company, there was a good deal of talk among them in
+the language of the country, not without some laughter at my expense.
+At last, the same gentleman who had been my interpreter, said, “he was
+desired by the rest to set me right in a few mistakes, which I had
+fallen into through the common imbecility of human nature, and upon
+that allowance was less answerable for them. That this breed of
+_struldbrugs_ was peculiar to their country, for there were no such
+people either in Balnibarbi or Japan, where he had the honour to be
+ambassador from his majesty, and found the natives in both those
+kingdoms very hard to believe that the fact was possible: and it
+appeared from my astonishment when he first mentioned the matter to me,
+that I received it as a thing wholly new, and scarcely to be credited.
+That in the two kingdoms above mentioned, where, during his residence,
+he had conversed very much, he observed long life to be the universal
+desire and wish of mankind. That whoever had one foot in the grave was
+sure to hold back the other as strongly as he could. That the oldest
+had still hopes of living one day longer, and looked on death as the
+greatest evil, from which nature always prompted him to retreat. Only
+in this island of Luggnagg the appetite for living was not so eager,
+from the continual example of the _struldbrugs_ before their eyes.
+
+“That the system of living contrived by me, was unreasonable and
+unjust; because it supposed a perpetuity of youth, health, and vigour,
+which no man could be so foolish to hope, however extravagant he may be
+in his wishes. That the question therefore was not, whether a man would
+choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and
+health; but how he would pass a perpetual life under all the usual
+disadvantages which old age brings along with it. For although few men
+will avow their desires of being immortal, upon such hard conditions,
+yet in the two kingdoms before mentioned, of Balnibarbi and Japan, he
+observed that every man desired to put off death some time longer, let
+it approach ever so late: and he rarely heard of any man who died
+willingly, except he were incited by the extremity of grief or torture.
+And he appealed to me, whether in those countries I had travelled, as
+well as my own, I had not observed the same general disposition.”
+
+After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the
+_struldbrugs_ among them. He said, “they commonly acted like mortals
+till about thirty years old; after which, by degrees, they grew
+melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to
+fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise,
+there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they
+were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to
+fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this
+country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old
+men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never
+dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose,
+vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural
+affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and
+impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects
+against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of
+the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the
+former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure;
+and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others
+have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope
+to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned
+and observed in their youth and middle-age, and even that is very
+imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to
+depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The
+least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and
+entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance,
+because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.
+
+“If a _struldbrug_ happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is
+dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the
+younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a
+reasonable indulgence, that those who are condemned, without any fault
+of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have
+their misery doubled by the load of a wife.
+
+“As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are
+looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their
+estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the
+poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period, they
+are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit; they cannot
+purchase lands, or take leases; neither are they allowed to be
+witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the
+decision of meers and bounds.
+
+“At ninety, they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no
+distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without
+relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue,
+without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common
+appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are
+their nearest friends and relations. For the same reason, they never
+can amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve
+to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this
+defect, they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might
+otherwise be capable.
+
+“The language of this country being always upon the flux, the
+_struldbrugs_ of one age do not understand those of another; neither
+are they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation
+(farther than by a few general words) with their neighbours the
+mortals; and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like
+foreigners in their own country.”
+
+This was the account given me of the _struldbrugs_, as near as I can
+remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest
+not above two hundred years old, who were brought to me at several
+times by some of my friends; but although they were told, “that I was a
+great traveller, and had seen all the world,” they had not the least
+curiosity to ask me a question; only desired “I would give them
+_slumskudask_,” or a token of remembrance; which is a modest way of
+begging, to avoid the law, that strictly forbids it, because they are
+provided for by the public, although indeed with a very scanty
+allowance.
+
+They are despised and hated by all sorts of people. When one of them is
+born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very
+particularly so that you may know their age by consulting the register,
+which, however, has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at
+least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances. But the usual
+way of computing how old they are, is by asking them what kings or
+great persons they can remember, and then consulting history; for
+infallibly the last prince in their mind did not begin his reign after
+they were fourscore years old.
+
+They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld; and the women more
+horrible than the men. Besides the usual deformities in extreme old
+age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their
+number of years, which is not to be described; and among half a dozen,
+I soon distinguished which was the eldest, although there was not above
+a century or two between them.
+
+The reader will easily believe, that from what I had heard and seen, my
+keen appetite for perpetuity of life was much abated. I grew heartily
+ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed; and thought no tyrant
+could invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure, from
+such a life. The king heard of all that had passed between me and my
+friends upon this occasion, and rallied me very pleasantly; wishing I
+could send a couple of _struldbrugs_ to my own country, to arm our
+people against the fear of death; but this, it seems, is forbidden by
+the fundamental laws of the kingdom, or else I should have been well
+content with the trouble and expense of transporting them.
+
+I could not but agree, that the laws of this kingdom relative to the
+_struldbrugs_ were founded upon the strongest reasons, and such as any
+other country would be under the necessity of enacting, in the like
+circumstances. Otherwise, as avarice is the necessary consequence of
+old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole
+nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to
+manage, must end in the ruin of the public.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The author leaves Luggnagg, and sails to Japan. From thence he returns
+in a Dutch ship to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to England.
+
+
+I thought this account of the _struldbrugs_ might be some entertainment
+to the reader, because it seems to be a little out of the common way;
+at least I do not remember to have met the like in any book of travels
+that has come to my hands; and if I am deceived, my excuse must be,
+that it is necessary for travellers who describe the same country, very
+often to agree in dwelling on the same particulars, without deserving
+the censure of having borrowed or transcribed from those who wrote
+before them.
+
+There is indeed a perpetual commerce between this kingdom and the great
+empire of Japan; and it is very probable, that the Japanese authors may
+have given some account of the _struldbrugs_; but my stay in Japan was
+so short, and I was so entirely a stranger to the language, that I was
+not qualified to make any inquiries. But I hope the Dutch, upon this
+notice, will be curious and able enough to supply my defects.
+
+His majesty having often pressed me to accept some employment in his
+court, and finding me absolutely determined to return to my native
+country, was pleased to give me his license to depart; and honoured me
+with a letter of recommendation, under his own hand, to the Emperor of
+Japan. He likewise presented me with four hundred and forty-four large
+pieces of gold (this nation delighting in even numbers), and a red
+diamond, which I sold in England for eleven hundred pounds.
+
+On the 6th day of May, 1709, I took a solemn leave of his majesty, and
+all my friends. This prince was so gracious as to order a guard to
+conduct me to Glanguenstald, which is a royal port to the south-west
+part of the island. In six days I found a vessel ready to carry me to
+Japan, and spent fifteen days in the voyage. We landed at a small
+port-town called Xamoschi, situated on the south-east part of Japan;
+the town lies on the western point, where there is a narrow strait
+leading northward into a long arm of the sea, upon the north-west part
+of which, Yedo, the metropolis, stands. At landing, I showed the
+custom-house officers my letter from the king of Luggnagg to his
+imperial majesty. They knew the seal perfectly well; it was as broad as
+the palm of my hand. The impression was, _A king lifting up a lame
+beggar from the earth_. The magistrates of the town, hearing of my
+letter, received me as a public minister. They provided me with
+carriages and servants, and bore my charges to Yedo; where I was
+admitted to an audience, and delivered my letter, which was opened with
+great ceremony, and explained to the Emperor by an interpreter, who
+then gave me notice, by his majesty’s order, “that I should signify my
+request, and, whatever it were, it should be granted, for the sake of
+his royal brother of Luggnagg.” This interpreter was a person employed
+to transact affairs with the Hollanders. He soon conjectured, by my
+countenance, that I was a European, and therefore repeated his
+majesty’s commands in Low Dutch, which he spoke perfectly well. I
+answered, as I had before determined, “that I was a Dutch merchant,
+shipwrecked in a very remote country, whence I had travelled by sea and
+land to Luggnagg, and then took shipping for Japan; where I knew my
+countrymen often traded, and with some of these I hoped to get an
+opportunity of returning into Europe: I therefore most humbly entreated
+his royal favour, to give order that I should be conducted in safety to
+Nangasac.” To this I added another petition, “that for the sake of my
+patron the king of Luggnagg, his majesty would condescend to excuse my
+performing the ceremony imposed on my countrymen, of trampling upon the
+crucifix, because I had been thrown into his kingdom by my misfortunes,
+without any intention of trading.” When this latter petition was
+interpreted to the Emperor, he seemed a little surprised; and said, “he
+believed I was the first of my countrymen who ever made any scruple in
+this point; and that he began to doubt, whether I was a real Hollander,
+or not; but rather suspected I must be a Christian. However, for the
+reasons I had offered, but chiefly to gratify the king of Luggnagg by
+an uncommon mark of his favour, he would comply with the singularity of
+my humour; but the affair must be managed with dexterity, and his
+officers should be commanded to let me pass, as it were by
+forgetfulness. For he assured me, that if the secret should be
+discovered by my countrymen the Dutch, they would cut my throat in the
+voyage.” I returned my thanks, by the interpreter, for so unusual a
+favour; and some troops being at that time on their march to Nangasac,
+the commanding officer had orders to convey me safe thither, with
+particular instructions about the business of the crucifix.
+
+On the 9th day of June, 1709, I arrived at Nangasac, after a very long
+and troublesome journey. I soon fell into the company of some Dutch
+sailors belonging to the Amboyna, of Amsterdam, a stout ship of 450
+tons. I had lived long in Holland, pursuing my studies at Leyden, and I
+spoke Dutch well. The seamen soon knew from whence I came last: they
+were curious to inquire into my voyages and course of life. I made up a
+story as short and probable as I could, but concealed the greatest
+part. I knew many persons in Holland. I was able to invent names for my
+parents, whom I pretended to be obscure people in the province of
+Gelderland. I would have given the captain (one Theodorus Vangrult)
+what he pleased to ask for my voyage to Holland; but understanding I
+was a surgeon, he was contented to take half the usual rate, on
+condition that I would serve him in the way of my calling. Before we
+took shipping, I was often asked by some of the crew, whether I had
+performed the ceremony above mentioned. I evaded the question by
+general answers; “that I had satisfied the Emperor and court in all
+particulars.” However, a malicious rogue of a skipper went to an
+officer, and pointing to me, told him, “I had not yet trampled on the
+crucifix;” but the other, who had received instructions to let me pass,
+gave the rascal twenty strokes on the shoulders with a bamboo; after
+which I was no more troubled with such questions.
+
+Nothing happened worth mentioning in this voyage. We sailed with a fair
+wind to the Cape of Good Hope, where we staid only to take in fresh
+water. On the 10th of April, 1710, we arrived safe at Amsterdam, having
+lost only three men by sickness in the voyage, and a fourth, who fell
+from the foremast into the sea, not far from the coast of Guinea. From
+Amsterdam I soon after set sail for England, in a small vessel
+belonging to that city.
+
+On the 16th of April, 1710, we put in at the Downs. I landed next
+morning, and saw once more my native country, after an absence of five
+years and six months complete. I went straight to Redriff, where I
+arrived the same day at two in the afternoon, and found my wife and
+family in good health.
+
+
+PART IV. A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HOUYHNHNMS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The author sets out as captain of a ship. His men conspire against him,
+confine him a long time to his cabin, and set him on shore in an
+unknown land. He travels up into the country. The Yahoos, a strange
+sort of animal, described. The author meets two Houyhnhnms.
+
+
+I continued at home with my wife and children about five months in a
+very happy condition, if I could have learned the lesson of knowing
+when I was well. I left my poor wife big with child, and accepted an
+advantageous offer made me to be captain of the Adventurer, a stout
+merchantman of 350 tons: for I understood navigation well, and being
+grown weary of a surgeon’s employment at sea, which, however, I could
+exercise upon occasion, I took a skilful young man of that calling, one
+Robert Purefoy, into my ship. We set sail from Portsmouth upon the 7th
+day of August, 1710; on the 14th we met with Captain Pocock, of
+Bristol, at Teneriffe, who was going to the bay of Campechy to cut
+logwood. On the 16th, he was parted from us by a storm; I heard since
+my return, that his ship foundered, and none escaped but one cabin boy.
+He was an honest man, and a good sailor, but a little too positive in
+his own opinions, which was the cause of his destruction, as it has
+been with several others; for if he had followed my advice, he might
+have been safe at home with his family at this time, as well as myself.
+
+I had several men who died in my ship of calentures, so that I was
+forced to get recruits out of Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands, where
+I touched, by the direction of the merchants who employed me; which I
+had soon too much cause to repent: for I found afterwards, that most of
+them had been buccaneers. I had fifty hands on board; and my orders
+were, that I should trade with the Indians in the South-Sea, and make
+what discoveries I could. These rogues, whom I had picked up, debauched
+my other men, and they all formed a conspiracy to seize the ship, and
+secure me; which they did one morning, rushing into my cabin, and
+binding me hand and foot, threatening to throw me overboard, if I
+offered to stir. I told them, “I was their prisoner, and would submit.”
+This they made me swear to do, and then they unbound me, only fastening
+one of my legs with a chain, near my bed, and placed a sentry at my
+door with his piece charged, who was commanded to shoot me dead if I
+attempted my liberty. They sent me down victuals and drink, and took
+the government of the ship to themselves. Their design was to turn
+pirates, and plunder the Spaniards, which they could not do till they
+got more men. But first they resolved to sell the goods in the ship,
+and then go to Madagascar for recruits, several among them having died
+since my confinement. They sailed many weeks, and traded with the
+Indians; but I knew not what course they took, being kept a close
+prisoner in my cabin, and expecting nothing less than to be murdered,
+as they often threatened me.
+
+Upon the 9th day of May, 1711, one James Welch came down to my cabin,
+and said, “he had orders from the captain to set me ashore.” I
+expostulated with him, but in vain; neither would he so much as tell me
+who their new captain was. They forced me into the long-boat, letting
+me put on my best suit of clothes, which were as good as new, and take
+a small bundle of linen, but no arms, except my hanger; and they were
+so civil as not to search my pockets, into which I conveyed what money
+I had, with some other little necessaries. They rowed about a league,
+and then set me down on a strand. I desired them to tell me what
+country it was. They all swore, “they knew no more than myself;” but
+said, “that the captain” (as they called him) “was resolved, after they
+had sold the lading, to get rid of me in the first place where they
+could discover land.” They pushed off immediately, advising me to make
+haste for fear of being overtaken by the tide, and so bade me farewell.
+
+In this desolate condition I advanced forward, and soon got upon firm
+ground, where I sat down on a bank to rest myself, and consider what I
+had best do. When I was a little refreshed, I went up into the country,
+resolving to deliver myself to the first savages I should meet, and
+purchase my life from them by some bracelets, glass rings, and other
+toys, which sailors usually provide themselves with in those voyages,
+and whereof I had some about me. The land was divided by long rows of
+trees, not regularly planted, but naturally growing; there was great
+plenty of grass, and several fields of oats. I walked very
+circumspectly, for fear of being surprised, or suddenly shot with an
+arrow from behind, or on either side. I fell into a beaten road, where
+I saw many tracts of human feet, and some of cows, but most of horses.
+At last I beheld several animals in a field, and one or two of the same
+kind sitting in trees. Their shape was very singular and deformed,
+which a little discomposed me, so that I lay down behind a thicket to
+observe them better. Some of them coming forward near the place where I
+lay, gave me an opportunity of distinctly marking their form. Their
+heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled, and
+others lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down
+their backs, and the fore parts of their legs and feet; but the rest of
+their bodies was bare, so that I might see their skins, which were of a
+brown buff colour. They had no tails, nor any hair at all on their
+buttocks, except about the anus, which, I presume, nature had placed
+there to defend them as they sat on the ground, for this posture they
+used, as well as lying down, and often stood on their hind feet. They
+climbed high trees as nimbly as a squirrel, for they had strong
+extended claws before and behind, terminating in sharp points, and
+hooked. They would often spring, and bound, and leap, with prodigious
+agility. The females were not so large as the males; they had long lank
+hair on their heads, but none on their faces, nor any thing more than a
+sort of down on the rest of their bodies, except about the anus and
+pudenda. The dugs hung between their forefeet, and often reached almost
+to the ground as they walked. The hair of both sexes was of several
+colours, brown, red, black, and yellow. Upon the whole, I never beheld,
+in all my travels, so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I
+naturally conceived so strong an antipathy. So that, thinking I had
+seen enough, full of contempt and aversion, I got up, and pursued the
+beaten road, hoping it might direct me to the cabin of some Indian. I
+had not got far, when I met one of these creatures full in my way, and
+coming up directly to me. The ugly monster, when he saw me, distorted
+several ways, every feature of his visage, and stared, as at an object
+he had never seen before; then approaching nearer, lifted up his
+fore-paw, whether out of curiosity or mischief I could not tell; but I
+drew my hanger, and gave him a good blow with the flat side of it, for
+I durst not strike with the edge, fearing the inhabitants might be
+provoked against me, if they should come to know that I had killed or
+maimed any of their cattle. When the beast felt the smart, he drew
+back, and roared so loud, that a herd of at least forty came flocking
+about me from the next field, howling and making odious faces; but I
+ran to the body of a tree, and leaning my back against it, kept them
+off by waving my hanger. Several of this cursed brood, getting hold of
+the branches behind, leaped up into the tree, whence they began to
+discharge their excrements on my head; however, I escaped pretty well
+by sticking close to the stem of the tree, but was almost stifled with
+the filth, which fell about me on every side.
+
+In the midst of this distress, I observed them all to run away on a
+sudden as fast as they could; at which I ventured to leave the tree and
+pursue the road, wondering what it was that could put them into this
+fright. But looking on my left hand, I saw a horse walking softly in
+the field; which my persecutors having sooner discovered, was the cause
+of their flight. The horse started a little, when he came near me, but
+soon recovering himself, looked full in my face with manifest tokens of
+wonder; he viewed my hands and feet, walking round me several times. I
+would have pursued my journey, but he placed himself directly in the
+way, yet looking with a very mild aspect, never offering the least
+violence. We stood gazing at each other for some time; at last I took
+the boldness to reach my hand towards his neck with a design to stroke
+it, using the common style and whistle of jockeys, when they are going
+to handle a strange horse. But this animal seemed to receive my
+civilities with disdain, shook his head, and bent his brows, softly
+raising up his right fore-foot to remove my hand. Then he neighed three
+or four times, but in so different a cadence, that I almost began to
+think he was speaking to himself, in some language of his own.
+
+While he and I were thus employed, another horse came up; who applying
+himself to the first in a very formal manner, they gently struck each
+other’s right hoof before, neighing several times by turns, and varying
+the sound, which seemed to be almost articulate. They went some paces
+off, as if it were to confer together, walking side by side, backward
+and forward, like persons deliberating upon some affair of weight, but
+often turning their eyes towards me, as it were to watch that I might
+not escape. I was amazed to see such actions and behaviour in brute
+beasts; and concluded with myself, that if the inhabitants of this
+country were endued with a proportionable degree of reason, they must
+needs be the wisest people upon earth. This thought gave me so much
+comfort, that I resolved to go forward, until I could discover some
+house or village, or meet with any of the natives, leaving the two
+horses to discourse together as they pleased. But the first, who was a
+dapple gray, observing me to steal off, neighed after me in so
+expressive a tone, that I fancied myself to understand what he meant;
+whereupon I turned back, and came near to him to expect his farther
+commands: but concealing my fear as much as I could, for I began to be
+in some pain how this adventure might terminate; and the reader will
+easily believe I did not much like my present situation.
+
+The two horses came up close to me, looking with great earnestness upon
+my face and hands. The gray steed rubbed my hat all round with his
+right fore-hoof, and discomposed it so much that I was forced to adjust
+it better by taking it off and settling it again; whereat, both he and
+his companion (who was a brown bay) appeared to be much surprised: the
+latter felt the lappet of my coat, and finding it to hang loose about
+me, they both looked with new signs of wonder. He stroked my right
+hand, seeming to admire the softness and colour; but he squeezed it so
+hard between his hoof and his pastern, that I was forced to roar; after
+which they both touched me with all possible tenderness. They were
+under great perplexity about my shoes and stockings, which they felt
+very often, neighing to each other, and using various gestures, not
+unlike those of a philosopher, when he would attempt to solve some new
+and difficult phenomenon.
+
+Upon the whole, the behaviour of these animals was so orderly and
+rational, so acute and judicious, that I at last concluded they must
+needs be magicians, who had thus metamorphosed themselves upon some
+design, and seeing a stranger in the way, resolved to divert themselves
+with him; or, perhaps, were really amazed at the sight of a man so very
+different in habit, feature, and complexion, from those who might
+probably live in so remote a climate. Upon the strength of this
+reasoning, I ventured to address them in the following manner:
+“Gentlemen, if you be conjurers, as I have good cause to believe, you
+can understand my language; therefore I make bold to let your worships
+know that I am a poor distressed Englishman, driven by his misfortunes
+upon your coast; and I entreat one of you to let me ride upon his back,
+as if he were a real horse, to some house or village where I can be
+relieved. In return of which favour, I will make you a present of this
+knife and bracelet,” taking them out of my pocket. The two creatures
+stood silent while I spoke, seeming to listen with great attention, and
+when I had ended, they neighed frequently towards each other, as if
+they were engaged in serious conversation. I plainly observed that
+their language expressed the passions very well, and the words might,
+with little pains, be resolved into an alphabet more easily than the
+Chinese.
+
+I could frequently distinguish the word _Yahoo_, which was repeated by
+each of them several times: and although it was impossible for me to
+conjecture what it meant, yet while the two horses were busy in
+conversation, I endeavoured to practise this word upon my tongue; and
+as soon as they were silent, I boldly pronounced _Yahoo_ in a loud
+voice, imitating at the same time, as near as I could, the neighing of
+a horse; at which they were both visibly surprised; and the gray
+repeated the same word twice, as if he meant to teach me the right
+accent; wherein I spoke after him as well as I could, and found myself
+perceivably to improve every time, though very far from any degree of
+perfection. Then the bay tried me with a second word, much harder to be
+pronounced; but reducing it to the English orthography, may be spelt
+thus, _Houyhnhnm_. I did not succeed in this so well as in the former;
+but after two or three farther trials, I had better fortune; and they
+both appeared amazed at my capacity.
+
+After some further discourse, which I then conjectured might relate to
+me, the two friends took their leaves, with the same compliment of
+striking each other’s hoof; and the gray made me signs that I should
+walk before him; wherein I thought it prudent to comply, till I could
+find a better director. When I offered to slacken my pace, he would cry
+_hhuun hhuun_: I guessed his meaning, and gave him to understand, as
+well as I could, “that I was weary, and not able to walk faster;” upon
+which he would stand a while to let me rest.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The author conducted by a Houyhnhnm to his house. The house described.
+The author’s reception. The food of the Houyhnhnms. The author in
+distress for want of meat, is at last relieved. His manner of feeding
+in this country.
+
+
+Having travelled about three miles, we came to a long kind of building,
+made of timber stuck in the ground, and wattled across; the roof was
+low and covered with straw. I now began to be a little comforted; and
+took out some toys, which travellers usually carry for presents to the
+savage Indians of America, and other parts, in hopes the people of the
+house would be thereby encouraged to receive me kindly. The horse made
+me a sign to go in first; it was a large room with a smooth clay floor,
+and a rack and manger, extending the whole length on one side. There
+were three nags and two mares, not eating, but some of them sitting
+down upon their hams, which I very much wondered at; but wondered more
+to see the rest employed in domestic business; these seemed but
+ordinary cattle. However, this confirmed my first opinion, that a
+people who could so far civilize brute animals, must needs excel in
+wisdom all the nations of the world. The gray came in just after, and
+thereby prevented any ill treatment which the others might have given
+me. He neighed to them several times in a style of authority, and
+received answers.
+
+Beyond this room there were three others, reaching the length of the
+house, to which you passed through three doors, opposite to each other,
+in the manner of a vista. We went through the second room towards the
+third. Here the gray walked in first, beckoning me to attend: I waited
+in the second room, and got ready my presents for the master and
+mistress of the house; they were two knives, three bracelets of false
+pearls, a small looking-glass, and a bead necklace. The horse neighed
+three or four times, and I waited to hear some answers in a human
+voice, but I heard no other returns than in the same dialect, only one
+or two a little shriller than his. I began to think that this house
+must belong to some person of great note among them, because there
+appeared so much ceremony before I could gain admittance. But, that a
+man of quality should be served all by horses, was beyond my
+comprehension. I feared my brain was disturbed by my sufferings and
+misfortunes. I roused myself, and looked about me in the room where I
+was left alone: this was furnished like the first, only after a more
+elegant manner. I rubbed my eyes often, but the same objects still
+occurred. I pinched my arms and sides to awake myself, hoping I might
+be in a dream. I then absolutely concluded, that all these appearances
+could be nothing else but necromancy and magic. But I had no time to
+pursue these reflections; for the gray horse came to the door, and made
+me a sign to follow him into the third room where I saw a very comely
+mare, together with a colt and foal, sitting on their haunches upon
+mats of straw, not unartfully made, and perfectly neat and clean.
+
+The mare soon after my entrance rose from her mat, and coming up close,
+after having nicely observed my hands and face, gave me a most
+contemptuous look; and turning to the horse, I heard the word _Yahoo_
+often repeated betwixt them; the meaning of which word I could not then
+comprehend, although it was the first I had learned to pronounce. But I
+was soon better informed, to my everlasting mortification; for the
+horse, beckoning to me with his head, and repeating the _hhuun_,
+_hhuun_, as he did upon the road, which I understood was to attend him,
+led me out into a kind of court, where was another building, at some
+distance from the house. Here we entered, and I saw three of those
+detestable creatures, which I first met after my landing, feeding upon
+roots, and the flesh of some animals, which I afterwards found to be
+that of asses and dogs, and now and then a cow, dead by accident or
+disease. They were all tied by the neck with strong withes, fastened to
+a beam; they held their food between the claws of their forefeet, and
+tore it with their teeth.
+
+The master horse ordered a sorrel nag, one of his servants, to untie
+the largest of these animals, and take him into the yard. The beast and
+I were brought close together, and by our countenances diligently
+compared both by master and servant, who thereupon repeated several
+times the word _Yahoo_. My horror and astonishment are not to be
+described, when I observed in this abominable animal, a perfect human
+figure: the face of it indeed was flat and broad, the nose depressed,
+the lips large, and the mouth wide; but these differences are common to
+all savage nations, where the lineaments of the countenance are
+distorted, by the natives suffering their infants to lie grovelling on
+the earth, or by carrying them on their backs, nuzzling with their face
+against the mothers’ shoulders. The forefeet of the _Yahoo_ differed
+from my hands in nothing else but the length of the nails, the
+coarseness and brownness of the palms, and the hairiness on the backs.
+There was the same resemblance between our feet, with the same
+differences; which I knew very well, though the horses did not, because
+of my shoes and stockings; the same in every part of our bodies except
+as to hairiness and colour, which I have already described.
+
+The great difficulty that seemed to stick with the two horses, was to
+see the rest of my body so very different from that of a _Yahoo_, for
+which I was obliged to my clothes, whereof they had no conception. The
+sorrel nag offered me a root, which he held (after their manner, as we
+shall describe in its proper place) between his hoof and pastern; I
+took it in my hand, and, having smelt it, returned it to him again as
+civilly as I could. He brought out of the _Yahoos_’ kennel a piece of
+ass’s flesh; but it smelt so offensively that I turned from it with
+loathing: he then threw it to the _Yahoo_, by whom it was greedily
+devoured. He afterwards showed me a wisp of hay, and a fetlock full of
+oats; but I shook my head, to signify that neither of these were food
+for me. And indeed I now apprehended that I must absolutely starve, if
+I did not get to some of my own species; for as to those filthy
+_Yahoos_, although there were few greater lovers of mankind at that
+time than myself, yet I confess I never saw any sensitive being so
+detestable on all accounts; and the more I came near them the more
+hateful they grew, while I stayed in that country. This the master
+horse observed by my behaviour, and therefore sent the _Yahoo_ back to
+his kennel. He then put his fore-hoof to his mouth, at which I was much
+surprised, although he did it with ease, and with a motion that
+appeared perfectly natural, and made other signs, to know what I would
+eat; but I could not return him such an answer as he was able to
+apprehend; and if he had understood me, I did not see how it was
+possible to contrive any way for finding myself nourishment. While we
+were thus engaged, I observed a cow passing by, whereupon I pointed to
+her, and expressed a desire to go and milk her. This had its effect;
+for he led me back into the house, and ordered a mare-servant to open a
+room, where a good store of milk lay in earthen and wooden vessels,
+after a very orderly and cleanly manner. She gave me a large bowlful,
+of which I drank very heartily, and found myself well refreshed.
+
+About noon, I saw coming towards the house a kind of vehicle drawn like
+a sledge by four _Yahoos_. There was in it an old steed, who seemed to
+be of quality; he alighted with his hind-feet forward, having by
+accident got a hurt in his left fore-foot. He came to dine with our
+horse, who received him with great civility. They dined in the best
+room, and had oats boiled in milk for the second course, which the old
+horse ate warm, but the rest cold. Their mangers were placed circular
+in the middle of the room, and divided into several partitions, round
+which they sat on their haunches, upon bosses of straw. In the middle
+was a large rack, with angles answering to every partition of the
+manger; so that each horse and mare ate their own hay, and their own
+mash of oats and milk, with much decency and regularity. The behaviour
+of the young colt and foal appeared very modest, and that of the master
+and mistress extremely cheerful and complaisant to their guest. The
+gray ordered me to stand by him; and much discourse passed between him
+and his friend concerning me, as I found by the stranger’s often
+looking on me, and the frequent repetition of the word _Yahoo_.
+
+I happened to wear my gloves, which the master gray observing, seemed
+perplexed, discovering signs of wonder what I had done to my forefeet.
+He put his hoof three or four times to them, as if he would signify,
+that I should reduce them to their former shape, which I presently did,
+pulling off both my gloves, and putting them into my pocket. This
+occasioned farther talk; and I saw the company was pleased with my
+behaviour, whereof I soon found the good effects. I was ordered to
+speak the few words I understood; and while they were at dinner, the
+master taught me the names for oats, milk, fire, water, and some
+others, which I could readily pronounce after him, having from my youth
+a great facility in learning languages.
+
+When dinner was done, the master horse took me aside, and by signs and
+words made me understand the concern he was in that I had nothing to
+eat. Oats in their tongue are called _hlunnh_. This word I pronounced
+two or three times; for although I had refused them at first, yet, upon
+second thoughts, I considered that I could contrive to make of them a
+kind of bread, which might be sufficient, with milk, to keep me alive,
+till I could make my escape to some other country, and to creatures of
+my own species. The horse immediately ordered a white mare servant of
+his family to bring me a good quantity of oats in a sort of wooden
+tray. These I heated before the fire, as well as I could, and rubbed
+them till the husks came off, which I made a shift to winnow from the
+grain. I ground and beat them between two stones; then took water, and
+made them into a paste or cake, which I toasted at the fire and eat
+warm with milk. It was at first a very insipid diet, though common
+enough in many parts of Europe, but grew tolerable by time; and having
+been often reduced to hard fare in my life, this was not the first
+experiment I had made how easily nature is satisfied. And I cannot but
+observe, that I never had one hour’s sickness while I stayed in this
+island. It is true, I sometimes made a shift to catch a rabbit, or
+bird, by springs made of _Yahoo’s_ hairs; and I often gathered
+wholesome herbs, which I boiled, and ate as salads with my bread; and
+now and then, for a rarity, I made a little butter, and drank the whey.
+I was at first at a great loss for salt, but custom soon reconciled me
+to the want of it; and I am confident that the frequent use of salt
+among us is an effect of luxury, and was first introduced only as a
+provocative to drink, except where it is necessary for preserving flesh
+in long voyages, or in places remote from great markets; for we observe
+no animal to be fond of it but man, and as to myself, when I left this
+country, it was a great while before I could endure the taste of it in
+anything that I ate.
+
+This is enough to say upon the subject of my diet, wherewith other
+travellers fill their books, as if the readers were personally
+concerned whether we fare well or ill. However, it was necessary to
+mention this matter, lest the world should think it impossible that I
+could find sustenance for three years in such a country, and among such
+inhabitants.
+
+When it grew towards evening, the master horse ordered a place for me
+to lodge in; it was but six yards from the house and separated from the
+stable of the _Yahoos_. Here I got some straw, and covering myself with
+my own clothes, slept very sound. But I was in a short time better
+accommodated, as the reader shall know hereafter, when I come to treat
+more particularly about my way of living.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The author studies to learn the language. The Houyhnhnm, his master,
+assists in teaching him. The language described. Several Houyhnhnms of
+quality come out of curiosity to see the author. He gives his master a
+short account of his voyage.
+
+
+My principal endeavour was to learn the language, which my master (for
+so I shall henceforth call him), and his children, and every servant of
+his house, were desirous to teach me; for they looked upon it as a
+prodigy, that a brute animal should discover such marks of a rational
+creature. I pointed to every thing, and inquired the name of it, which
+I wrote down in my journal-book when I was alone, and corrected my bad
+accent by desiring those of the family to pronounce it often. In this
+employment, a sorrel nag, one of the under-servants, was very ready to
+assist me.
+
+In speaking, they pronounced through the nose and throat, and their
+language approaches nearest to the High-Dutch, or German, of any I know
+in Europe; but is much more graceful and significant. The emperor
+Charles V. made almost the same observation, when he said “that if he
+were to speak to his horse, it should be in High-Dutch.”
+
+The curiosity and impatience of my master were so great, that he spent
+many hours of his leisure to instruct me. He was convinced (as he
+afterwards told me) that I must be a _Yahoo_; but my teachableness,
+civility, and cleanliness, astonished him; which were qualities
+altogether opposite to those animals. He was most perplexed about my
+clothes, reasoning sometimes with himself, whether they were a part of
+my body: for I never pulled them off till the family were asleep, and
+got them on before they waked in the morning. My master was eager to
+learn “whence I came; how I acquired those appearances of reason, which
+I discovered in all my actions; and to know my story from my own mouth,
+which he hoped he should soon do by the great proficiency I made in
+learning and pronouncing their words and sentences.” To help my memory,
+I formed all I learned into the English alphabet, and writ the words
+down, with the translations. This last, after some time, I ventured to
+do in my master’s presence. It cost me much trouble to explain to him
+what I was doing; for the inhabitants have not the least idea of books
+or literature.
+
+In about ten weeks time, I was able to understand most of his
+questions; and in three months, could give him some tolerable answers.
+He was extremely curious to know “from what part of the country I came,
+and how I was taught to imitate a rational creature; because the
+_Yahoos_ (whom he saw I exactly resembled in my head, hands, and face,
+that were only visible), with some appearance of cunning, and the
+strongest disposition to mischief, were observed to be the most
+unteachable of all brutes.” I answered, “that I came over the sea, from
+a far place, with many others of my own kind, in a great hollow vessel
+made of the bodies of trees: that my companions forced me to land on
+this coast, and then left me to shift for myself.” It was with some
+difficulty, and by the help of many signs, that I brought him to
+understand me. He replied, “that I must needs be mistaken, or that I
+said the thing which was not;” for they have no word in their language
+to express lying or falsehood. “He knew it was impossible that there
+could be a country beyond the sea, or that a parcel of brutes could
+move a wooden vessel whither they pleased upon water. He was sure no
+_Houyhnhnm_ alive could make such a vessel, nor would trust _Yahoos_ to
+manage it.”
+
+The word _Houyhnhnm_, in their tongue, signifies a _horse_, and, in its
+etymology, the _perfection of nature_. I told my master, “that I was at
+a loss for expression, but would improve as fast as I could; and hoped,
+in a short time, I should be able to tell him wonders.” He was pleased
+to direct his own mare, his colt, and foal, and the servants of the
+family, to take all opportunities of instructing me; and every day, for
+two or three hours, he was at the same pains himself. Several horses
+and mares of quality in the neighbourhood came often to our house, upon
+the report spread of “a wonderful _Yahoo_, that could speak like a
+_Houyhnhnm_, and seemed, in his words and actions, to discover some
+glimmerings of reason.” These delighted to converse with me: they put
+many questions, and received such answers as I was able to return. By
+all these advantages I made so great a progress, that, in five months
+from my arrival I understood whatever was spoken, and could express
+myself tolerably well.
+
+The _Houyhnhnms_, who came to visit my master out of a design of seeing
+and talking with me, could hardly believe me to be a right _Yahoo_,
+because my body had a different covering from others of my kind. They
+were astonished to observe me without the usual hair or skin, except on
+my head, face, and hands; but I discovered that secret to my master
+upon an accident which happened about a fortnight before.
+
+I have already told the reader, that every night, when the family were
+gone to bed, it was my custom to strip, and cover myself with my
+clothes. It happened, one morning early, that my master sent for me by
+the sorrel nag, who was his valet. When he came I was fast asleep, my
+clothes fallen off on one side, and my shirt above my waist. I awaked
+at the noise he made, and observed him to deliver his message in some
+disorder; after which he went to my master, and in a great fright gave
+him a very confused account of what he had seen. This I presently
+discovered, for, going as soon as I was dressed to pay my attendance
+upon his honour, he asked me “the meaning of what his servant had
+reported, that I was not the same thing when I slept, as I appeared to
+be at other times; that his valet assured him, some part of me was
+white, some yellow, at least not so white, and some brown.”
+
+I had hitherto concealed the secret of my dress, in order to
+distinguish myself, as much as possible, from that cursed race of
+_Yahoos_; but now I found it in vain to do so any longer. Besides, I
+considered that my clothes and shoes would soon wear out, which already
+were in a declining condition, and must be supplied by some contrivance
+from the hides of _Yahoos_, or other brutes; whereby the whole secret
+would be known. I therefore told my master, “that in the country whence
+I came, those of my kind always covered their bodies with the hairs of
+certain animals prepared by art, as well for decency as to avoid the
+inclemencies of air, both hot and cold; of which, as to my own person,
+I would give him immediate conviction, if he pleased to command me:
+only desiring his excuse, if I did not expose those parts that nature
+taught us to conceal.” He said, “my discourse was all very strange, but
+especially the last part; for he could not understand, why nature
+should teach us to conceal what nature had given; that neither himself
+nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies; but, however, I
+might do as I pleased.” Whereupon I first unbuttoned my coat, and
+pulled it off. I did the same with my waistcoat. I drew off my shoes,
+stockings, and breeches. I let my shirt down to my waist, and drew up
+the bottom; fastening it like a girdle about my middle, to hide my
+nakedness.
+
+My master observed the whole performance with great signs of curiosity
+and admiration. He took up all my clothes in his pastern, one piece
+after another, and examined them diligently; he then stroked my body
+very gently, and looked round me several times; after which, he said,
+it was plain I must be a perfect _Yahoo_; but that I differed very much
+from the rest of my species in the softness, whiteness, and smoothness
+of my skin; my want of hair in several parts of my body; the shape and
+shortness of my claws behind and before; and my affectation of walking
+continually on my two hinder feet. He desired to see no more; and gave
+me leave to put on my clothes again, for I was shuddering with cold.
+
+I expressed my uneasiness at his giving me so often the appellation of
+_Yahoo_, an odious animal, for which I had so utter a hatred and
+contempt: I begged he would forbear applying that word to me, and make
+the same order in his family and among his friends whom he suffered to
+see me. I requested likewise, “that the secret of my having a false
+covering to my body, might be known to none but himself, at least as
+long as my present clothing should last; for as to what the sorrel nag,
+his valet, had observed, his honour might command him to conceal it.”
+
+All this my master very graciously consented to; and thus the secret
+was kept till my clothes began to wear out, which I was forced to
+supply by several contrivances that shall hereafter be mentioned. In
+the meantime, he desired “I would go on with my utmost diligence to
+learn their language, because he was more astonished at my capacity for
+speech and reason, than at the figure of my body, whether it were
+covered or not;” adding, “that he waited with some impatience to hear
+the wonders which I promised to tell him.”
+
+From thenceforward he doubled the pains he had been at to instruct me:
+he brought me into all company, and made them treat me with civility;
+“because,” as he told them, privately, “this would put me into good
+humour, and make me more diverting.”
+
+Every day, when I waited on him, beside the trouble he was at in
+teaching, he would ask me several questions concerning myself, which I
+answered as well as I could, and by these means he had already received
+some general ideas, though very imperfect. It would be tedious to
+relate the several steps by which I advanced to a more regular
+conversation; but the first account I gave of myself in any order and
+length was to this purpose:
+
+“That I came from a very far country, as I already had attempted to
+tell him, with about fifty more of my own species; that we travelled
+upon the seas in a great hollow vessel made of wood, and larger than
+his honour’s house. I described the ship to him in the best terms I
+could, and explained, by the help of my handkerchief displayed, how it
+was driven forward by the wind. That upon a quarrel among us, I was set
+on shore on this coast, where I walked forward, without knowing
+whither, till he delivered me from the persecution of those execrable
+_Yahoos_.” He asked me, “who made the ship, and how it was possible
+that the _Houyhnhnms_ of my country would leave it to the management of
+brutes?” My answer was, “that I durst proceed no further in my
+relation, unless he would give me his word and honour that he would not
+be offended, and then I would tell him the wonders I had so often
+promised.” He agreed; and I went on by assuring him, that the ship was
+made by creatures like myself; who, in all the countries I had
+travelled, as well as in my own, were the only governing rational
+animals; and that upon my arrival hither, I was as much astonished to
+see the _Houyhnhnms_ act like rational beings, as he, or his friends,
+could be, in finding some marks of reason in a creature he was pleased
+to call a _Yahoo_; to which I owned my resemblance in every part, but
+could not account for their degenerate and brutal nature. I said
+farther, “that if good fortune ever restored me to my native country,
+to relate my travels hither, as I resolved to do, everybody would
+believe, that I said the thing that was not, that I invented the story
+out of my own head; and (with all possible respect to himself, his
+family, and friends, and under his promise of not being offended) our
+countrymen would hardly think it probable that a _Houyhnhnm_ should be
+the presiding creature of a nation, and a _Yahoo_ the brute.”
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Houyhnhnms’ notion of truth and falsehood. The author’s discourse
+disapproved by his master. The author gives a more particular account
+of himself, and the accidents of his voyage.
+
+
+My master heard me with great appearances of uneasiness in his
+countenance; because _doubting_, or not believing, are so little known
+in this country, that the inhabitants cannot tell how to behave
+themselves under such circumstances. And I remember, in frequent
+discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood in other
+parts of the world, having occasion to talk of _lying_ and _false
+representation_, it was with much difficulty that he comprehended what
+I meant, although he had otherwise a most acute judgment. For he argued
+thus: “that the use of speech was to make us understand one another,
+and to receive information of facts; now, if any one _said the thing
+which was not_, these ends were defeated, because I cannot properly be
+said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving information,
+that he leaves me worse than in ignorance; for I am led to believe a
+thing black, when it is white, and short, when it is long.” And these
+were all the notions he had concerning that faculty of _lying_, so
+perfectly well understood, and so universally practised, among human
+creatures.
+
+To return from this digression. When I asserted that the _Yahoos_ were
+the only governing animals in my country, which my master said was
+altogether past his conception, he desired to know, “whether we had
+_Houyhnhnms_ among us, and what was their employment?” I told him, “we
+had great numbers; that in summer they grazed in the fields, and in
+winter were kept in houses with hay and oats, where _Yahoo_ servants
+were employed to rub their skins smooth, comb their manes, pick their
+feet, serve them with food, and make their beds.” “I understand you
+well,” said my master: “it is now very plain, from all you have spoken,
+that whatever share of reason the _Yahoos_ pretend to, the _Houyhnhnms_
+are your masters; I heartily wish our _Yahoos_ would be so tractable.”
+I begged “his honour would please to excuse me from proceeding any
+further, because I was very certain that the account he expected from
+me would be highly displeasing.” But he insisted in commanding me to
+let him know the best and the worst. I told him “he should be obeyed.”
+I owned “that the _Houyhnhnms_ among us, whom we called horses, were
+the most generous and comely animals we had; that they excelled in
+strength and swiftness; and when they belonged to persons of quality,
+were employed in travelling, racing, or drawing chariots; they were
+treated with much kindness and care, till they fell into diseases, or
+became foundered in the feet; but then they were sold, and used to all
+kind of drudgery till they died; after which their skins were stripped,
+and sold for what they were worth, and their bodies left to be devoured
+by dogs and birds of prey. But the common race of horses had not so
+good fortune, being kept by farmers and carriers, and other mean
+people, who put them to greater labour, and fed them worse.” I
+described, as well as I could, our way of riding; the shape and use of
+a bridle, a saddle, a spur, and a whip; of harness and wheels. I added,
+“that we fastened plates of a certain hard substance, called iron, at
+the bottom of their feet, to preserve their hoofs from being broken by
+the stony ways, on which we often travelled.”
+
+My master, after some expressions of great indignation, wondered “how
+we dared to venture upon a _Houyhnhnm’s_ back; for he was sure, that
+the weakest servant in his house would be able to shake off the
+strongest _Yahoo_; or by lying down and rolling on his back, squeeze
+the brute to death.” I answered “that our horses were trained up, from
+three or four years old, to the several uses we intended them for; that
+if any of them proved intolerably vicious, they were employed for
+carriages; that they were severely beaten, while they were young, for
+any mischievous tricks; that the males, designed for the common use of
+riding or draught, were generally castrated about two years after their
+birth, to take down their spirits, and make them more tame and gentle;
+that they were indeed sensible of rewards and punishments; but his
+honour would please to consider, that they had not the least tincture
+of reason, any more than the _Yahoos_ in this country.”
+
+It put me to the pains of many circumlocutions, to give my master a
+right idea of what I spoke; for their language does not abound in
+variety of words, because their wants and passions are fewer than among
+us. But it is impossible to express his noble resentment at our savage
+treatment of the _Houyhnhnm_ race; particularly after I had explained
+the manner and use of castrating horses among us, to hinder them from
+propagating their kind, and to render them more servile. He said, “if
+it were possible there could be any country where _Yahoos_ alone were
+endued with reason, they certainly must be the governing animal;
+because reason in time will always prevail against brutal strength.
+But, considering the frame of our bodies, and especially of mine, he
+thought no creature of equal bulk was so ill-contrived for employing
+that reason in the common offices of life;” whereupon he desired to
+know “whether those among whom I lived resembled me, or the _Yahoos_ of
+his country?” I assured him, “that I was as well shaped as most of my
+age; but the younger, and the females, were much more soft and tender,
+and the skins of the latter generally as white as milk.” He said, “I
+differed indeed from other _Yahoos_, being much more cleanly, and not
+altogether so deformed; but, in point of real advantage, he thought I
+differed for the worse: that my nails were of no use either to my fore
+or hinder feet; as to my forefeet, he could not properly call them by
+that name, for he never observed me to walk upon them; that they were
+too soft to bear the ground; that I generally went with them uncovered;
+neither was the covering I sometimes wore on them of the same shape, or
+so strong as that on my feet behind: that I could not walk with any
+security, for if either of my hinder feet slipped, I must inevitably
+fall.” He then began to find fault with other parts of my body: “the
+flatness of my face, the prominence of my nose, my eyes placed directly
+in front, so that I could not look on either side without turning my
+head: that I was not able to feed myself, without lifting one of my
+forefeet to my mouth: and therefore nature had placed those joints to
+answer that necessity. He knew not what could be the use of those
+several clefts and divisions in my feet behind; that these were too
+soft to bear the hardness and sharpness of stones, without a covering
+made from the skin of some other brute; that my whole body wanted a
+fence against heat and cold, which I was forced to put on and off every
+day, with tediousness and trouble: and lastly, that he observed every
+animal in this country naturally to abhor the _Yahoos_, whom the weaker
+avoided, and the stronger drove from them. So that, supposing us to
+have the gift of reason, he could not see how it were possible to cure
+that natural antipathy, which every creature discovered against us; nor
+consequently how we could tame and render them serviceable. However, he
+would,” as he said, “debate the matter no farther, because he was more
+desirous to know my own story, the country where I was born, and the
+several actions and events of my life, before I came hither.”
+
+I assured him, “how extremely desirous I was that he should be
+satisfied on every point; but I doubted much, whether it would be
+possible for me to explain myself on several subjects, whereof his
+honour could have no conception; because I saw nothing in his country
+to which I could resemble them; that, however, I would do my best, and
+strive to express myself by similitudes, humbly desiring his assistance
+when I wanted proper words;” which he was pleased to promise me.
+
+I said, “my birth was of honest parents, in an island called England;
+which was remote from his country, as many days’ journey as the
+strongest of his honour’s servants could travel in the annual course of
+the sun; that I was bred a surgeon, whose trade it is to cure wounds
+and hurts in the body, gotten by accident or violence; that my country
+was governed by a female man, whom we called queen; that I left it to
+get riches, whereby I might maintain myself and family, when I should
+return; that, in my last voyage, I was commander of the ship, and had
+about fifty _Yahoos_ under me, many of which died at sea, and I was
+forced to supply them by others picked out from several nations; that
+our ship was twice in danger of being sunk, the first time by a great
+storm, and the second by striking against a rock.” Here my master
+interposed, by asking me, “how I could persuade strangers, out of
+different countries, to venture with me, after the losses I had
+sustained, and the hazards I had run?” I said, “they were fellows of
+desperate fortunes, forced to fly from the places of their birth on
+account of their poverty or their crimes. Some were undone by lawsuits;
+others spent all they had in drinking, whoring, and gaming; others fled
+for treason; many for murder, theft, poisoning, robbery, perjury,
+forgery, coining false money, for committing rapes, or sodomy; for
+flying from their colours, or deserting to the enemy; and most of them
+had broken prison; none of these durst return to their native
+countries, for fear of being hanged, or of starving in a jail; and
+therefore they were under the necessity of seeking a livelihood in
+other places.”
+
+During this discourse, my master was pleased to interrupt me several
+times. I had made use of many circumlocutions in describing to him the
+nature of the several crimes for which most of our crew had been forced
+to fly their country. This labour took up several days’ conversation,
+before he was able to comprehend me. He was wholly at a loss to know
+what could be the use or necessity of practising those vices. To clear
+up which, I endeavoured to give some ideas of the desire of power and
+riches; of the terrible effects of lust, intemperance, malice, and
+envy. All this I was forced to define and describe by putting cases and
+making suppositions. After which, like one whose imagination was struck
+with something never seen or heard of before, he would lift up his eyes
+with amazement and indignation. Power, government, war, law,
+punishment, and a thousand other things, had no terms wherein that
+language could express them, which made the difficulty almost
+insuperable, to give my master any conception of what I meant. But
+being of an excellent understanding, much improved by contemplation and
+converse, he at last arrived at a competent knowledge of what human
+nature, in our parts of the world, is capable to perform, and desired I
+would give him some particular account of that land which we call
+Europe, but especially of my own country.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The author at his master’s command, informs him of the state of
+England. The causes of war among the princes of Europe. The author
+begins to explain the English constitution.
+
+
+The reader may please to observe, that the following extract of many
+conversations I had with my master, contains a summary of the most
+material points which were discoursed at several times for above two
+years; his honour often desiring fuller satisfaction, as I farther
+improved in the _Houyhnhnm_ tongue. I laid before him, as well as I
+could, the whole state of Europe; I discoursed of trade and
+manufactures, of arts and sciences; and the answers I gave to all the
+questions he made, as they arose upon several subjects, were a fund of
+conversation not to be exhausted. But I shall here only set down the
+substance of what passed between us concerning my own country, reducing
+it in order as well as I can, without any regard to time or other
+circumstances, while I strictly adhere to truth. My only concern is,
+that I shall hardly be able to do justice to my master’s arguments and
+expressions, which must needs suffer by my want of capacity, as well as
+by a translation into our barbarous English.
+
+In obedience, therefore, to his honour’s commands, I related to him the
+Revolution under the Prince of Orange; the long war with France,
+entered into by the said prince, and renewed by his successor, the
+present queen, wherein the greatest powers of Christendom were engaged,
+and which still continued: I computed, at his request, “that about a
+million of _Yahoos_ might have been killed in the whole progress of it;
+and perhaps a hundred or more cities taken, and five times as many
+ships burnt or sunk.”
+
+He asked me, “what were the usual causes or motives that made one
+country go to war with another?” I answered “they were innumerable; but
+I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of
+princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern;
+sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a
+war, in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against
+their evil administration. Difference in opinions has cost many
+millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be
+flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether
+whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post,
+or throw it into the fire; what is the best colour for a coat, whether
+black, white, red, or gray; and whether it should be long or short,
+narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many more. Neither are any wars so
+furious and bloody, or of so long a continuance, as those occasioned by
+difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.
+
+“Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them
+shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them
+pretend to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrels with another for
+fear the other should quarrel with him. Sometimes a war is entered
+upon, because the enemy is too strong; and sometimes, because he is too
+weak. Sometimes our neighbours want the things which we have, or have
+the things which we want, and we both fight, till they take ours, or
+give us theirs. It is a very justifiable cause of a war, to invade a
+country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by
+pestilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves. It is
+justifiable to enter into war against our nearest ally, when one of his
+towns lies convenient for us, or a territory of land, that would render
+our dominions round and complete. If a prince sends forces into a
+nation, where the people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put
+half of them to death, and make slaves of the rest, in order to
+civilize and reduce them from their barbarous way of living. It is a
+very kingly, honourable, and frequent practice, when one prince desires
+the assistance of another, to secure him against an invasion, that the
+assistant, when he has driven out the invader, should seize on the
+dominions himself, and kill, imprison, or banish, the prince he came to
+relieve. Alliance by blood, or marriage, is a frequent cause of war
+between princes; and the nearer the kindred is, the greater their
+disposition to quarrel; poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are
+proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance. For these
+reasons, the trade of a soldier is held the most honourable of all
+others; because a soldier is a _Yahoo_ hired to kill, in cold blood, as
+many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he
+can.
+
+“There is likewise a kind of beggarly princes in Europe, not able to
+make war by themselves, who hire out their troops to richer nations,
+for so much a day to each man; of which they keep three-fourths to
+themselves, and it is the best part of their maintenance: such are
+those in many northern parts of Europe.”
+
+“What you have told me,” said my master, “upon the subject of war, does
+indeed discover most admirably the effects of that reason you pretend
+to: however, it is happy that the shame is greater than the danger; and
+that nature has left you utterly incapable of doing much mischief. For,
+your mouths lying flat with your faces, you can hardly bite each other
+to any purpose, unless by consent. Then as to the claws upon your feet
+before and behind, they are so short and tender, that one of our
+_Yahoos_ would drive a dozen of yours before him. And therefore, in
+recounting the numbers of those who have been killed in battle, I
+cannot but think you have said the thing which is not.”
+
+I could not forbear shaking my head, and smiling a little at his
+ignorance. And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a
+description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols,
+bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks,
+undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights, ships sunk with a
+thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs
+flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under
+horses’ feet, flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases,
+left for food to dogs and wolves and birds of prey; plundering,
+stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying. And to set forth the
+valour of my own dear countrymen, I assured him, “that I had seen them
+blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship,
+and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the
+great diversion of the spectators.”
+
+I was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me
+silence. He said, “whoever understood the nature of _Yahoos_, might
+easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every
+action I had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their
+malice. But as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole
+species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind to which he
+was wholly a stranger before. He thought his ears, being used to such
+abominable words, might, by degrees, admit them with less detestation:
+that although he hated the _Yahoos_ of this country, yet he no more
+blamed them for their odious qualities, than he did a _gnnayh_ (a bird
+of prey) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. But
+when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such
+enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be
+worse than brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident, that,
+instead of reason we were only possessed of some quality fitted to
+increase our natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream
+returns the image of an ill-shapen body, not only larger but more
+distorted.”
+
+He added, “that he had heard too much upon the subject of war, both in
+this and some former discourses. There was another point, which a
+little perplexed him at present. I had informed him, that some of our
+crew left their country on account of being ruined by law; that I had
+already explained the meaning of the word; but he was at a loss how it
+should come to pass, that the law, which was intended for every man’s
+preservation, should be any man’s ruin. Therefore he desired to be
+further satisfied what I meant by law, and the dispensers thereof,
+according to the present practice in my own country; because he thought
+nature and reason were sufficient guides for a reasonable animal, as we
+pretended to be, in showing us what we ought to do, and what to avoid.”
+
+I assured his honour, “that law was a science in which I had not much
+conversed, further than by employing advocates, in vain, upon some
+injustices that had been done me: however, I would give him all the
+satisfaction I was able.”
+
+I said, “there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth
+in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white
+is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this
+society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my
+neighbour has a mind to my cow, he has a lawyer to prove that he ought
+to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it
+being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak
+for himself. Now, in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under
+two great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practised almost from
+his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he
+would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he
+always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will. The
+second disadvantage is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution,
+or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his
+brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. And
+therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is, to
+gain over my adversary’s lawyer with a double fee, who will then betray
+his client by insinuating that he hath justice on his side. The second
+way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can, by
+allowing the cow to belong to my adversary: and this, if it be
+skilfully done, will certainly bespeak the favour of the bench. Now
+your honour is to know, that these judges are persons appointed to
+decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of
+criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are
+grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all their lives against
+truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud,
+perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large
+bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty,
+by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office.
+
+“It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever has been done before,
+may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to
+record all the decisions formerly made against common justice, and the
+general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they
+produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the
+judges never fail of directing accordingly.
+
+“In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the
+cause; but are loud, violent, and tedious, in dwelling upon all
+circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the case
+already mentioned; they never desire to know what claim or title my
+adversary has to my cow; but whether the said cow were red or black;
+her horns long or short; whether the field I graze her in be round or
+square; whether she was milked at home or abroad; what diseases she is
+subject to, and the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn
+the cause from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years, come
+to an issue.
+
+“It is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant
+and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and
+wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to
+multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth
+and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it will take thirty years to
+decide, whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations
+belongs to me, or to a stranger three hundred miles off.
+
+“In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state, the
+method is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to
+sound the disposition of those in power, after which he can easily hang
+or save a criminal, strictly preserving all due forms of law.”
+
+Here my master interposing, said, “it was a pity, that creatures
+endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind, as these lawyers, by
+the description I gave of them, must certainly be, were not rather
+encouraged to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge.” In
+answer to which I assured his honour, “that in all points out of their
+own trade, they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation
+among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to
+all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general
+reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse as in that of
+their own profession.”
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A continuation of the state of England under Queen Anne. The character
+of a first minister of state in European courts.
+
+
+My master was yet wholly at a loss to understand what motives could
+incite this race of lawyers to perplex, disquiet, and weary themselves,
+and engage in a confederacy of injustice, merely for the sake of
+injuring their fellow-animals; neither could he comprehend what I meant
+in saying, they did it for hire. Whereupon I was at much pains to
+describe to him the use of money, the materials it was made of, and the
+value of the metals; “that when a _Yahoo_ had got a great store of this
+precious substance, he was able to purchase whatever he had a mind to;
+the finest clothing, the noblest houses, great tracts of land, the most
+costly meats and drinks, and have his choice of the most beautiful
+females. Therefore since money alone was able to perform all these
+feats, our _Yahoos_ thought they could never have enough of it to
+spend, or to save, as they found themselves inclined, from their
+natural bent either to profusion or avarice; that the rich man enjoyed
+the fruit of the poor man’s labour, and the latter were a thousand to
+one in proportion to the former; that the bulk of our people were
+forced to live miserably, by labouring every day for small wages, to
+make a few live plentifully.”
+
+I enlarged myself much on these, and many other particulars to the same
+purpose; but his honour was still to seek; for he went upon a
+supposition, that all animals had a title to their share in the
+productions of the earth, and especially those who presided over the
+rest. Therefore he desired I would let him know, “what these costly
+meats were, and how any of us happened to want them?” Whereupon I
+enumerated as many sorts as came into my head, with the various methods
+of dressing them, which could not be done without sending vessels by
+sea to every part of the world, as well for liquors to drink as for
+sauces and innumerable other conveniences. I assured him “that this
+whole globe of earth must be at least three times gone round before one
+of our better female _Yahoos_ could get her breakfast, or a cup to put
+it in.” He said “that must needs be a miserable country which cannot
+furnish food for its own inhabitants. But what he chiefly wondered at
+was, how such vast tracts of ground as I described should be wholly
+without fresh water, and the people put to the necessity of sending
+over the sea for drink.” I replied “that England (the dear place of my
+nativity) was computed to produce three times the quantity of food more
+than its inhabitants are able to consume, as well as liquors extracted
+from grain, or pressed out of the fruit of certain trees, which made
+excellent drink, and the same proportion in every other convenience of
+life. But, in order to feed the luxury and intemperance of the males,
+and the vanity of the females, we sent away the greatest part of our
+necessary things to other countries, whence, in return, we brought the
+materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend among ourselves. Hence
+it follows of necessity, that vast numbers of our people are compelled
+to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating,
+pimping, flattering, suborning, forswearing, forging, gaming, lying,
+fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning,
+whoring, canting, libelling, freethinking, and the like occupations:”
+every one of which terms I was at much pains to make him understand.
+
+“That wine was not imported among us from foreign countries to supply
+the want of water or other drinks, but because it was a sort of liquid
+which made us merry by putting us out of our senses, diverted all
+melancholy thoughts, begat wild extravagant imaginations in the brain,
+raised our hopes and banished our fears, suspended every office of
+reason for a time, and deprived us of the use of our limbs, till we
+fell into a profound sleep; although it must be confessed, that we
+always awaked sick and dispirited; and that the use of this liquor
+filled us with diseases which made our lives uncomfortable and short.
+
+“But beside all this, the bulk of our people supported themselves by
+furnishing the necessities or conveniences of life to the rich and to
+each other. For instance, when I am at home, and dressed as I ought to
+be, I carry on my body the workmanship of a hundred tradesmen; the
+building and furniture of my house employ as many more, and five times
+the number to adorn my wife.”
+
+I was going on to tell him of another sort of people, who get their
+livelihood by attending the sick, having, upon some occasions, informed
+his honour that many of my crew had died of diseases. But here it was
+with the utmost difficulty that I brought him to apprehend what I
+meant. “He could easily conceive, that a _Houyhnhnm_, grew weak and
+heavy a few days before his death, or by some accident might hurt a
+limb; but that nature, who works all things to perfection, should
+suffer any pains to breed in our bodies, he thought impossible, and
+desired to know the reason of so unaccountable an evil.”
+
+I told him “we fed on a thousand things which operated contrary to each
+other; that we ate when we were not hungry, and drank without the
+provocation of thirst; that we sat whole nights drinking strong
+liquors, without eating a bit, which disposed us to sloth, inflamed our
+bodies, and precipitated or prevented digestion; that prostitute female
+_Yahoos_ acquired a certain malady, which bred rottenness in the bones
+of those who fell into their embraces; that this, and many other
+diseases, were propagated from father to son; so that great numbers
+came into the world with complicated maladies upon them; that it would
+be endless to give him a catalogue of all diseases incident to human
+bodies, for they would not be fewer than five or six hundred, spread
+over every limb and joint—in short, every part, external and intestine,
+having diseases appropriated to itself. To remedy which, there was a
+sort of people bred up among us in the profession, or pretence, of
+curing the sick. And because I had some skill in the faculty, I would,
+in gratitude to his honour, let him know the whole mystery and method
+by which they proceed.
+
+“Their fundamental is, that all diseases arise from repletion; whence
+they conclude, that a great evacuation of the body is necessary, either
+through the natural passage or upwards at the mouth. Their next
+business is from herbs, minerals, gums, oils, shells, salts, juices,
+sea-weed, excrements, barks of trees, serpents, toads, frogs, spiders,
+dead men’s flesh and bones, birds, beasts, and fishes, to form a
+composition, for smell and taste, the most abominable, nauseous, and
+detestable, they can possibly contrive, which the stomach immediately
+rejects with loathing, and this they call a vomit; or else, from the
+same store-house, with some other poisonous additions, they command us
+to take in at the orifice above or below (just as the physician then
+happens to be disposed) a medicine equally annoying and disgustful to
+the bowels; which, relaxing the belly, drives down all before it; and
+this they call a purge, or a clyster. For nature (as the physicians
+allege) having intended the superior anterior orifice only for the
+intromission of solids and liquids, and the inferior posterior for
+ejection, these artists ingeniously considering that in all diseases
+nature is forced out of her seat, therefore, to replace her in it, the
+body must be treated in a manner directly contrary, by interchanging
+the use of each orifice; forcing solids and liquids in at the anus, and
+making evacuations at the mouth.
+
+“But, besides real diseases, we are subject to many that are only
+imaginary, for which the physicians have invented imaginary cures;
+these have their several names, and so have the drugs that are proper
+for them; and with these our female _Yahoos_ are always infested.
+
+“One great excellency in this tribe, is their skill at prognostics,
+wherein they seldom fail; their predictions in real diseases, when they
+rise to any degree of malignity, generally portending death, which is
+always in their power, when recovery is not: and therefore, upon any
+unexpected signs of amendment, after they have pronounced their
+sentence, rather than be accused as false prophets, they know how to
+approve their sagacity to the world, by a seasonable dose.
+
+“They are likewise of special use to husbands and wives who are grown
+weary of their mates; to eldest sons, to great ministers of state, and
+often to princes.”
+
+I had formerly, upon occasion, discoursed with my master upon the
+nature of government in general, and particularly of our own excellent
+constitution, deservedly the wonder and envy of the whole world. But
+having here accidentally mentioned a minister of state, he commanded
+me, some time after, to inform him, “what species of _Yahoo_ I
+particularly meant by that appellation.”
+
+I told him, “that a first or chief minister of state, who was the
+person I intended to describe, was the creature wholly exempt from joy
+and grief, love and hatred, pity and anger; at least, makes use of no
+other passions, but a violent desire of wealth, power, and titles; that
+he applies his words to all uses, except to the indication of his mind;
+that he never tells a truth but with an intent that you should take it
+for a lie; nor a lie, but with a design that you should take it for a
+truth; that those he speaks worst of behind their backs are in the
+surest way of preferment; and whenever he begins to praise you to
+others, or to yourself, you are from that day forlorn. The worst mark
+you can receive is a promise, especially when it is confirmed with an
+oath; after which, every wise man retires, and gives over all hopes.
+
+“There are three methods, by which a man may rise to be chief minister.
+The first is, by knowing how, with prudence, to dispose of a wife, a
+daughter, or a sister; the second, by betraying or undermining his
+predecessor; and the third is, by a furious zeal, in public assemblies,
+against the corruptions of the court. But a wise prince would rather
+choose to employ those who practise the last of these methods; because
+such zealots prove always the most obsequious and subservient to the
+will and passions of their master. That these ministers, having all
+employments at their disposal, preserve themselves in power, by bribing
+the majority of a senate or great council; and at last, by an
+expedient, called an act of indemnity” (whereof I described the nature
+to him), “they secure themselves from after-reckonings, and retire from
+the public laden with the spoils of the nation.
+
+“The palace of a chief minister is a seminary to breed up others in his
+own trade: the pages, lackeys, and porters, by imitating their master,
+become ministers of state in their several districts, and learn to
+excel in the three principal ingredients, of insolence, lying, and
+bribery. Accordingly, they have a subaltern court paid to them by
+persons of the best rank; and sometimes by the force of dexterity and
+impudence, arrive, through several gradations, to be successors to
+their lord.
+
+“He is usually governed by a decayed wench, or favourite footman, who
+are the tunnels through which all graces are conveyed, and may properly
+be called, in the last resort, the governors of the kingdom.”
+
+One day, in discourse, my master, having heard me mention the nobility
+of my country, was pleased to make me a compliment which I could not
+pretend to deserve: “that he was sure I must have been born of some
+noble family, because I far exceeded in shape, colour, and cleanliness,
+all the _Yahoos_ of his nation, although I seemed to fail in strength
+and agility, which must be imputed to my different way of living from
+those other brutes; and besides I was not only endowed with the faculty
+of speech, but likewise with some rudiments of reason, to a degree
+that, with all his acquaintance, I passed for a prodigy.”
+
+He made me observe, “that among the _Houyhnhnms_, the white, the
+sorrel, and the iron-gray, were not so exactly shaped as the bay, the
+dapple-gray, and the black; nor born with equal talents of mind, or a
+capacity to improve them; and therefore continued always in the
+condition of servants, without ever aspiring to match out of their own
+race, which in that country would be reckoned monstrous and unnatural.”
+
+I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion
+he was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time,
+“that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest
+parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that
+nobility, among us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he
+had of it; that our young noblemen are bred from their childhood in
+idleness and luxury; that, as soon as years will permit, they consume
+their vigour, and contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when
+their fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth,
+disagreeable person, and unsound constitution (merely for the sake of
+money), whom they hate and despise. That the productions of such
+marriages are generally scrofulous, rickety, or deformed children; by
+which means the family seldom continues above three generations, unless
+the wife takes care to provide a healthy father, among her neighbours
+or domestics, in order to improve and continue the breed. That a weak
+diseased body, a meagre countenance, and sallow complexion, are the
+true marks of noble blood; and a healthy robust appearance is so
+disgraceful in a man of quality, that the world concludes his real
+father to have been a groom or a coachman. The imperfections of his
+mind run parallel with those of his body, being a composition of
+spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride.
+
+“Without the consent of this illustrious body, no law can be enacted,
+repealed, or altered: and these nobles have likewise the decision of
+all our possessions, without appeal.” [514]
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The author’s great love of his native country. His master’s
+observations upon the constitution and administration of England, as
+described by the author, with parallel cases and comparisons. His
+master’s observations upon human nature.
+
+
+The reader may be disposed to wonder how I could prevail on myself to
+give so free a representation of my own species, among a race of
+mortals who are already too apt to conceive the vilest opinion of
+humankind, from that entire congruity between me and their _Yahoos_.
+But I must freely confess, that the many virtues of those excellent
+quadrupeds, placed in opposite view to human corruptions, had so far
+opened my eyes and enlarged my understanding, that I began to view the
+actions and passions of man in a very different light, and to think the
+honour of my own kind not worth managing; which, besides, it was
+impossible for me to do, before a person of so acute a judgment as my
+master, who daily convinced me of a thousand faults in myself, whereof
+I had not the least perception before, and which, with us, would never
+be numbered even among human infirmities. I had likewise learned, from
+his example, an utter detestation of all falsehood or disguise; and
+truth appeared so amiable to me, that I determined upon sacrificing
+every thing to it.
+
+Let me deal so candidly with the reader as to confess that there was
+yet a much stronger motive for the freedom I took in my representation
+of things. I had not yet been a year in this country before I
+contracted such a love and veneration for the inhabitants, that I
+entered on a firm resolution never to return to humankind, but to pass
+the rest of my life among these admirable _Houyhnhnms_, in the
+contemplation and practice of every virtue, where I could have no
+example or incitement to vice. But it was decreed by fortune, my
+perpetual enemy, that so great a felicity should not fall to my share.
+However, it is now some comfort to reflect, that in what I said of my
+countrymen, I extenuated their faults as much as I durst before so
+strict an examiner; and upon every article gave as favourable a turn as
+the matter would bear. For, indeed, who is there alive that will not be
+swayed by his bias and partiality to the place of his birth?
+
+I have related the substance of several conversations I had with my
+master during the greatest part of the time I had the honour to be in
+his service; but have, indeed, for brevity sake, omitted much more than
+is here set down.
+
+When I had answered all his questions, and his curiosity seemed to be
+fully satisfied, he sent for me one morning early, and commanded me to
+sit down at some distance (an honour which he had never before
+conferred upon me). He said, “he had been very seriously considering my
+whole story, as far as it related both to myself and my country; that
+he looked upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what
+accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had
+fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to
+aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which
+nature had not given us; that we disarmed ourselves of the few
+abilities she had bestowed; had been very successful in multiplying our
+original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours
+to supply them by our own inventions; that, as to myself, it was
+manifest I had neither the strength nor agility of a common _Yahoo_;
+that I walked infirmly on my hinder feet; had found out a contrivance
+to make my claws of no use or defence, and to remove the hair from my
+chin, which was intended as a shelter from the sun and the weather:
+lastly, that I could neither run with speed, nor climb trees like my
+brethren,” as he called them, “the _Yahoos_ in his country.
+
+“That our institutions of government and law were plainly owing to our
+gross defects in reason, and by consequence in virtue; because reason
+alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature; which was,
+therefore, a character we had no pretence to challenge, even from the
+account I had given of my own people; although he manifestly perceived,
+that, in order to favour them, I had concealed many particulars, and
+often said the thing which was not.
+
+“He was the more confirmed in this opinion, because, he observed, that
+as I agreed in every feature of my body with other _Yahoos_, except
+where it was to my real disadvantage in point of strength, speed, and
+activity, the shortness of my claws, and some other particulars where
+nature had no part; so from the representation I had given him of our
+lives, our manners, and our actions, he found as near a resemblance in
+the disposition of our minds.” He said, “the _Yahoos_ were known to
+hate one another, more than they did any different species of animals;
+and the reason usually assigned was, the odiousness of their own
+shapes, which all could see in the rest, but not in themselves. He had
+therefore begun to think it not unwise in us to cover our bodies, and
+by that invention conceal many of our deformities from each other,
+which would else be hardly supportable. But he now found he had been
+mistaken, and that the dissensions of those brutes in his country were
+owing to the same cause with ours, as I had described them. For if,”
+said he, “you throw among five _Yahoos_ as much food as would be
+sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating peaceably, fall
+together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself;
+and therefore a servant was usually employed to stand by while they
+were feeding abroad, and those kept at home were tied at a distance
+from each other: that if a cow died of age or accident, before a
+_Houyhnhnm_ could secure it for his own _Yahoos_, those in the
+neighbourhood would come in herds to seize it, and then would ensue
+such a battle as I had described, with terrible wounds made by their
+claws on both sides, although they seldom were able to kill one
+another, for want of such convenient instruments of death as we had
+invented. At other times, the like battles have been fought between the
+_Yahoos_ of several neighbourhoods, without any visible cause; those of
+one district watching all opportunities to surprise the next, before
+they are prepared. But if they find their project has miscarried, they
+return home, and, for want of enemies, engage in what I call a civil
+war among themselves.
+
+“That in some fields of his country there are certain shining stones of
+several colours, whereof the _Yahoos_ are violently fond: and when part
+of these stones is fixed in the earth, as it sometimes happens, they
+will dig with their claws for whole days to get them out; then carry
+them away, and hide them by heaps in their kennels; but still looking
+round with great caution, for fear their comrades should find out their
+treasure.” My master said, “he could never discover the reason of this
+unnatural appetite, or how these stones could be of any use to a
+_Yahoo_; but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle
+of avarice which I had ascribed to mankind. That he had once, by way of
+experiment, privately removed a heap of these stones from the place
+where one of his _Yahoos_ had buried it; whereupon the sordid animal,
+missing his treasure, by his loud lamenting brought the whole herd to
+the place, there miserably howled, then fell to biting and tearing the
+rest, began to pine away, would neither eat, nor sleep, nor work, till
+he ordered a servant privately to convey the stones into the same hole,
+and hide them as before; which, when his _Yahoo_ had found, he
+presently recovered his spirits and good humour, but took good care to
+remove them to a better hiding place, and has ever since been a very
+serviceable brute.”
+
+My master further assured me, which I also observed myself, “that in
+the fields where the shining stones abound, the fiercest and most
+frequent battles are fought, occasioned by perpetual inroads of the
+neighbouring _Yahoos_.”
+
+He said, “it was common, when two _Yahoos_ discovered such a stone in a
+field, and were contending which of them should be the proprietor, a
+third would take the advantage, and carry it away from them both;”
+which my master would needs contend to have some kind of resemblance
+with our suits at law; wherein I thought it for our credit not to
+undeceive him; since the decision he mentioned was much more equitable
+than many decrees among us; because the plaintiff and defendant there
+lost nothing beside the stone they contended for: whereas our courts of
+equity would never have dismissed the cause, while either of them had
+any thing left.
+
+My master, continuing his discourse, said, “there was nothing that
+rendered the _Yahoos_ more odious, than their undistinguishing appetite
+to devour every thing that came in their way, whether herbs, roots,
+berries, the corrupted flesh of animals, or all mingled together: and
+it was peculiar in their temper, that they were fonder of what they
+could get by rapine or stealth, at a greater distance, than much better
+food provided for them at home. If their prey held out, they would eat
+till they were ready to burst; after which, nature had pointed out to
+them a certain root that gave them a general evacuation.
+
+“There was also another kind of root, very juicy, but somewhat rare and
+difficult to be found, which the _Yahoos_ sought for with much
+eagerness, and would suck it with great delight; it produced in them
+the same effects that wine has upon us. It would make them sometimes
+hug, and sometimes tear one another; they would howl, and grin, and
+chatter, and reel, and tumble, and then fall asleep in the mud.”
+
+I did indeed observe that the _Yahoos_ were the only animals in this
+country subject to any diseases; which, however, were much fewer than
+horses have among us, and contracted, not by any ill-treatment they
+meet with, but by the nastiness and greediness of that sordid brute.
+Neither has their language any more than a general appellation for
+those maladies, which is borrowed from the name of the beast, and
+called _hnea-yahoo_, or _Yahoo’s evil_; and the cure prescribed is a
+mixture of their own dung and urine, forcibly put down the _Yahoo’s_
+throat. This I have since often known to have been taken with success,
+and do here freely recommend it to my countrymen for the public good,
+as an admirable specific against all diseases produced by repletion.
+
+“As to learning, government, arts, manufactures, and the like,” my
+master confessed, “he could find little or no resemblance between the
+_Yahoos_ of that country and those in ours; for he only meant to
+observe what parity there was in our natures. He had heard, indeed,
+some curious _Houyhnhnms_ observe, that in most herds there was a sort
+of ruling _Yahoo_ (as among us there is generally some leading or
+principal stag in a park), who was always more deformed in body, and
+mischievous in disposition, than any of the rest; that this leader had
+usually a favourite as like himself as he could get, whose employment
+was to lick his master’s feet and posteriors, and drive the female
+_Yahoos_ to his kennel; for which he was now and then rewarded with a
+piece of ass’s flesh. This favourite is hated by the whole herd, and
+therefore, to protect himself, keeps always near the person of his
+leader. He usually continues in office till a worse can be found; but
+the very moment he is discarded, his successor, at the head of all the
+_Yahoos_ in that district, young and old, male and female, come in a
+body, and discharge their excrements upon him from head to foot. But
+how far this might be applicable to our courts, and favourites, and
+ministers of state, my master said I could best determine.”
+
+I durst make no return to this malicious insinuation, which debased
+human understanding below the sagacity of a common hound, who has
+judgment enough to distinguish and follow the cry of the ablest dog in
+the pack, without being ever mistaken.
+
+My master told me, “there were some qualities remarkable in the
+_Yahoos_, which he had not observed me to mention, or at least very
+slightly, in the accounts I had given of humankind.” He said, “those
+animals, like other brutes, had their females in common; but in this
+they differed, that the she _Yahoo_ would admit the males while she was
+pregnant; and that the hes would quarrel and fight with the females, as
+fiercely as with each other; both which practices were such degrees of
+infamous brutality, as no other sensitive creature ever arrived at.
+
+“Another thing he wondered at in the _Yahoos_, was their strange
+disposition to nastiness and dirt; whereas there appears to be a
+natural love of cleanliness in all other animals.” As to the two former
+accusations, I was glad to let them pass without any reply, because I
+had not a word to offer upon them in defence of my species, which
+otherwise I certainly had done from my own inclinations. But I could
+have easily vindicated humankind from the imputation of singularity
+upon the last article, if there had been any swine in that country (as
+unluckily for me there were not), which, although it may be a sweeter
+quadruped than a _Yahoo_, cannot, I humbly conceive, in justice,
+pretend to more cleanliness; and so his honour himself must have owned,
+if he had seen their filthy way of feeding, and their custom of
+wallowing and sleeping in the mud.
+
+My master likewise mentioned another quality which his servants had
+discovered in several Yahoos, and to him was wholly unaccountable. He
+said, “a fancy would sometimes take a _Yahoo_ to retire into a corner,
+to lie down, and howl, and groan, and spurn away all that came near
+him, although he were young and fat, wanted neither food nor water, nor
+did the servant imagine what could possibly ail him. And the only
+remedy they found was, to set him to hard work, after which he would
+infallibly come to himself.” To this I was silent out of partiality to
+my own kind; yet here I could plainly discover the true seeds of
+spleen, which only seizes on the lazy, the luxurious, and the rich;
+who, if they were forced to undergo the same regimen, I would undertake
+for the cure.
+
+His honour had further observed, “that a female _Yahoo_ would often
+stand behind a bank or a bush, to gaze on the young males passing by,
+and then appear, and hide, using many antic gestures and grimaces, at
+which time it was observed that she had a most offensive smell; and
+when any of the males advanced, would slowly retire, looking often
+back, and with a counterfeit show of fear, run off into some convenient
+place, where she knew the male would follow her.
+
+“At other times, if a female stranger came among them, three or four of
+her own sex would get about her, and stare, and chatter, and grin, and
+smell her all over; and then turn off with gestures, that seemed to
+express contempt and disdain.”
+
+Perhaps my master might refine a little in these speculations, which he
+had drawn from what he observed himself, or had been told him by
+others; however, I could not reflect without some amazement, and much
+sorrow, that the rudiments of lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal,
+should have place by instinct in womankind.
+
+I expected every moment that my master would accuse the _Yahoos_ of
+those unnatural appetites in both sexes, so common among us. But
+nature, it seems, has not been so expert a school-mistress; and these
+politer pleasures are entirely the productions of art and reason on our
+side of the globe.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The author relates several particulars of the _Yahoos_. The great
+virtues of the _Houyhnhnms_. The education and exercise of their youth.
+Their general assembly.
+
+
+As I ought to have understood human nature much better than I supposed
+it possible for my master to do, so it was easy to apply the character
+he gave of the _Yahoos_ to myself and my countrymen; and I believed I
+could yet make further discoveries, from my own observation. I
+therefore often begged his honour to let me go among the herds of
+_Yahoos_ in the neighbourhood; to which he always very graciously
+consented, being perfectly convinced that the hatred I bore these
+brutes would never suffer me to be corrupted by them; and his honour
+ordered one of his servants, a strong sorrel nag, very honest and
+good-natured, to be my guard; without whose protection I durst not
+undertake such adventures. For I have already told the reader how much
+I was pestered by these odious animals, upon my first arrival; and I
+afterwards failed very narrowly, three or four times, of falling into
+their clutches, when I happened to stray at any distance without my
+hanger. And I have reason to believe they had some imagination that I
+was of their own species, which I often assisted myself by stripping up
+my sleeves, and showing my naked arms and breast in their sight, when
+my protector was with me. At which times they would approach as near as
+they durst, and imitate my actions after the manner of monkeys, but
+ever with great signs of hatred; as a tame jackdaw with cap and
+stockings is always persecuted by the wild ones, when he happens to be
+got among them.
+
+They are prodigiously nimble from their infancy. However, I once caught
+a young male of three years old, and endeavoured, by all marks of
+tenderness, to make it quiet; but the little imp fell a squalling and
+scratching and biting with such violence, that I was forced to let it
+go; and it was high time, for a whole troop of old ones came about us
+at the noise, but finding the cub was safe (for away it ran), and my
+sorrel nag being by, they durst not venture near us. I observed the
+young animal’s flesh to smell very rank, and the stink was somewhat
+between a weasel and a fox, but much more disagreeable. I forgot
+another circumstance (and perhaps I might have the reader’s pardon if
+it were wholly omitted), that while I held the odious vermin in my
+hands, it voided its filthy excrements of a yellow liquid substance all
+over my clothes; but by good fortune there was a small brook hard by,
+where I washed myself as clean as I could; although I durst not come
+into my master’s presence until I were sufficiently aired.
+
+By what I could discover, the _Yahoos_ appear to be the most
+unteachable of all animals, their capacity never reaching higher than
+to draw or carry burdens. Yet I am of opinion this defect arises
+chiefly from a perverse, restive disposition; for they are cunning,
+malicious, treacherous, and revengeful. They are strong and hardy, but
+of a cowardly spirit, and, by consequence, insolent, abject, and cruel.
+It is observed, that the red haired of both sexes are more libidinous
+and mischievous than the rest, whom yet they much exceed in strength
+and activity.
+
+The _Houyhnhnms_ keep the _Yahoos_ for present use in huts not far from
+the house; but the rest are sent abroad to certain fields, where they
+dig up roots, eat several kinds of herbs, and search about for carrion,
+or sometimes catch weasels and _luhimuhs_ (a sort of wild rat), which
+they greedily devour. Nature has taught them to dig deep holes with
+their nails on the side of a rising ground, wherein they lie by
+themselves; only the kennels of the females are larger, sufficient to
+hold two or three cubs.
+
+They swim from their infancy like frogs, and are able to continue long
+under water, where they often take fish, which the females carry home
+to their young. And, upon this occasion, I hope the reader will pardon
+my relating an odd adventure.
+
+Being one day abroad with my protector the sorrel nag, and the weather
+exceeding hot, I entreated him to let me bathe in a river that was
+near. He consented, and I immediately stripped myself stark naked, and
+went down softly into the stream. It happened that a young female
+_Yahoo_, standing behind a bank, saw the whole proceeding, and inflamed
+by desire, as the nag and I conjectured, came running with all speed,
+and leaped into the water, within five yards of the place where I
+bathed. I was never in my life so terribly frightened. The nag was
+grazing at some distance, not suspecting any harm. She embraced me
+after a most fulsome manner. I roared as loud as I could, and the nag
+came galloping towards me, whereupon she quitted her grasp, with the
+utmost reluctancy, and leaped upon the opposite bank, where she stood
+gazing and howling all the time I was putting on my clothes.
+
+This was a matter of diversion to my master and his family, as well as
+of mortification to myself. For now I could no longer deny that I was a
+real _Yahoo_ in every limb and feature, since the females had a natural
+propensity to me, as one of their own species. Neither was the hair of
+this brute of a red colour (which might have been some excuse for an
+appetite a little irregular), but black as a sloe, and her countenance
+did not make an appearance altogether so hideous as the rest of her
+kind; for I think she could not be above eleven years old.
+
+Having lived three years in this country, the reader, I suppose, will
+expect that I should, like other travellers, give him some account of
+the manners and customs of its inhabitants, which it was indeed my
+principal study to learn.
+
+As these noble _Houyhnhnms_ are endowed by nature with a general
+disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is
+evil in a rational creature, so their grand maxim is, to cultivate
+reason, and to be wholly governed by it. Neither is reason among them a
+point problematical, as with us, where men can argue with plausibility
+on both sides of the question, but strikes you with immediate
+conviction; as it must needs do, where it is not mingled, obscured, or
+discoloured, by passion and interest. I remember it was with extreme
+difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of
+the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason
+taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our
+knowledge we cannot do either. So that controversies, wranglings,
+disputes, and positiveness, in false or dubious propositions, are evils
+unknown among the _Houyhnhnms_. In the like manner, when I used to
+explain to him our several systems of natural philosophy, he would
+laugh, “that a creature pretending to reason, should value itself upon
+the knowledge of other people’s conjectures, and in things where that
+knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no use.” Wherein he agreed
+entirely with the sentiments of Socrates, as Plato delivers them; which
+I mention as the highest honour I can do that prince of philosophers. I
+have often since reflected, what destruction such doctrine would make
+in the libraries of Europe; and how many paths of fame would be then
+shut up in the learned world.
+
+Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among the
+_Houyhnhnms_; and these not confined to particular objects, but
+universal to the whole race; for a stranger from the remotest part is
+equally treated with the nearest neighbour, and wherever he goes, looks
+upon himself as at home. They preserve decency and civility in the
+highest degrees, but are altogether ignorant of ceremony. They have no
+fondness for their colts or foals, but the care they take in educating
+them proceeds entirely from the dictates of reason. And I observed my
+master to show the same affection to his neighbour’s issue, that he had
+for his own. They will have it that nature teaches them to love the
+whole species, and it is reason only that makes a distinction of
+persons, where there is a superior degree of virtue.
+
+When the matron _Houyhnhnms_ have produced one of each sex, they no
+longer accompany with their consorts, except they lose one of their
+issue by some casualty, which very seldom happens; but in such a case
+they meet again; or when the like accident befalls a person whose wife
+is past bearing, some other couple bestow on him one of their own
+colts, and then go together again until the mother is pregnant. This
+caution is necessary, to prevent the country from being overburdened
+with numbers. But the race of inferior _Houyhnhnms_, bred up to be
+servants, is not so strictly limited upon this article: these are
+allowed to produce three of each sex, to be domestics in the noble
+families.
+
+In their marriages, they are exactly careful to choose such colours as
+will not make any disagreeable mixture in the breed. Strength is
+chiefly valued in the male, and comeliness in the female; not upon the
+account of love, but to preserve the race from degenerating; for where
+a female happens to excel in strength, a consort is chosen, with regard
+to comeliness.
+
+Courtship, love, presents, jointures, settlements have no place in
+their thoughts, or terms whereby to express them in their language. The
+young couple meet, and are joined, merely because it is the
+determination of their parents and friends; it is what they see done
+every day, and they look upon it as one of the necessary actions of a
+reasonable being. But the violation of marriage, or any other
+unchastity, was never heard of; and the married pair pass their lives
+with the same friendship and mutual benevolence, that they bear to all
+others of the same species who come in their way, without jealousy,
+fondness, quarrelling, or discontent.
+
+In educating the youth of both sexes, their method is admirable, and
+highly deserves our imitation. These are not suffered to taste a grain
+of oats, except upon certain days, till eighteen years old; nor milk,
+but very rarely; and in summer they graze two hours in the morning, and
+as many in the evening, which their parents likewise observe; but the
+servants are not allowed above half that time, and a great part of
+their grass is brought home, which they eat at the most convenient
+hours, when they can be best spared from work.
+
+Temperance, industry, exercise, and cleanliness, are the lessons
+equally enjoined to the young ones of both sexes: and my master thought
+it monstrous in us, to give the females a different kind of education
+from the males, except in some articles of domestic management;
+whereby, as he truly observed, one half of our natives were good for
+nothing but bringing children into the world; and to trust the care of
+our children to such useless animals, he said, was yet a greater
+instance of brutality.
+
+But the _Houyhnhnms_ train up their youth to strength, speed, and
+hardiness, by exercising them in running races up and down steep hills,
+and over hard stony grounds; and when they are all in a sweat, they are
+ordered to leap over head and ears into a pond or river. Four times a
+year the youth of a certain district meet to show their proficiency in
+running and leaping, and other feats of strength and agility; where the
+victor is rewarded with a song in his or her praise. On this festival,
+the servants drive a herd of _Yahoos_ into the field, laden with hay,
+and oats, and milk, for a repast to the _Houyhnhnms_; after which,
+these brutes are immediately driven back again, for fear of being
+noisome to the assembly.
+
+Every fourth year, at the vernal equinox, there is a representative
+council of the whole nation, which meets in a plain about twenty miles
+from our house, and continues about five or six days. Here they inquire
+into the state and condition of the several districts; whether they
+abound or be deficient in hay or oats, or cows, or _Yahoos_; and
+wherever there is any want (which is but seldom) it is immediately
+supplied by unanimous consent and contribution. Here likewise the
+regulation of children is settled: as for instance, if a _Houyhnhnm_
+has two males, he changes one of them with another that has two
+females; and when a child has been lost by any casualty, where the
+mother is past breeding, it is determined what family in the district
+shall breed another to supply the loss.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A grand debate at the general assembly of the _Houyhnhnms_, and how it
+was determined. The learning of the _Houyhnhnms_. Their buildings.
+Their manner of burials. The defectiveness of their language.
+
+
+One of these grand assemblies was held in my time, about three months
+before my departure, whither my master went as the representative of
+our district. In this council was resumed their old debate, and indeed
+the only debate that ever happened in their country; whereof my master,
+after his return, gave me a very particular account.
+
+The question to be debated was, “whether the _Yahoos_ should be
+exterminated from the face of the earth?” One of the members for the
+affirmative offered several arguments of great strength and weight,
+alleging, “that as the _Yahoos_ were the most filthy, noisome, and
+deformed animals which nature ever produced, so they were the most
+restive and indocible, mischievous and malicious; they would privately
+suck the teats of the _Houyhnhnms’_ cows, kill and devour their cats,
+trample down their oats and grass, if they were not continually
+watched, and commit a thousand other extravagancies.” He took notice of
+a general tradition, “that _Yahoos_ had not been always in their
+country; but that many ages ago, two of these brutes appeared together
+upon a mountain; whether produced by the heat of the sun upon corrupted
+mud and slime, or from the ooze and froth of the sea, was never known;
+that these _Yahoos_ engendered, and their brood, in a short time, grew
+so numerous as to overrun and infest the whole nation; that the
+_Houyhnhnms_, to get rid of this evil, made a general hunting, and at
+last enclosed the whole herd; and destroying the elder, every
+_Houyhnhnm_ kept two young ones in a kennel, and brought them to such a
+degree of tameness, as an animal, so savage by nature, can be capable
+of acquiring, using them for draught and carriage; that there seemed to
+be much truth in this tradition, and that those creatures could not be
+_yinhniamshy_ (or _aborigines_ of the land), because of the violent
+hatred the _Houyhnhnms_, as well as all other animals, bore them,
+which, although their evil disposition sufficiently deserved, could
+never have arrived at so high a degree if they had been _aborigines_,
+or else they would have long since been rooted out; that the
+inhabitants, taking a fancy to use the service of the _Yahoos_, had,
+very imprudently, neglected to cultivate the breed of asses, which are
+a comely animal, easily kept, more tame and orderly, without any
+offensive smell, strong enough for labour, although they yield to the
+other in agility of body, and if their braying be no agreeable sound,
+it is far preferable to the horrible howlings of the _Yahoos_.”
+
+Several others declared their sentiments to the same purpose, when my
+master proposed an expedient to the assembly, whereof he had indeed
+borrowed the hint from me. “He approved of the tradition mentioned by
+the honourable member who spoke before, and affirmed, that the two
+_Yahoos_ said to be seen first among them, had been driven thither over
+the sea; that coming to land, and being forsaken by their companions,
+they retired to the mountains, and degenerating by degrees, became in
+process of time much more savage than those of their own species in the
+country whence these two originals came. The reason of this assertion
+was, that he had now in his possession a certain wonderful _Yahoo_
+(meaning myself) which most of them had heard of, and many of them had
+seen. He then related to them how he first found me; that my body was
+all covered with an artificial composure of the skins and hairs of
+other animals; that I spoke in a language of my own, and had thoroughly
+learned theirs; that I had related to him the accidents which brought
+me thither; that when he saw me without my covering, I was an exact
+_Yahoo_ in every part, only of a whiter colour, less hairy, and with
+shorter claws. He added, how I had endeavoured to persuade him, that in
+my own and other countries, the _Yahoos_ acted as the governing,
+rational animal, and held the _Houyhnhnms_ in servitude; that he
+observed in me all the qualities of a _Yahoo_, only a little more
+civilized by some tincture of reason, which, however, was in a degree
+as far inferior to the _Houyhnhnm_ race, as the _Yahoos_ of their
+country were to me; that, among other things, I mentioned a custom we
+had of castrating _Houyhnhnms_ when they were young, in order to render
+them tame; that the operation was easy and safe; that it was no shame
+to learn wisdom from brutes, as industry is taught by the ant, and
+building by the swallow (for so I translate the word _lyhannh_,
+although it be a much larger fowl); that this invention might be
+practised upon the younger _Yahoos_ here, which besides rendering them
+tractable and fitter for use, would in an age put an end to the whole
+species, without destroying life; that in the mean time the
+_Houyhnhnms_ should be exhorted to cultivate the breed of asses, which,
+as they are in all respects more valuable brutes, so they have this
+advantage, to be fit for service at five years old, which the others
+are not till twelve.”
+
+This was all my master thought fit to tell me, at that time, of what
+passed in the grand council. But he was pleased to conceal one
+particular, which related personally to myself, whereof I soon felt the
+unhappy effect, as the reader will know in its proper place, and whence
+I date all the succeeding misfortunes of my life.
+
+The _Houyhnhnms_ have no letters, and consequently their knowledge is
+all traditional. But there happening few events of any moment among a
+people so well united, naturally disposed to every virtue, wholly
+governed by reason, and cut off from all commerce with other nations,
+the historical part is easily preserved without burdening their
+memories. I have already observed that they are subject to no diseases,
+and therefore can have no need of physicians. However, they have
+excellent medicines, composed of herbs, to cure accidental bruises and
+cuts in the pastern or frog of the foot, by sharp stones, as well as
+other maims and hurts in the several parts of the body.
+
+They calculate the year by the revolution of the sun and moon, but use
+no subdivisions into weeks. They are well enough acquainted with the
+motions of those two luminaries, and understand the nature of eclipses;
+and this is the utmost progress of their astronomy.
+
+In poetry, they must be allowed to excel all other mortals; wherein the
+justness of their similes, and the minuteness as well as exactness of
+their descriptions, are indeed inimitable. Their verses abound very
+much in both of these, and usually contain either some exalted notions
+of friendship and benevolence or the praises of those who were victors
+in races and other bodily exercises. Their buildings, although very
+rude and simple, are not inconvenient, but well contrived to defend
+them from all injuries of cold and heat. They have a kind of tree,
+which at forty years old loosens in the root, and falls with the first
+storm: it grows very straight, and being pointed like stakes with a
+sharp stone (for the _Houyhnhnms_ know not the use of iron), they stick
+them erect in the ground, about ten inches asunder, and then weave in
+oat straw, or sometimes wattles, between them. The roof is made after
+the same manner, and so are the doors.
+
+The _Houyhnhnms_ use the hollow part, between the pastern and the hoof
+of their fore-foot, as we do our hands, and this with greater dexterity
+than I could at first imagine. I have seen a white mare of our family
+thread a needle (which I lent her on purpose) with that joint. They
+milk their cows, reap their oats, and do all the work which requires
+hands, in the same manner. They have a kind of hard flints, which, by
+grinding against other stones, they form into instruments, that serve
+instead of wedges, axes, and hammers. With tools made of these flints,
+they likewise cut their hay, and reap their oats, which there grow
+naturally in several fields; the _Yahoos_ draw home the sheaves in
+carriages, and the servants tread them in certain covered huts to get
+out the grain, which is kept in stores. They make a rude kind of
+earthen and wooden vessels, and bake the former in the sun.
+
+If they can avoid casualties, they die only of old age, and are buried
+in the obscurest places that can be found, their friends and relations
+expressing neither joy nor grief at their departure; nor does the dying
+person discover the least regret that he is leaving the world, any more
+than if he were upon returning home from a visit to one of his
+neighbours. I remember my master having once made an appointment with a
+friend and his family to come to his house, upon some affair of
+importance: on the day fixed, the mistress and her two children came
+very late; she made two excuses, first for her husband, who, as she
+said, happened that very morning to _shnuwnh_. The word is strongly
+expressive in their language, but not easily rendered into English; it
+signifies, “to retire to his first mother.” Her excuse for not coming
+sooner, was, that her husband dying late in the morning, she was a good
+while consulting her servants about a convenient place where his body
+should be laid; and I observed, she behaved herself at our house as
+cheerfully as the rest. She died about three months after.
+
+They live generally to seventy, or seventy-five years, very seldom to
+fourscore. Some weeks before their death, they feel a gradual decay;
+but without pain. During this time they are much visited by their
+friends, because they cannot go abroad with their usual ease and
+satisfaction. However, about ten days before their death, which they
+seldom fail in computing, they return the visits that have been made
+them by those who are nearest in the neighbourhood, being carried in a
+convenient sledge drawn by _Yahoos_; which vehicle they use, not only
+upon this occasion, but when they grow old, upon long journeys, or when
+they are lamed by any accident: and therefore when the dying
+_Houyhnhnms_ return those visits, they take a solemn leave of their
+friends, as if they were going to some remote part of the country,
+where they designed to pass the rest of their lives.
+
+I know not whether it may be worth observing, that the _Houyhnhnms_
+have no word in their language to express any thing that is evil,
+except what they borrow from the deformities or ill qualities of the
+_Yahoos_. Thus they denote the folly of a servant, an omission of a
+child, a stone that cuts their feet, a continuance of foul or
+unseasonable weather, and the like, by adding to each the epithet of
+_Yahoo_. For instance, _hhnm Yahoo_; _whnaholm Yahoo_, _ynlhmndwihlma
+Yahoo_, and an ill-contrived house _ynholmhnmrohlnw Yahoo_.
+
+I could, with great pleasure, enlarge further upon the manners and
+virtues of this excellent people; but intending in a short time to
+publish a volume by itself, expressly upon that subject, I refer the
+reader thither; and, in the mean time, proceed to relate my own sad
+catastrophe.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The author’s economy, and happy life among the Houyhnhnms. His great
+improvement in virtue by conversing with them. Their conversations. The
+author has notice given him by his master, that he must depart from the
+country. He falls into a swoon for grief; but submits. He contrives and
+finishes a canoe by the help of a fellow-servant, and puts to sea at a
+venture.
+
+
+I had settled my little economy to my own heart’s content. My master
+had ordered a room to be made for me, after their manner, about six
+yards from the house: the sides and floors of which I plastered with
+clay, and covered with rush-mats of my own contriving. I had beaten
+hemp, which there grows wild, and made of it a sort of ticking; this I
+filled with the feathers of several birds I had taken with springes
+made of _Yahoos’_ hairs, and were excellent food. I had worked two
+chairs with my knife, the sorrel nag helping me in the grosser and more
+laborious part. When my clothes were worn to rags, I made myself others
+with the skins of rabbits, and of a certain beautiful animal, about the
+same size, called _nnuhnoh_, the skin of which is covered with a fine
+down. Of these I also made very tolerable stockings. I soled my shoes
+with wood, which I cut from a tree, and fitted to the upper-leather;
+and when this was worn out, I supplied it with the skins of _Yahoos_
+dried in the sun. I often got honey out of hollow trees, which I
+mingled with water, or ate with my bread. No man could more verify the
+truth of these two maxims, “That nature is very easily satisfied;” and,
+“That necessity is the mother of invention.” I enjoyed perfect health
+of body, and tranquillity of mind; I did not feel the treachery or
+inconstancy of a friend, nor the injuries of a secret or open enemy. I
+had no occasion of bribing, flattering, or pimping, to procure the
+favour of any great man, or of his minion; I wanted no fence against
+fraud or oppression: here was neither physician to destroy my body, nor
+lawyer to ruin my fortune; no informer to watch my words and actions,
+or forge accusations against me for hire: here were no gibers,
+censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, housebreakers,
+attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetics,
+tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers,
+virtuosos; no leaders, or followers, of party and faction; no
+encouragers to vice, by seducement or examples; no dungeon, axes,
+gibbets, whipping-posts, or pillories; no cheating shopkeepers or
+mechanics; no pride, vanity, or affectation; no fops, bullies,
+drunkards, strolling whores, or poxes; no ranting, lewd, expensive
+wives; no stupid, proud pedants; no importunate, overbearing,
+quarrelsome, noisy, roaring, empty, conceited, swearing companions; no
+scoundrels raised from the dust upon the merit of their vices, or
+nobility thrown into it on account of their virtues; no lords,
+fiddlers, judges, or dancing-masters.
+
+I had the favour of being admitted to several _Houyhnhnms_, who came to
+visit or dine with my master; where his honour graciously suffered me
+to wait in the room, and listen to their discourse. Both he and his
+company would often descend to ask me questions, and receive my
+answers. I had also sometimes the honour of attending my master in his
+visits to others. I never presumed to speak, except in answer to a
+question; and then I did it with inward regret, because it was a loss
+of so much time for improving myself; but I was infinitely delighted
+with the station of an humble auditor in such conversations, where
+nothing passed but what was useful, expressed in the fewest and most
+significant words; where, as I have already said, the greatest decency
+was observed, without the least degree of ceremony; where no person
+spoke without being pleased himself, and pleasing his companions; where
+there was no interruption, tediousness, heat, or difference of
+sentiments. They have a notion, that when people are met together, a
+short silence does much improve conversation: this I found to be true;
+for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in
+their minds, which very much enlivened the discourse. Their subjects
+are, generally on friendship and benevolence, on order and economy;
+sometimes upon the visible operations of nature, or ancient traditions;
+upon the bounds and limits of virtue; upon the unerring rules of
+reason, or upon some determinations to be taken at the next great
+assembly: and often upon the various excellences of poetry. I may add,
+without vanity, that my presence often gave them sufficient matter for
+discourse, because it afforded my master an occasion of letting his
+friends into the history of me and my country, upon which they were all
+pleased to descant, in a manner not very advantageous to humankind: and
+for that reason I shall not repeat what they said; only I may be
+allowed to observe, that his honour, to my great admiration, appeared
+to understand the nature of _Yahoos_ much better than myself. He went
+through all our vices and follies, and discovered many, which I had
+never mentioned to him, by only supposing what qualities a _Yahoo_ of
+their country, with a small proportion of reason, might be capable of
+exerting; and concluded, with too much probability, “how vile, as well
+as miserable, such a creature must be.”
+
+I freely confess, that all the little knowledge I have of any value,
+was acquired by the lectures I received from my master, and from
+hearing the discourses of him and his friends; to which I should be
+prouder to listen, than to dictate to the greatest and wisest assembly
+in Europe. I admired the strength, comeliness, and speed of the
+inhabitants; and such a constellation of virtues, in such amiable
+persons, produced in me the highest veneration. At first, indeed, I did
+not feel that natural awe, which the _Yahoos_ and all other animals
+bear toward them; but it grew upon me by degrees, much sooner than I
+imagined, and was mingled with a respectful love and gratitude, that
+they would condescend to distinguish me from the rest of my species.
+
+When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or the human
+race in general, I considered them, as they really were, _Yahoos_ in
+shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified
+with the gift of speech; but making no other use of reason, than to
+improve and multiply those vices whereof their brethren in this country
+had only the share that nature allotted them. When I happened to behold
+the reflection of my own form in a lake or fountain, I turned away my
+face in horror and detestation of myself, and could better endure the
+sight of a common _Yahoo_ than of my own person. By conversing with the
+_Houyhnhnms_, and looking upon them with delight, I fell to imitate
+their gait and gesture, which is now grown into a habit; and my friends
+often tell me, in a blunt way, “that I trot like a horse;” which,
+however, I take for a great compliment. Neither shall I disown, that in
+speaking I am apt to fall into the voice and manner of the
+_Houyhnhnms_, and hear myself ridiculed on that account, without the
+least mortification.
+
+In the midst of all this happiness, and when I looked upon myself to be
+fully settled for life, my master sent for me one morning a little
+earlier than his usual hour. I observed by his countenance that he was
+in some perplexity, and at a loss how to begin what he had to speak.
+After a short silence, he told me, “he did not know how I would take
+what he was going to say: that in the last general assembly, when the
+affair of the _Yahoos_ was entered upon, the representatives had taken
+offence at his keeping a _Yahoo_ (meaning myself) in his family, more
+like a _Houyhnhnm_ than a brute animal; that he was known frequently to
+converse with me, as if he could receive some advantage or pleasure in
+my company; that such a practice was not agreeable to reason or nature,
+or a thing ever heard of before among them; the assembly did therefore
+exhort him either to employ me like the rest of my species, or command
+me to swim back to the place whence I came: that the first of these
+expedients was utterly rejected by all the _Houyhnhnms_ who had ever
+seen me at his house or their own; for they alleged, that because I had
+some rudiments of reason, added to the natural pravity of those
+animals, it was to be feared I might be able to seduce them into the
+woody and mountainous parts of the country, and bring them in troops by
+night to destroy the _Houyhnhnms’_ cattle, as being naturally of the
+ravenous kind, and averse from labour.”
+
+My master added, “that he was daily pressed by the _Houyhnhnms_ of the
+neighbourhood to have the assembly’s exhortation executed, which he
+could not put off much longer. He doubted it would be impossible for me
+to swim to another country; and therefore wished I would contrive some
+sort of vehicle, resembling those I had described to him, that might
+carry me on the sea; in which work I should have the assistance of his
+own servants, as well as those of his neighbours.” He concluded, “that
+for his own part, he could have been content to keep me in his service
+as long as I lived; because he found I had cured myself of some bad
+habits and dispositions, by endeavouring, as far as my inferior nature
+was capable, to imitate the _Houyhnhnms_.”
+
+I should here observe to the reader, that a decree of the general
+assembly in this country is expressed by the word _hnhloayn_, which
+signifies an exhortation, as near as I can render it; for they have no
+conception how a rational creature can be compelled, but only advised,
+or exhorted; because no person can disobey reason, without giving up
+his claim to be a rational creature.
+
+I was struck with the utmost grief and despair at my master’s
+discourse; and being unable to support the agonies I was under, I fell
+into a swoon at his feet. When I came to myself, he told me “that he
+concluded I had been dead;” for these people are subject to no such
+imbecilities of nature. I answered in a faint voice, “that death would
+have been too great a happiness; that although I could not blame the
+assembly’s exhortation, or the urgency of his friends; yet, in my weak
+and corrupt judgment, I thought it might consist with reason to have
+been less rigorous; that I could not swim a league, and probably the
+nearest land to theirs might be distant above a hundred: that many
+materials, necessary for making a small vessel to carry me off, were
+wholly wanting in this country; which, however, I would attempt, in
+obedience and gratitude to his honour, although I concluded the thing
+to be impossible, and therefore looked on myself as already devoted to
+destruction; that the certain prospect of an unnatural death was the
+least of my evils; for, supposing I should escape with life by some
+strange adventure, how could I think with temper of passing my days
+among _Yahoos_, and relapsing into my old corruptions, for want of
+examples to lead and keep me within the paths of virtue? That I knew
+too well upon what solid reasons all the determinations of the wise
+_Houyhnhnms_ were founded, not to be shaken by arguments of mine, a
+miserable _Yahoo_; and therefore, after presenting him with my humble
+thanks for the offer of his servants’ assistance in making a vessel,
+and desiring a reasonable time for so difficult a work, I told him I
+would endeavour to preserve a wretched being; and if ever I returned to
+England, was not without hopes of being useful to my own species, by
+celebrating the praises of the renowned _Houyhnhnms_, and proposing
+their virtues to the imitation of mankind.”
+
+My master, in a few words, made me a very gracious reply; allowed me
+the space of two months to finish my boat; and ordered the sorrel nag,
+my fellow-servant (for so, at this distance, I may presume to call
+him), to follow my instruction; because I told my master, “that his
+help would be sufficient, and I knew he had a tenderness for me.”
+
+In his company, my first business was to go to that part of the coast
+where my rebellious crew had ordered me to be set on shore. I got upon
+a height, and looking on every side into the sea; fancied I saw a small
+island toward the north-east. I took out my pocket glass, and could
+then clearly distinguish it above five leagues off, as I computed; but
+it appeared to the sorrel nag to be only a blue cloud: for as he had no
+conception of any country beside his own, so he could not be as expert
+in distinguishing remote objects at sea, as we who so much converse in
+that element.
+
+After I had discovered this island, I considered no further; but
+resolved it should, if possible, be the first place of my banishment,
+leaving the consequence to fortune.
+
+I returned home, and consulting with the sorrel nag, we went into a
+copse at some distance, where I with my knife, and he with a sharp
+flint, fastened very artificially after their manner, to a wooden
+handle, cut down several oak wattles, about the thickness of a
+walking-staff, and some larger pieces. But I shall not trouble the
+reader with a particular description of my own mechanics; let it
+suffice to say, that in six weeks time with the help of the sorrel nag,
+who performed the parts that required most labour, I finished a sort of
+Indian canoe, but much larger, covering it with the skins of _Yahoos_,
+well stitched together with hempen threads of my own making. My sail
+was likewise composed of the skins of the same animal; but I made use
+of the youngest I could get, the older being too tough and thick; and I
+likewise provided myself with four paddles. I laid in a stock of boiled
+flesh, of rabbits and fowls, and took with me two vessels, one filled
+with milk and the other with water.
+
+I tried my canoe in a large pond, near my master’s house, and then
+corrected in it what was amiss; stopping all the chinks with _Yahoos’_
+tallow, till I found it staunch, and able to bear me and my freight;
+and, when it was as complete as I could possibly make it, I had it
+drawn on a carriage very gently by _Yahoos_ to the sea-side, under the
+conduct of the sorrel nag and another servant.
+
+When all was ready, and the day came for my departure, I took leave of
+my master and lady and the whole family, my eyes flowing with tears,
+and my heart quite sunk with grief. But his honour, out of curiosity,
+and, perhaps, (if I may speak without vanity,) partly out of kindness,
+was determined to see me in my canoe, and got several of his
+neighbouring friends to accompany him. I was forced to wait above an
+hour for the tide; and then observing the wind very fortunately bearing
+toward the island to which I intended to steer my course, I took a
+second leave of my master; but as I was going to prostrate myself to
+kiss his hoof, he did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth. I
+am not ignorant how much I have been censured for mentioning this last
+particular. Detractors are pleased to think it improbable, that so
+illustrious a person should descend to give so great a mark of
+distinction to a creature so inferior as I. Neither have I forgotten
+how apt some travellers are to boast of extraordinary favours they have
+received. But, if these censurers were better acquainted with the noble
+and courteous disposition of the _Houyhnhnms_, they would soon change
+their opinion.
+
+I paid my respects to the rest of the _Houyhnhnms_ in his honour’s
+company; then getting into my canoe, I pushed off from shore.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The author’s dangerous voyage. He arrives at New Holland, hoping to
+settle there. Is wounded with an arrow by one of the natives. Is seized
+and carried by force into a Portuguese ship. The great civilities of
+the captain. The author arrives at England.
+
+
+I began this desperate voyage on February 15, 1714–15, at nine o’clock
+in the morning. The wind was very favourable; however, I made use at
+first only of my paddles; but considering I should soon be weary, and
+that the wind might chop about, I ventured to set up my little sail;
+and thus, with the help of the tide, I went at the rate of a league and
+a half an hour, as near as I could guess. My master and his friends
+continued on the shore till I was almost out of sight; and I often
+heard the sorrel nag (who always loved me) crying out, “_Hnuy illa
+nyha_, _majah Yahoo_;” “Take care of thyself, gentle _Yahoo_.”
+
+My design was, if possible, to discover some small island uninhabited,
+yet sufficient, by my labour, to furnish me with the necessaries of
+life, which I would have thought a greater happiness, than to be first
+minister in the politest court of Europe; so horrible was the idea I
+conceived of returning to live in the society, and under the government
+of _Yahoos_. For in such a solitude as I desired, I could at least
+enjoy my own thoughts, and reflect with delight on the virtues of those
+inimitable _Houyhnhnms_, without an opportunity of degenerating into
+the vices and corruptions of my own species.
+
+The reader may remember what I related, when my crew conspired against
+me, and confined me to my cabin; how I continued there several weeks
+without knowing what course we took; and when I was put ashore in the
+long-boat, how the sailors told me, with oaths, whether true or false,
+“that they knew not in what part of the world we were.” However, I did
+then believe us to be about 10 degrees southward of the Cape of Good
+Hope, or about 45 degrees southern latitude, as I gathered from some
+general words I overheard among them, being I supposed to the
+south-east in their intended voyage to Madagascar. And although this
+were little better than conjecture, yet I resolved to steer my course
+eastward, hoping to reach the south-west coast of New Holland, and
+perhaps some such island as I desired lying westward of it. The wind
+was full west, and by six in the evening I computed I had gone eastward
+at least eighteen leagues; when I spied a very small island about half
+a league off, which I soon reached. It was nothing but a rock, with one
+creek naturally arched by the force of tempests. Here I put in my
+canoe, and climbing a part of the rock, I could plainly discover land
+to the east, extending from south to north. I lay all night in my
+canoe; and repeating my voyage early in the morning, I arrived in seven
+hours to the south-east point of New Holland. This confirmed me in the
+opinion I have long entertained, that the maps and charts place this
+country at least three degrees more to the east than it really is;
+which thought I communicated many years ago to my worthy friend, Mr.
+Herman Moll, and gave him my reasons for it, although he has rather
+chosen to follow other authors.
+
+I saw no inhabitants in the place where I landed, and being unarmed, I
+was afraid of venturing far into the country. I found some shellfish on
+the shore, and ate them raw, not daring to kindle a fire, for fear of
+being discovered by the natives. I continued three days feeding on
+oysters and limpets, to save my own provisions; and I fortunately found
+a brook of excellent water, which gave me great relief.
+
+On the fourth day, venturing out early a little too far, I saw twenty
+or thirty natives upon a height not above five hundred yards from me.
+They were stark naked, men, women, and children, round a fire, as I
+could discover by the smoke. One of them spied me, and gave notice to
+the rest; five of them advanced toward me, leaving the women and
+children at the fire. I made what haste I could to the shore, and,
+getting into my canoe, shoved off: the savages, observing me retreat,
+ran after me; and before I could get far enough into the sea,
+discharged an arrow which wounded me deeply on the inside of my left
+knee: I shall carry the mark to my grave. I apprehended the arrow might
+be poisoned, and paddling out of the reach of their darts (being a calm
+day), I made a shift to suck the wound, and dress it as well as I
+could.
+
+I was at a loss what to do, for I durst not return to the same
+landing-place, but stood to the north, and was forced to paddle, for
+the wind, though very gentle, was against me, blowing north-west. As I
+was looking about for a secure landing-place, I saw a sail to the
+north-north-east, which appearing every minute more visible, I was in
+some doubt whether I should wait for them or not; but at last my
+detestation of the _Yahoo_ race prevailed: and turning my canoe, I
+sailed and paddled together to the south, and got into the same creek
+whence I set out in the morning, choosing rather to trust myself among
+these barbarians, than live with European _Yahoos_. I drew up my canoe
+as close as I could to the shore, and hid myself behind a stone by the
+little brook, which, as I have already said, was excellent water.
+
+The ship came within half a league of this creek, and sent her
+long-boat with vessels to take in fresh water (for the place, it seems,
+was very well known); but I did not observe it, till the boat was
+almost on shore; and it was too late to seek another hiding-place. The
+seamen at their landing observed my canoe, and rummaging it all over,
+easily conjectured that the owner could not be far off. Four of them,
+well armed, searched every cranny and lurking-hole, till at last they
+found me flat on my face behind the stone. They gazed awhile in
+admiration at my strange uncouth dress; my coat made of skins, my
+wooden-soled shoes, and my furred stockings; whence, however, they
+concluded, I was not a native of the place, who all go naked. One of
+the seamen, in Portuguese, bid me rise, and asked who I was. I
+understood that language very well, and getting upon my feet, said, “I
+was a poor _Yahoo_ banished from the _Houyhnhnms_, and desired they
+would please to let me depart.” They admired to hear me answer them in
+their own tongue, and saw by my complexion I must be a European; but
+were at a loss to know what I meant by _Yahoos_ and _Houyhnhnms_; and
+at the same time fell a-laughing at my strange tone in speaking, which
+resembled the neighing of a horse. I trembled all the while betwixt
+fear and hatred. I again desired leave to depart, and was gently moving
+to my canoe; but they laid hold of me, desiring to know, “what country
+I was of? whence I came?” with many other questions. I told them “I was
+born in England, whence I came about five years ago, and then their
+country and ours were at peace. I therefore hoped they would not treat
+me as an enemy, since I meant them no harm, but was a poor _Yahoo_
+seeking some desolate place where to pass the remainder of his
+unfortunate life.”
+
+When they began to talk, I thought I never heard or saw any thing more
+unnatural; for it appeared to me as monstrous as if a dog or a cow
+should speak in England, or a _Yahoo_ in _Houyhnhnmland_. The honest
+Portuguese were equally amazed at my strange dress, and the odd manner
+of delivering my words, which, however, they understood very well. They
+spoke to me with great humanity, and said, “they were sure the captain
+would carry me _gratis_ to Lisbon, whence I might return to my own
+country; that two of the seamen would go back to the ship, inform the
+captain of what they had seen, and receive his orders; in the mean
+time, unless I would give my solemn oath not to fly, they would secure
+me by force. I thought it best to comply with their proposal. They were
+very curious to know my story, but I gave them very little
+satisfaction, and they all conjectured that my misfortunes had impaired
+my reason. In two hours the boat, which went laden with vessels of
+water, returned, with the captain’s command to fetch me on board. I
+fell on my knees to preserve my liberty; but all was in vain; and the
+men, having tied me with cords, heaved me into the boat, whence I was
+taken into the ship, and thence into the captain’s cabin.
+
+His name was Pedro de Mendez; he was a very courteous and generous
+person. He entreated me to give some account of myself, and desired to
+know what I would eat or drink; said, “I should be used as well as
+himself;” and spoke so many obliging things, that I wondered to find
+such civilities from a _Yahoo_. However, I remained silent and sullen;
+I was ready to faint at the very smell of him and his men. At last I
+desired something to eat out of my own canoe; but he ordered me a
+chicken, and some excellent wine, and then directed that I should be
+put to bed in a very clean cabin. I would not undress myself, but lay
+on the bed-clothes, and in half an hour stole out, when I thought the
+crew was at dinner, and getting to the side of the ship, was going to
+leap into the sea, and swim for my life, rather than continue among
+_Yahoos_. But one of the seamen prevented me, and having informed the
+captain, I was chained to my cabin.
+
+After dinner, Don Pedro came to me, and desired to know my reason for
+so desperate an attempt; assured me, “he only meant to do me all the
+service he was able;” and spoke so very movingly, that at last I
+descended to treat him like an animal which had some little portion of
+reason. I gave him a very short relation of my voyage; of the
+conspiracy against me by my own men; of the country where they set me
+on shore, and of my five years residence there. All which he looked
+upon as if it were a dream or a vision; whereat I took great offence;
+for I had quite forgot the faculty of lying, so peculiar to _Yahoos_,
+in all countries where they preside, and, consequently, their
+disposition of suspecting truth in others of their own species. I asked
+him, “whether it were the custom in his country to say the thing which
+was not?” I assured him, “I had almost forgot what he meant by
+falsehood, and if I had lived a thousand years in _Houyhnhnmland_, I
+should never have heard a lie from the meanest servant; that I was
+altogether indifferent whether he believed me or not; but, however, in
+return for his favours, I would give so much allowance to the
+corruption of his nature, as to answer any objection he would please to
+make, and then he might easily discover the truth.”
+
+The captain, a wise man, after many endeavours to catch me tripping in
+some part of my story, at last began to have a better opinion of my
+veracity. But he added, “that since I professed so inviolable an
+attachment to truth, I must give him my word and honour to bear him
+company in this voyage, without attempting any thing against my life;
+or else he would continue me a prisoner till we arrived at Lisbon.” I
+gave him the promise he required; but at the same time protested, “that
+I would suffer the greatest hardships, rather than return to live among
+_Yahoos_.”
+
+Our voyage passed without any considerable accident. In gratitude to
+the captain, I sometimes sat with him, at his earnest request, and
+strove to conceal my antipathy against humankind, although it often
+broke out; which he suffered to pass without observation. But the
+greatest part of the day I confined myself to my cabin, to avoid seeing
+any of the crew. The captain had often entreated me to strip myself of
+my savage dress, and offered to lend me the best suit of clothes he
+had. This I would not be prevailed on to accept, abhorring to cover
+myself with any thing that had been on the back of a _Yahoo_. I only
+desired he would lend me two clean shirts, which, having been washed
+since he wore them, I believed would not so much defile me. These I
+changed every second day, and washed them myself.
+
+We arrived at Lisbon, Nov. 5, 1715. At our landing, the captain forced
+me to cover myself with his cloak, to prevent the rabble from crowding
+about me. I was conveyed to his own house; and at my earnest request he
+led me up to the highest room backwards. I conjured him “to conceal
+from all persons what I had told him of the _Houyhnhnms_; because the
+least hint of such a story would not only draw numbers of people to see
+me, but probably put me in danger of being imprisoned, or burnt by the
+Inquisition.” The captain persuaded me to accept a suit of clothes
+newly made; but I would not suffer the tailor to take my measure;
+however, Don Pedro being almost of my size, they fitted me well enough.
+He accoutred me with other necessaries, all new, which I aired for
+twenty-four hours before I would use them.
+
+The captain had no wife, nor above three servants, none of which were
+suffered to attend at meals; and his whole deportment was so obliging,
+added to very good human understanding, that I really began to tolerate
+his company. He gained so far upon me, that I ventured to look out of
+the back window. By degrees I was brought into another room, whence I
+peeped into the street, but drew my head back in a fright. In a week’s
+time he seduced me down to the door. I found my terror gradually
+lessened, but my hatred and contempt seemed to increase. I was at last
+bold enough to walk the street in his company, but kept my nose well
+stopped with rue, or sometimes with tobacco.
+
+In ten days, Don Pedro, to whom I had given some account of my domestic
+affairs, put it upon me, as a matter of honour and conscience, “that I
+ought to return to my native country, and live at home with my wife and
+children.” He told me, “there was an English ship in the port just
+ready to sail, and he would furnish me with all things necessary.” It
+would be tedious to repeat his arguments, and my contradictions. He
+said, “it was altogether impossible to find such a solitary island as I
+desired to live in; but I might command in my own house, and pass my
+time in a manner as recluse as I pleased.”
+
+I complied at last, finding I could not do better. I left Lisbon the
+24th day of November, in an English merchantman, but who was the master
+I never inquired. Don Pedro accompanied me to the ship, and lent me
+twenty pounds. He took kind leave of me, and embraced me at parting,
+which I bore as well as I could. During this last voyage I had no
+commerce with the master or any of his men; but, pretending I was sick,
+kept close in my cabin. On the fifth of December, 1715, we cast anchor
+in the Downs, about nine in the morning, and at three in the afternoon
+I got safe to my house at Rotherhith. [546]
+
+My wife and family received me with great surprise and joy, because
+they concluded me certainly dead; but I must freely confess the sight
+of them filled me only with hatred, disgust, and contempt; and the
+more, by reflecting on the near alliance I had to them. For although,
+since my unfortunate exile from the _Houyhnhnm_ country, I had
+compelled myself to tolerate the sight of _Yahoos_, and to converse
+with Don Pedro de Mendez, yet my memory and imagination were
+perpetually filled with the virtues and ideas of those exalted
+_Houyhnhnms_. And when I began to consider that, by copulating with one
+of the _Yahoo_ species I had become a parent of more, it struck me with
+the utmost shame, confusion, and horror.
+
+As soon as I entered the house, my wife took me in her arms, and kissed
+me; at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal
+for so many years, I fell into a swoon for almost an hour. At the time
+I am writing, it is five years since my last return to England. During
+the first year, I could not endure my wife or children in my presence;
+the very smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them
+to eat in the same room. To this hour they dare not presume to touch my
+bread, or drink out of the same cup, neither was I ever able to let one
+of them take me by the hand. The first money I laid out was to buy two
+young stone-horses, which I keep in a good stable; and next to them,
+the groom is my greatest favourite, for I feel my spirits revived by
+the smell he contracts in the stable. My horses understand me tolerably
+well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are
+strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me and
+friendship to each other.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The author’s veracity. His design in publishing this work. His censure
+of those travellers who swerve from the truth. The author clears
+himself from any sinister ends in writing. An objection answered. The
+method of planting colonies. His native country commended. The right of
+the crown to those countries described by the author is justified. The
+difficulty of conquering them. The author takes his last leave of the
+reader; proposes his manner of living for the future; gives good
+advice, and concludes.
+
+
+Thus, gentle reader, I have given thee a faithful history of my travels
+for sixteen years and above seven months: wherein I have not been so
+studious of ornament as of truth. I could, perhaps, like others, have
+astonished thee with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to
+relate plain matter of fact, in the simplest manner and style; because
+my principal design was to inform, and not to amuse thee.
+
+It is easy for us who travel into remote countries, which are seldom
+visited by Englishmen or other Europeans, to form descriptions of
+wonderful animals both at sea and land. Whereas a traveller’s chief aim
+should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by
+the bad, as well as good, example of what they deliver concerning
+foreign places.
+
+I could heartily wish a law was enacted, that every traveller, before
+he were permitted to publish his voyages, should be obliged to make
+oath before the Lord High Chancellor, that all he intended to print was
+absolutely true to the best of his knowledge; for then the world would
+no longer be deceived, as it usually is, while some writers, to make
+their works pass the better upon the public, impose the grossest
+falsities on the unwary reader. I have perused several books of travels
+with great delight in my younger days; but having since gone over most
+parts of the globe, and been able to contradict many fabulous accounts
+from my own observation, it has given me a great disgust against this
+part of reading, and some indignation to see the credulity of mankind
+so impudently abused. Therefore, since my acquaintance were pleased to
+think my poor endeavours might not be unacceptable to my country, I
+imposed on myself, as a maxim never to be swerved from, that I would
+strictly adhere to truth; neither indeed can I be ever under the least
+temptation to vary from it, while I retain in my mind the lectures and
+example of my noble master and the other illustrious _Houyhnhnms_ of
+whom I had so long the honour to be an humble hearer.
+
+
+_—Nec si miserum Fortuna Sinonem_
+
+_Finxit_, _vanum etiam_, _mendacemque improba finget_.
+
+I know very well, how little reputation is to be got by writings which
+require neither genius nor learning, nor indeed any other talent,
+except a good memory, or an exact journal. I know likewise, that
+writers of travels, like dictionary-makers, are sunk into oblivion by
+the weight and bulk of those who come last, and therefore lie
+uppermost. And it is highly probable, that such travellers, who shall
+hereafter visit the countries described in this work of mine, may, by
+detecting my errors (if there be any), and adding many new discoveries
+of their own, jostle me out of vogue, and stand in my place, making the
+world forget that ever I was an author. This indeed would be too great
+a mortification, if I wrote for fame: but as my sole intention was the
+public good, I cannot be altogether disappointed. For who can read of
+the virtues I have mentioned in the glorious _Houyhnhnms_, without
+being ashamed of his own vices, when he considers himself as the
+reasoning, governing animal of his country? I shall say nothing of
+those remote nations where _Yahoos_ preside; among which the least
+corrupted are the _Brobdingnagians_; whose wise maxims in morality and
+government it would be our happiness to observe. But I forbear
+descanting further, and rather leave the judicious reader to his own
+remarks and application.
+
+I am not a little pleased that this work of mine can possibly meet with
+no censurers: for what objections can be made against a writer, who
+relates only plain facts, that happened in such distant countries,
+where we have not the least interest, with respect either to trade or
+negotiations? I have carefully avoided every fault with which common
+writers of travels are often too justly charged. Besides, I meddle not
+the least with any party, but write without passion, prejudice, or
+ill-will against any man, or number of men, whatsoever. I write for the
+noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind; over whom I may, without
+breach of modesty, pretend to some superiority, from the advantages I
+received by conversing so long among the most accomplished
+_Houyhnhnms_. I write without any view to profit or praise. I never
+suffer a word to pass that may look like reflection, or possibly give
+the least offence, even to those who are most ready to take it. So that
+I hope I may with justice pronounce myself an author perfectly
+blameless; against whom the tribes of Answerers, Considerers,
+Observers, Reflectors, Detectors, Remarkers, will never be able to find
+matter for exercising their talents.
+
+I confess, it was whispered to me, “that I was bound in duty, as a
+subject of England, to have given in a memorial to a secretary of state
+at my first coming over; because, whatever lands are discovered by a
+subject belong to the crown.” But I doubt whether our conquests in the
+countries I treat of would be as easy as those of Ferdinando Cortez
+over the naked Americans. The _Lilliputians_, I think, are hardly worth
+the charge of a fleet and army to reduce them; and I question whether
+it might be prudent or safe to attempt the _Brobdingnagians_; or
+whether an English army would be much at their ease with the Flying
+Island over their heads. The _Houyhnhnms_ indeed appear not to be so
+well prepared for war, a science to which they are perfect strangers,
+and especially against missive weapons. However, supposing myself to be
+a minister of state, I could never give my advice for invading them.
+Their prudence, unanimity, unacquaintedness with fear, and their love
+of their country, would amply supply all defects in the military art.
+Imagine twenty thousand of them breaking into the midst of an European
+army, confounding the ranks, overturning the carriages, battering the
+warriors’ faces into mummy by terrible yerks from their hinder hoofs.
+For they would well deserve the character given to Augustus,
+_Recalcitrat undique tutus_. But, instead of proposals for conquering
+that magnanimous nation, I rather wish they were in a capacity, or
+disposition, to send a sufficient number of their inhabitants for
+civilizing Europe, by teaching us the first principles of honour,
+justice, truth, temperance, public spirit, fortitude, chastity,
+friendship, benevolence, and fidelity. The names of all which virtues
+are still retained among us in most languages, and are to be met with
+in modern, as well as ancient authors; which I am able to assert from
+my own small reading.
+
+But I had another reason, which made me less forward to enlarge his
+majesty’s dominions by my discoveries. To say the truth, I had
+conceived a few scruples with relation to the distributive justice of
+princes upon those occasions. For instance, a crew of pirates are
+driven by a storm they know not whither; at length a boy discovers land
+from the topmast; they go on shore to rob and plunder, they see a
+harmless people, are entertained with kindness; they give the country a
+new name; they take formal possession of it for their king; they set up
+a rotten plank, or a stone, for a memorial; they murder two or three
+dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more, by force, for a sample;
+return home, and get their pardon. Here commences a new dominion
+acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first
+opportunity; the natives driven out or destroyed; their princes
+tortured to discover their gold; a free license given to all acts of
+inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its
+inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers, employed in so pious
+an expedition, is a modern colony, sent to convert and civilize an
+idolatrous and barbarous people!
+
+But this description, I confess, does by no means affect the British
+nation, who may be an example to the whole world for their wisdom,
+care, and justice in planting colonies; their liberal endowments for
+the advancement of religion and learning; their choice of devout and
+able pastors to propagate Christianity; their caution in stocking their
+provinces with people of sober lives and conversations from this the
+mother kingdom; their strict regard to the distribution of justice, in
+supplying the civil administration through all their colonies with
+officers of the greatest abilities, utter strangers to corruption; and,
+to crown all, by sending the most vigilant and virtuous governors, who
+have no other views than the happiness of the people over whom they
+preside, and the honour of the king their master.
+
+But as those countries which I have described do not appear to have any
+desire of being conquered and enslaved, murdered or driven out by
+colonies, nor abound either in gold, silver, sugar, or tobacco, I did
+humbly conceive, they were by no means proper objects of our zeal, our
+valour, or our interest. However, if those whom it more concerns think
+fit to be of another opinion, I am ready to depose, when I shall be
+lawfully called, that no European did ever visit those countries before
+me. I mean, if the inhabitants ought to be believed, unless a dispute
+may arise concerning the two _Yahoos_, said to have been seen many
+years ago upon a mountain in _Houyhnhnmland_, from whence the opinion
+is, that the race of those brutes hath descended; and these, for
+anything I know, may have been English, which indeed I was apt to
+suspect from the lineaments of their posterity’s countenances, although
+very much defaced. But, how far that will go to make out a title, I
+leave to the learned in colony-law.
+
+But, as to the formality of taking possession in my sovereign’s name,
+it never came once into my thoughts; and if it had, yet, as my affairs
+then stood, I should perhaps, in point of prudence and
+self-preservation, have put it off to a better opportunity.
+
+Having thus answered the only objection that can ever be raised against
+me as a traveller, I here take a final leave of all my courteous
+readers, and return to enjoy my own speculations in my little garden at
+Redriff; to apply those excellent lessons of virtue which I learned
+among the _Houyhnhnms_; to instruct the _Yahoos_ of my own family, as
+far as I shall find them docible animals; to behold my figure often in
+a glass, and thus, if possible, habituate myself by time to tolerate
+the sight of a human creature; to lament the brutality to _Houyhnhnms_
+in my own country, but always treat their persons with respect, for the
+sake of my noble master, his family, his friends, and the whole
+_Houyhnhnm_ race, whom these of ours have the honour to resemble in all
+their lineaments, however their intellectuals came to degenerate.
+
+I began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the
+farthest end of a long table; and to answer (but with the utmost
+brevity) the few questions I asked her. Yet, the smell of a _Yahoo_
+continuing very offensive, I always keep my nose well stopped with rue,
+lavender, or tobacco leaves. And, although it be hard for a man late in
+life to remove old habits, I am not altogether out of hopes, in some
+time, to suffer a neighbour _Yahoo_ in my company, without the
+apprehensions I am yet under of his teeth or his claws.
+
+My reconcilement to the _Yahoo_-kind in general might not be so
+difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies only
+which nature has entitled them to. I am not in the least provoked at
+the sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a
+gamester, a politician, a whoremonger, a physician, an evidence, a
+suborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like; this is all according to
+the due course of things: but when I behold a lump of deformity and
+diseases, both in body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately
+breaks all the measures of my patience; neither shall I be ever able to
+comprehend how such an animal, and such a vice, could tally together.
+The wise and virtuous _Houyhnhnms_, who abound in all excellences that
+can adorn a rational creature, have no name for this vice in their
+language, which has no terms to express any thing that is evil, except
+those whereby they describe the detestable qualities of their _Yahoos_,
+among which they were not able to distinguish this of pride, for want
+of thoroughly understanding human nature, as it shows itself in other
+countries where that animal presides. But I, who had more experience,
+could plainly observe some rudiments of it among the wild _Yahoos_.
+
+
+But the _Houyhnhnms_, who live under the government of reason, are no
+more proud of the good qualities they possess, than I should be for not
+wanting a leg or an arm; which no man in his wits would boast of,
+although he must be miserable without them. I dwell the longer upon
+this subject from the desire I have to make the society of an English
+_Yahoo_ by any means not insupportable; and therefore I here entreat
+those who have any tincture of this absurd vice, that they will not
+presume to come in my sight.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[301] A stang is a pole or perch; sixteen feet and a half.
+
+[330] An act of parliament has been since passed by which some breaches
+of trust have been made capital.
+
+[454a] Britannia.—_Sir W. Scott_.
+
+[454b] London.—_Sir W. Scott_.
+
+[455] This is the revised text adopted by Dr. Hawksworth (1766). The
+above paragraph in the original editions (1726) takes another form,
+commencing:—“I told him that should I happen to live in a kingdom where
+lots were in vogue,” &c. The names Tribnia and Langden are not
+mentioned, and the “close stool” and its signification do not occur.
+
+[514] This paragraph is not in the original editions.
+
+[546] The original editions and Hawksworth’s have Rotherhith here,
+though earlier in the work, Redriff is said to have been Gulliver’s
+home in England.
diff --git a/search-engine/books/Romeo and Juliet.txt b/search-engine/books/Romeo and Juliet.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/search-engine/books/Romeo and Juliet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5270 @@
+Title: Romeo and Juliet
+Author: William Shakespeare
+
+THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET
+
+by William Shakespeare
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+THE PROLOGUE.
+
+ACT I
+Scene I. A public place.
+Scene II. A Street.
+Scene III. Room in Capulet’s House.
+Scene IV. A Street.
+Scene V. A Hall in Capulet’s House.
+
+ACT II
+CHORUS.
+Scene I. An open place adjoining Capulet’s Garden.
+Scene II. Capulet’s Garden.
+Scene III. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.
+Scene IV. A Street.
+Scene V. Capulet’s Garden.
+Scene VI. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.
+
+ACT III
+Scene I. A public Place.
+Scene II. A Room in Capulet’s House.
+Scene III. Friar Lawrence’s cell.
+Scene IV. A Room in Capulet’s House.
+Scene V. An open Gallery to Juliet’s Chamber, overlooking the Garden.
+
+ACT IV
+Scene I. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.
+Scene II. Hall in Capulet’s House.
+Scene III. Juliet’s Chamber.
+Scene IV. Hall in Capulet’s House.
+Scene V. Juliet’s Chamber; Juliet on the bed.
+
+ACT V
+Scene I. Mantua. A Street.
+Scene II. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.
+Scene III. A churchyard; in it a Monument belonging to the Capulets.
+
+
+
+
+ Dramatis Personæ
+
+ESCALUS, Prince of Verona.
+MERCUTIO, kinsman to the Prince, and friend to Romeo.
+PARIS, a young Nobleman, kinsman to the Prince.
+Page to Paris.
+
+MONTAGUE, head of a Veronese family at feud with the Capulets.
+LADY MONTAGUE, wife to Montague.
+ROMEO, son to Montague.
+BENVOLIO, nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo.
+ABRAM, servant to Montague.
+BALTHASAR, servant to Romeo.
+
+CAPULET, head of a Veronese family at feud with the Montagues.
+LADY CAPULET, wife to Capulet.
+JULIET, daughter to Capulet.
+TYBALT, nephew to Lady Capulet.
+CAPULET’S COUSIN, an old man.
+NURSE to Juliet.
+PETER, servant to Juliet’s Nurse.
+SAMPSON, servant to Capulet.
+GREGORY, servant to Capulet.
+Servants.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE, a Franciscan.
+FRIAR JOHN, of the same Order.
+An Apothecary.
+CHORUS.
+Three Musicians.
+An Officer.
+Citizens of Verona; several Men and Women, relations to both houses;
+Maskers, Guards, Watchmen and Attendants.
+
+SCENE. During the greater part of the Play in Verona; once, in the
+Fifth Act, at Mantua.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROLOGUE
+
+
+ Enter Chorus.
+
+CHORUS.
+Two households, both alike in dignity,
+In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
+From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
+Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
+From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
+A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
+Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows
+Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
+The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
+And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
+Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
+Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
+The which, if you with patient ears attend,
+What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+
+
+
+ACT I
+
+SCENE I. A public place.
+
+
+ Enter Sampson and Gregory armed with swords and bucklers.
+
+SAMPSON.
+Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals.
+
+GREGORY.
+No, for then we should be colliers.
+
+SAMPSON.
+I mean, if we be in choler, we’ll draw.
+
+GREGORY.
+Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o’ the collar.
+
+SAMPSON.
+I strike quickly, being moved.
+
+GREGORY.
+But thou art not quickly moved to strike.
+
+SAMPSON.
+A dog of the house of Montague moves me.
+
+GREGORY.
+To move is to stir; and to be valiant is to stand: therefore, if thou
+art moved, thou runn’st away.
+
+SAMPSON.
+A dog of that house shall move me to stand.
+I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague’s.
+
+GREGORY.
+That shows thee a weak slave, for the weakest goes to the wall.
+
+SAMPSON.
+True, and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to
+the wall: therefore I will push Montague’s men from the wall, and
+thrust his maids to the wall.
+
+GREGORY.
+The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.
+
+SAMPSON.
+’Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when I have fought with the
+men I will be civil with the maids, I will cut off their heads.
+
+GREGORY.
+The heads of the maids?
+
+SAMPSON.
+Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads; take it in what sense
+thou wilt.
+
+GREGORY.
+They must take it in sense that feel it.
+
+SAMPSON.
+Me they shall feel while I am able to stand: and ’tis known I am a
+pretty piece of flesh.
+
+GREGORY.
+’Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor John.
+Draw thy tool; here comes of the house of Montagues.
+
+ Enter Abram and Balthasar.
+
+SAMPSON.
+My naked weapon is out: quarrel, I will back thee.
+
+GREGORY.
+How? Turn thy back and run?
+
+SAMPSON.
+Fear me not.
+
+GREGORY.
+No, marry; I fear thee!
+
+SAMPSON.
+Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin.
+
+GREGORY.
+I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list.
+
+SAMPSON.
+Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them, which is disgrace to
+them if they bear it.
+
+ABRAM.
+Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
+
+SAMPSON.
+I do bite my thumb, sir.
+
+ABRAM.
+Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
+
+SAMPSON.
+Is the law of our side if I say ay?
+
+GREGORY.
+No.
+
+SAMPSON.
+No sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir; but I bite my thumb, sir.
+
+GREGORY.
+Do you quarrel, sir?
+
+ABRAM.
+Quarrel, sir? No, sir.
+
+SAMPSON.
+But if you do, sir, I am for you. I serve as good a man as you.
+
+ABRAM.
+No better.
+
+SAMPSON.
+Well, sir.
+
+ Enter Benvolio.
+
+GREGORY.
+Say better; here comes one of my master’s kinsmen.
+
+SAMPSON.
+Yes, better, sir.
+
+ABRAM.
+You lie.
+
+SAMPSON.
+Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy washing blow.
+
+ [_They fight._]
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Part, fools! put up your swords, you know not what you do.
+
+ [_Beats down their swords._]
+
+ Enter Tybalt.
+
+TYBALT.
+What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?
+Turn thee Benvolio, look upon thy death.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+I do but keep the peace, put up thy sword,
+Or manage it to part these men with me.
+
+TYBALT.
+What, drawn, and talk of peace? I hate the word
+As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee:
+Have at thee, coward.
+
+ [_They fight._]
+
+ Enter three or four Citizens with clubs.
+
+FIRST CITIZEN.
+Clubs, bills and partisans! Strike! Beat them down!
+Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!
+
+ Enter Capulet in his gown, and Lady Capulet.
+
+CAPULET.
+What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword?
+
+CAPULET.
+My sword, I say! Old Montague is come,
+And flourishes his blade in spite of me.
+
+ Enter Montague and his Lady Montague.
+
+MONTAGUE.
+Thou villain Capulet! Hold me not, let me go.
+
+LADY MONTAGUE.
+Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.
+
+ Enter Prince Escalus, with Attendants.
+
+PRINCE.
+Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,
+Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel,—
+Will they not hear? What, ho! You men, you beasts,
+That quench the fire of your pernicious rage
+With purple fountains issuing from your veins,
+On pain of torture, from those bloody hands
+Throw your mistemper’d weapons to the ground
+And hear the sentence of your moved prince.
+Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word,
+By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,
+Have thrice disturb’d the quiet of our streets,
+And made Verona’s ancient citizens
+Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments,
+To wield old partisans, in hands as old,
+Canker’d with peace, to part your canker’d hate.
+If ever you disturb our streets again,
+Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.
+For this time all the rest depart away:
+You, Capulet, shall go along with me,
+And Montague, come you this afternoon,
+To know our farther pleasure in this case,
+To old Free-town, our common judgement-place.
+Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.
+
+ [_Exeunt Prince and Attendants; Capulet, Lady Capulet, Tybalt,
+ Citizens and Servants._]
+
+MONTAGUE.
+Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?
+Speak, nephew, were you by when it began?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Here were the servants of your adversary
+And yours, close fighting ere I did approach.
+I drew to part them, in the instant came
+The fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepar’d,
+Which, as he breath’d defiance to my ears,
+He swung about his head, and cut the winds,
+Who nothing hurt withal, hiss’d him in scorn.
+While we were interchanging thrusts and blows
+Came more and more, and fought on part and part,
+Till the Prince came, who parted either part.
+
+LADY MONTAGUE.
+O where is Romeo, saw you him today?
+Right glad I am he was not at this fray.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun
+Peer’d forth the golden window of the east,
+A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad,
+Where underneath the grove of sycamore
+That westward rooteth from this city side,
+So early walking did I see your son.
+Towards him I made, but he was ware of me,
+And stole into the covert of the wood.
+I, measuring his affections by my own,
+Which then most sought where most might not be found,
+Being one too many by my weary self,
+Pursu’d my humour, not pursuing his,
+And gladly shunn’d who gladly fled from me.
+
+MONTAGUE.
+Many a morning hath he there been seen,
+With tears augmenting the fresh morning’s dew,
+Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs;
+But all so soon as the all-cheering sun
+Should in the farthest east begin to draw
+The shady curtains from Aurora’s bed,
+Away from light steals home my heavy son,
+And private in his chamber pens himself,
+Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out
+And makes himself an artificial night.
+Black and portentous must this humour prove,
+Unless good counsel may the cause remove.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+My noble uncle, do you know the cause?
+
+MONTAGUE.
+I neither know it nor can learn of him.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Have you importun’d him by any means?
+
+MONTAGUE.
+Both by myself and many other friends;
+But he, his own affections’ counsellor,
+Is to himself—I will not say how true—
+But to himself so secret and so close,
+So far from sounding and discovery,
+As is the bud bit with an envious worm
+Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
+Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
+Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow,
+We would as willingly give cure as know.
+
+ Enter Romeo.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+See, where he comes. So please you step aside;
+I’ll know his grievance or be much denied.
+
+MONTAGUE.
+I would thou wert so happy by thy stay
+To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let’s away,
+
+ [_Exeunt Montague and Lady Montague._]
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Good morrow, cousin.
+
+ROMEO.
+Is the day so young?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+But new struck nine.
+
+ROMEO.
+Ay me, sad hours seem long.
+Was that my father that went hence so fast?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo’s hours?
+
+ROMEO.
+Not having that which, having, makes them short.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+In love?
+
+ROMEO.
+Out.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Of love?
+
+ROMEO.
+Out of her favour where I am in love.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Alas that love so gentle in his view,
+Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof.
+
+ROMEO.
+Alas that love, whose view is muffled still,
+Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!
+Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?
+Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
+Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love:
+Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
+O anything, of nothing first create!
+O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
+Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
+Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
+Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
+This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
+Dost thou not laugh?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+No coz, I rather weep.
+
+ROMEO.
+Good heart, at what?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+At thy good heart’s oppression.
+
+ROMEO.
+Why such is love’s transgression.
+Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,
+Which thou wilt propagate to have it prest
+With more of thine. This love that thou hast shown
+Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.
+Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs;
+Being purg’d, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;
+Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears:
+What is it else? A madness most discreet,
+A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
+Farewell, my coz.
+
+ [_Going._]
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Soft! I will go along:
+And if you leave me so, you do me wrong.
+
+ROMEO.
+Tut! I have lost myself; I am not here.
+This is not Romeo, he’s some other where.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Tell me in sadness who is that you love?
+
+ROMEO.
+What, shall I groan and tell thee?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Groan! Why, no; but sadly tell me who.
+
+ROMEO.
+Bid a sick man in sadness make his will,
+A word ill urg’d to one that is so ill.
+In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+I aim’d so near when I suppos’d you lov’d.
+
+ROMEO.
+A right good markman, and she’s fair I love.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.
+
+ROMEO.
+Well, in that hit you miss: she’ll not be hit
+With Cupid’s arrow, she hath Dian’s wit;
+And in strong proof of chastity well arm’d,
+From love’s weak childish bow she lives uncharm’d.
+She will not stay the siege of loving terms
+Nor bide th’encounter of assailing eyes,
+Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold:
+O she’s rich in beauty, only poor
+That when she dies, with beauty dies her store.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?
+
+ROMEO.
+She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste;
+For beauty starv’d with her severity,
+Cuts beauty off from all posterity.
+She is too fair, too wise; wisely too fair,
+To merit bliss by making me despair.
+She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow
+Do I live dead, that live to tell it now.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Be rul’d by me, forget to think of her.
+
+ROMEO.
+O teach me how I should forget to think.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+By giving liberty unto thine eyes;
+Examine other beauties.
+
+ROMEO.
+’Tis the way
+To call hers, exquisite, in question more.
+These happy masks that kiss fair ladies’ brows,
+Being black, puts us in mind they hide the fair;
+He that is strucken blind cannot forget
+The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.
+Show me a mistress that is passing fair,
+What doth her beauty serve but as a note
+Where I may read who pass’d that passing fair?
+Farewell, thou canst not teach me to forget.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+I’ll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE II. A Street.
+
+ Enter Capulet, Paris and Servant.
+
+CAPULET.
+But Montague is bound as well as I,
+In penalty alike; and ’tis not hard, I think,
+For men so old as we to keep the peace.
+
+PARIS.
+Of honourable reckoning are you both,
+And pity ’tis you liv’d at odds so long.
+But now my lord, what say you to my suit?
+
+CAPULET.
+But saying o’er what I have said before.
+My child is yet a stranger in the world,
+She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;
+Let two more summers wither in their pride
+Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
+
+PARIS.
+Younger than she are happy mothers made.
+
+CAPULET.
+And too soon marr’d are those so early made.
+The earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she,
+She is the hopeful lady of my earth:
+But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart,
+My will to her consent is but a part;
+And she agree, within her scope of choice
+Lies my consent and fair according voice.
+This night I hold an old accustom’d feast,
+Whereto I have invited many a guest,
+Such as I love, and you among the store,
+One more, most welcome, makes my number more.
+At my poor house look to behold this night
+Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light:
+Such comfort as do lusty young men feel
+When well apparell’d April on the heel
+Of limping winter treads, even such delight
+Among fresh female buds shall you this night
+Inherit at my house. Hear all, all see,
+And like her most whose merit most shall be:
+Which, on more view of many, mine, being one,
+May stand in number, though in reckoning none.
+Come, go with me. Go, sirrah, trudge about
+Through fair Verona; find those persons out
+Whose names are written there, [_gives a paper_] and to them say,
+My house and welcome on their pleasure stay.
+
+ [_Exeunt Capulet and Paris._]
+
+SERVANT.
+Find them out whose names are written here! It is written that the
+shoemaker should meddle with his yard and the tailor with his last, the
+fisher with his pencil, and the painter with his nets; but I am sent to
+find those persons whose names are here writ, and can never find what
+names the writing person hath here writ. I must to the learned. In good
+time!
+
+ Enter Benvolio and Romeo.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Tut, man, one fire burns out another’s burning,
+One pain is lessen’d by another’s anguish;
+Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;
+One desperate grief cures with another’s languish:
+Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
+And the rank poison of the old will die.
+
+ROMEO.
+Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+For what, I pray thee?
+
+ROMEO.
+For your broken shin.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Why, Romeo, art thou mad?
+
+ROMEO.
+Not mad, but bound more than a madman is:
+Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
+Whipp’d and tormented and—God-den, good fellow.
+
+SERVANT.
+God gi’ go-den. I pray, sir, can you read?
+
+ROMEO.
+Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.
+
+SERVANT.
+Perhaps you have learned it without book.
+But I pray, can you read anything you see?
+
+ROMEO.
+Ay, If I know the letters and the language.
+
+SERVANT.
+Ye say honestly, rest you merry!
+
+ROMEO.
+Stay, fellow; I can read.
+
+ [_He reads the letter._]
+
+_Signior Martino and his wife and daughters;
+County Anselmo and his beauteous sisters;
+The lady widow of Utruvio;
+Signior Placentio and his lovely nieces;
+Mercutio and his brother Valentine;
+Mine uncle Capulet, his wife, and daughters;
+My fair niece Rosaline and Livia;
+Signior Valentio and his cousin Tybalt;
+Lucio and the lively Helena. _
+
+
+A fair assembly. [_Gives back the paper_] Whither should they come?
+
+SERVANT.
+Up.
+
+ROMEO.
+Whither to supper?
+
+SERVANT.
+To our house.
+
+ROMEO.
+Whose house?
+
+SERVANT.
+My master’s.
+
+ROMEO.
+Indeed I should have ask’d you that before.
+
+SERVANT.
+Now I’ll tell you without asking. My master is the great rich Capulet,
+and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray come and crush a
+cup of wine. Rest you merry.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+BENVOLIO.
+At this same ancient feast of Capulet’s
+Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lov’st;
+With all the admired beauties of Verona.
+Go thither and with unattainted eye,
+Compare her face with some that I shall show,
+And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.
+
+ROMEO.
+When the devout religion of mine eye
+Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fire;
+And these who, often drown’d, could never die,
+Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars.
+One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun
+Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by,
+Herself pois’d with herself in either eye:
+But in that crystal scales let there be weigh’d
+Your lady’s love against some other maid
+That I will show you shining at this feast,
+And she shall scant show well that now shows best.
+
+ROMEO.
+I’ll go along, no such sight to be shown,
+But to rejoice in splendour of my own.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE III. Room in Capulet’s House.
+
+ Enter Lady Capulet and Nurse.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Nurse, where’s my daughter? Call her forth to me.
+
+NURSE.
+Now, by my maidenhead, at twelve year old,
+I bade her come. What, lamb! What ladybird!
+God forbid! Where’s this girl? What, Juliet!
+
+ Enter Juliet.
+
+JULIET.
+How now, who calls?
+
+NURSE.
+Your mother.
+
+JULIET.
+Madam, I am here. What is your will?
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+This is the matter. Nurse, give leave awhile,
+We must talk in secret. Nurse, come back again,
+I have remember’d me, thou’s hear our counsel.
+Thou knowest my daughter’s of a pretty age.
+
+NURSE.
+Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+She’s not fourteen.
+
+NURSE.
+I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth,
+And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four,
+She is not fourteen. How long is it now
+To Lammas-tide?
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+A fortnight and odd days.
+
+NURSE.
+Even or odd, of all days in the year,
+Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.
+Susan and she,—God rest all Christian souls!—
+Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God;
+She was too good for me. But as I said,
+On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen;
+That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
+’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
+And she was wean’d,—I never shall forget it—,
+Of all the days of the year, upon that day:
+For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
+Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall;
+My lord and you were then at Mantua:
+Nay, I do bear a brain. But as I said,
+When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
+Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
+To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug!
+Shake, quoth the dovehouse: ’twas no need, I trow,
+To bid me trudge.
+And since that time it is eleven years;
+For then she could stand alone; nay, by th’rood
+She could have run and waddled all about;
+For even the day before she broke her brow,
+And then my husband,—God be with his soul!
+A was a merry man,—took up the child:
+‘Yea,’ quoth he, ‘dost thou fall upon thy face?
+Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;
+Wilt thou not, Jule?’ and, by my holidame,
+The pretty wretch left crying, and said ‘Ay’.
+To see now how a jest shall come about.
+I warrant, and I should live a thousand years,
+I never should forget it. ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?’ quoth he;
+And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said ‘Ay.’
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Enough of this; I pray thee hold thy peace.
+
+NURSE.
+Yes, madam, yet I cannot choose but laugh,
+To think it should leave crying, and say ‘Ay’;
+And yet I warrant it had upon it brow
+A bump as big as a young cockerel’s stone;
+A perilous knock, and it cried bitterly.
+‘Yea,’ quoth my husband, ‘fall’st upon thy face?
+Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age;
+Wilt thou not, Jule?’ it stinted, and said ‘Ay’.
+
+JULIET.
+And stint thou too, I pray thee, Nurse, say I.
+
+NURSE.
+Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace
+Thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nurs’d:
+And I might live to see thee married once, I have my wish.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Marry, that marry is the very theme
+I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet,
+How stands your disposition to be married?
+
+JULIET.
+It is an honour that I dream not of.
+
+NURSE.
+An honour! Were not I thine only nurse,
+I would say thou hadst suck’d wisdom from thy teat.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Well, think of marriage now: younger than you,
+Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
+Are made already mothers. By my count
+I was your mother much upon these years
+That you are now a maid. Thus, then, in brief;
+The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.
+
+NURSE.
+A man, young lady! Lady, such a man
+As all the world—why he’s a man of wax.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Verona’s summer hath not such a flower.
+
+NURSE.
+Nay, he’s a flower, in faith a very flower.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+What say you, can you love the gentleman?
+This night you shall behold him at our feast;
+Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face,
+And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen.
+Examine every married lineament,
+And see how one another lends content;
+And what obscur’d in this fair volume lies,
+Find written in the margent of his eyes.
+This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
+To beautify him, only lacks a cover:
+The fish lives in the sea; and ’tis much pride
+For fair without the fair within to hide.
+That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory,
+That in gold clasps locks in the golden story;
+So shall you share all that he doth possess,
+By having him, making yourself no less.
+
+NURSE.
+No less, nay bigger. Women grow by men.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Speak briefly, can you like of Paris’ love?
+
+JULIET.
+I’ll look to like, if looking liking move:
+But no more deep will I endart mine eye
+Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.
+
+ Enter a Servant.
+
+SERVANT.
+Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady
+asked for, the Nurse cursed in the pantry, and everything in extremity.
+I must hence to wait, I beseech you follow straight.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+We follow thee.
+
+ [_Exit Servant._]
+
+Juliet, the County stays.
+
+NURSE.
+Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE IV. A Street.
+
+ Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six Maskers;
+ Torch-bearers and others.
+
+ROMEO.
+What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?
+Or shall we on without apology?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+The date is out of such prolixity:
+We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink’d with a scarf,
+Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,
+Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;
+Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke
+After the prompter, for our entrance:
+But let them measure us by what they will,
+We’ll measure them a measure, and be gone.
+
+ROMEO.
+Give me a torch, I am not for this ambling;
+Being but heavy I will bear the light.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.
+
+ROMEO.
+Not I, believe me, you have dancing shoes,
+With nimble soles, I have a soul of lead
+So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+You are a lover, borrow Cupid’s wings,
+And soar with them above a common bound.
+
+ROMEO.
+I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
+To soar with his light feathers, and so bound,
+I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.
+Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+And, to sink in it, should you burden love;
+Too great oppression for a tender thing.
+
+ROMEO.
+Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
+Too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
+Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
+Give me a case to put my visage in: [_Putting on a mask._]
+A visor for a visor. What care I
+What curious eye doth quote deformities?
+Here are the beetle-brows shall blush for me.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in
+But every man betake him to his legs.
+
+ROMEO.
+A torch for me: let wantons, light of heart,
+Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels;
+For I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase,
+I’ll be a candle-holder and look on,
+The game was ne’er so fair, and I am done.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word:
+If thou art dun, we’ll draw thee from the mire
+Or save your reverence love, wherein thou stickest
+Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho.
+
+ROMEO.
+Nay, that’s not so.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+I mean sir, in delay
+We waste our lights in vain, light lights by day.
+Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits
+Five times in that ere once in our five wits.
+
+ROMEO.
+And we mean well in going to this mask;
+But ’tis no wit to go.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Why, may one ask?
+
+ROMEO.
+I dreamt a dream tonight.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+And so did I.
+
+ROMEO.
+Well what was yours?
+
+MERCUTIO.
+That dreamers often lie.
+
+ROMEO.
+In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
+She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
+In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
+On the fore-finger of an alderman,
+Drawn with a team of little atomies
+Over men’s noses as they lie asleep:
+Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs;
+The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
+Her traces, of the smallest spider’s web;
+The collars, of the moonshine’s watery beams;
+Her whip of cricket’s bone; the lash, of film;
+Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
+Not half so big as a round little worm
+Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid:
+Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,
+Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
+Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
+And in this state she gallops night by night
+Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
+O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight;
+O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees;
+O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,
+Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
+Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
+Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,
+And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
+And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail,
+Tickling a parson’s nose as a lies asleep,
+Then dreams he of another benefice:
+Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,
+And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
+Of breaches, ambuscados, Spanish blades,
+Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
+Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes;
+And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
+And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
+That plats the manes of horses in the night;
+And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
+Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
+This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
+That presses them, and learns them first to bear,
+Making them women of good carriage:
+This is she,—
+
+ROMEO.
+Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace,
+Thou talk’st of nothing.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+True, I talk of dreams,
+Which are the children of an idle brain,
+Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
+Which is as thin of substance as the air,
+And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
+Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
+And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,
+Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves:
+Supper is done, and we shall come too late.
+
+ROMEO.
+I fear too early: for my mind misgives
+Some consequence yet hanging in the stars,
+Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
+With this night’s revels; and expire the term
+Of a despised life, clos’d in my breast
+By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
+But he that hath the steerage of my course
+Direct my suit. On, lusty gentlemen!
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Strike, drum.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE V. A Hall in Capulet’s House.
+
+ Musicians waiting. Enter Servants.
+
+FIRST SERVANT.
+Where’s Potpan, that he helps not to take away?
+He shift a trencher! He scrape a trencher!
+
+SECOND SERVANT.
+When good manners shall lie all in one or two men’s hands, and they
+unwash’d too, ’tis a foul thing.
+
+FIRST SERVANT.
+Away with the join-stools, remove the court-cupboard, look to the
+plate. Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane; and as thou loves me,
+let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell. Antony and Potpan!
+
+SECOND SERVANT.
+Ay, boy, ready.
+
+FIRST SERVANT.
+You are looked for and called for, asked for and sought for, in the
+great chamber.
+
+SECOND SERVANT.
+We cannot be here and there too. Cheerly, boys. Be brisk awhile, and
+the longer liver take all.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+ Enter Capulet, &c. with the Guests and Gentlewomen to the Maskers.
+
+CAPULET.
+Welcome, gentlemen, ladies that have their toes
+Unplagu’d with corns will have a bout with you.
+Ah my mistresses, which of you all
+Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty,
+She I’ll swear hath corns. Am I come near ye now?
+Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day
+That I have worn a visor, and could tell
+A whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear,
+Such as would please; ’tis gone, ’tis gone, ’tis gone,
+You are welcome, gentlemen! Come, musicians, play.
+A hall, a hall, give room! And foot it, girls.
+
+ [_Music plays, and they dance._]
+
+More light, you knaves; and turn the tables up,
+And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.
+Ah sirrah, this unlook’d-for sport comes well.
+Nay sit, nay sit, good cousin Capulet,
+For you and I are past our dancing days;
+How long is’t now since last yourself and I
+Were in a mask?
+
+CAPULET’S COUSIN.
+By’r Lady, thirty years.
+
+CAPULET.
+What, man, ’tis not so much, ’tis not so much:
+’Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,
+Come Pentecost as quickly as it will,
+Some five and twenty years; and then we mask’d.
+
+CAPULET’S COUSIN.
+’Tis more, ’tis more, his son is elder, sir;
+His son is thirty.
+
+CAPULET.
+Will you tell me that?
+His son was but a ward two years ago.
+
+ROMEO.
+What lady is that, which doth enrich the hand
+Of yonder knight?
+
+SERVANT.
+I know not, sir.
+
+ROMEO.
+O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
+It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
+As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear;
+Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
+So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows
+As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.
+The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,
+And touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
+Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
+For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.
+
+TYBALT.
+This by his voice, should be a Montague.
+Fetch me my rapier, boy. What, dares the slave
+Come hither, cover’d with an antic face,
+To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?
+Now by the stock and honour of my kin,
+To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.
+
+CAPULET.
+Why how now, kinsman!
+Wherefore storm you so?
+
+TYBALT.
+Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe;
+A villain that is hither come in spite,
+To scorn at our solemnity this night.
+
+CAPULET.
+Young Romeo, is it?
+
+TYBALT.
+’Tis he, that villain Romeo.
+
+CAPULET.
+Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone,
+A bears him like a portly gentleman;
+And, to say truth, Verona brags of him
+To be a virtuous and well-govern’d youth.
+I would not for the wealth of all the town
+Here in my house do him disparagement.
+Therefore be patient, take no note of him,
+It is my will; the which if thou respect,
+Show a fair presence and put off these frowns,
+An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.
+
+TYBALT.
+It fits when such a villain is a guest:
+I’ll not endure him.
+
+CAPULET.
+He shall be endur’d.
+What, goodman boy! I say he shall, go to;
+Am I the master here, or you? Go to.
+You’ll not endure him! God shall mend my soul,
+You’ll make a mutiny among my guests!
+You will set cock-a-hoop, you’ll be the man!
+
+TYBALT.
+Why, uncle, ’tis a shame.
+
+CAPULET.
+Go to, go to!
+You are a saucy boy. Is’t so, indeed?
+This trick may chance to scathe you, I know what.
+You must contrary me! Marry, ’tis time.
+Well said, my hearts!—You are a princox; go:
+Be quiet, or—More light, more light!—For shame!
+I’ll make you quiet. What, cheerly, my hearts.
+
+TYBALT.
+Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting
+Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting.
+I will withdraw: but this intrusion shall,
+Now seeming sweet, convert to bitter gall.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+ROMEO.
+[_To Juliet._] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
+This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
+My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
+To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
+
+JULIET.
+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.
+
+ROMEO.
+Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
+
+JULIET.
+Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
+
+ROMEO.
+O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do:
+They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
+
+JULIET.
+Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
+
+ROMEO.
+Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.
+Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purg’d.
+[_Kissing her._]
+
+JULIET.
+Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
+
+ROMEO.
+Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg’d!
+Give me my sin again.
+
+JULIET.
+You kiss by the book.
+
+NURSE.
+Madam, your mother craves a word with you.
+
+ROMEO.
+What is her mother?
+
+NURSE.
+Marry, bachelor,
+Her mother is the lady of the house,
+And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous.
+I nurs’d her daughter that you talk’d withal.
+I tell you, he that can lay hold of her
+Shall have the chinks.
+
+ROMEO.
+Is she a Capulet?
+O dear account! My life is my foe’s debt.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Away, be gone; the sport is at the best.
+
+ROMEO.
+Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest.
+
+CAPULET.
+Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone,
+We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.
+Is it e’en so? Why then, I thank you all;
+I thank you, honest gentlemen; good night.
+More torches here! Come on then, let’s to bed.
+Ah, sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late,
+I’ll to my rest.
+
+ [_Exeunt all but Juliet and Nurse._]
+
+JULIET.
+Come hither, Nurse. What is yond gentleman?
+
+NURSE.
+The son and heir of old Tiberio.
+
+JULIET.
+What’s he that now is going out of door?
+
+NURSE.
+Marry, that I think be young Petruchio.
+
+JULIET.
+What’s he that follows here, that would not dance?
+
+NURSE.
+I know not.
+
+JULIET.
+Go ask his name. If he be married,
+My grave is like to be my wedding bed.
+
+NURSE.
+His name is Romeo, and a Montague,
+The only son of your great enemy.
+
+JULIET.
+My only love sprung from my only hate!
+Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
+Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
+That I must love a loathed enemy.
+
+NURSE.
+What’s this? What’s this?
+
+JULIET.
+A rhyme I learn’d even now
+Of one I danc’d withal.
+
+ [_One calls within, ‘Juliet’._]
+
+NURSE.
+Anon, anon!
+Come let’s away, the strangers all are gone.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+
+
+
+ACT II
+
+
+ Enter Chorus.
+
+CHORUS.
+Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie,
+And young affection gapes to be his heir;
+That fair for which love groan’d for and would die,
+With tender Juliet match’d, is now not fair.
+Now Romeo is belov’d, and loves again,
+Alike bewitched by the charm of looks;
+But to his foe suppos’d he must complain,
+And she steal love’s sweet bait from fearful hooks:
+Being held a foe, he may not have access
+To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear;
+And she as much in love, her means much less
+To meet her new beloved anywhere.
+But passion lends them power, time means, to meet,
+Tempering extremities with extreme sweet.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+SCENE I. An open place adjoining Capulet’s Garden.
+
+ Enter Romeo.
+
+ROMEO.
+Can I go forward when my heart is here?
+Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.
+
+ [_He climbs the wall and leaps down within it._]
+
+ Enter Benvolio and Mercutio.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Romeo! My cousin Romeo! Romeo!
+
+MERCUTIO.
+He is wise,
+And on my life hath stol’n him home to bed.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+He ran this way, and leap’d this orchard wall:
+Call, good Mercutio.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Nay, I’ll conjure too.
+Romeo! Humours! Madman! Passion! Lover!
+Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh,
+Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied;
+Cry but ‘Ah me!’ Pronounce but Love and dove;
+Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word,
+One nickname for her purblind son and heir,
+Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so trim
+When King Cophetua lov’d the beggar-maid.
+He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not;
+The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.
+I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes,
+By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,
+By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh,
+And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,
+That in thy likeness thou appear to us.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+An if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+This cannot anger him. ’Twould anger him
+To raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle,
+Of some strange nature, letting it there stand
+Till she had laid it, and conjur’d it down;
+That were some spite. My invocation
+Is fair and honest, and, in his mistress’ name,
+I conjure only but to raise up him.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Come, he hath hid himself among these trees
+To be consorted with the humorous night.
+Blind is his love, and best befits the dark.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
+Now will he sit under a medlar tree,
+And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
+As maids call medlars when they laugh alone.
+O Romeo, that she were, O that she were
+An open-arse and thou a poperin pear!
+Romeo, good night. I’ll to my truckle-bed.
+This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep.
+Come, shall we go?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Go then; for ’tis in vain
+To seek him here that means not to be found.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE II. Capulet’s Garden.
+
+ Enter Romeo.
+
+ROMEO.
+He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
+
+ Juliet appears above at a window.
+
+But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
+It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!
+Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon,
+Who is already sick and pale with grief,
+That thou her maid art far more fair than she.
+Be not her maid since she is envious;
+Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
+And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
+It is my lady, O it is my love!
+O, that she knew she were!
+She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?
+Her eye discourses, I will answer it.
+I am too bold, ’tis not to me she speaks.
+Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
+Having some business, do entreat her eyes
+To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
+What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
+The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
+As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
+Would through the airy region stream so bright
+That birds would sing and think it were not night.
+See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
+O that I were a glove upon that hand,
+That I might touch that cheek.
+
+JULIET.
+Ay me.
+
+ROMEO.
+She speaks.
+O speak again bright angel, for thou art
+As glorious to this night, being o’er my head,
+As is a winged messenger of heaven
+Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes
+Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
+When he bestrides the lazy-puffing clouds
+And sails upon the bosom of the air.
+
+JULIET.
+O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
+Deny thy father and refuse thy name.
+Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
+And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
+
+ROMEO.
+[_Aside._] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
+
+JULIET.
+’Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
+Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
+What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot,
+Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
+Belonging to a man. O be some other name.
+What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
+By any other name would smell as sweet;
+So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
+Retain that dear perfection which he owes
+Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
+And for thy name, which is no part of thee,
+Take all myself.
+
+ROMEO.
+I take thee at thy word.
+Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptis’d;
+Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
+
+JULIET.
+What man art thou that, thus bescreen’d in night
+So stumblest on my counsel?
+
+ROMEO.
+By a name
+I know not how to tell thee who I am:
+My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
+Because it is an enemy to thee.
+Had I it written, I would tear the word.
+
+JULIET.
+My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words
+Of thy tongue’s utterance, yet I know the sound.
+Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?
+
+ROMEO.
+Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.
+
+JULIET.
+How cam’st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?
+The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,
+And the place death, considering who thou art,
+If any of my kinsmen find thee here.
+
+ROMEO.
+With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls,
+For stony limits cannot hold love out,
+And what love can do, that dares love attempt:
+Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.
+
+JULIET.
+If they do see thee, they will murder thee.
+
+ROMEO.
+Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
+Than twenty of their swords. Look thou but sweet,
+And I am proof against their enmity.
+
+JULIET.
+I would not for the world they saw thee here.
+
+ROMEO.
+I have night’s cloak to hide me from their eyes,
+And but thou love me, let them find me here.
+My life were better ended by their hate
+Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.
+
+JULIET.
+By whose direction found’st thou out this place?
+
+ROMEO.
+By love, that first did prompt me to enquire;
+He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes.
+I am no pilot; yet wert thou as far
+As that vast shore wash’d with the farthest sea,
+I should adventure for such merchandise.
+
+JULIET.
+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.
+Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny
+What I have spoke; but farewell compliment.
+Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say Ay,
+And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou swear’st,
+Thou mayst prove false. At lovers’ perjuries,
+They say Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,
+If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.
+Or if thou thinkest I am too quickly won,
+I’ll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay,
+So thou wilt woo. But else, not for the world.
+In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond;
+And therefore thou mayst think my ’haviour light:
+But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
+Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
+I should have been more strange, I must confess,
+But that thou overheard’st, ere I was ’ware,
+My true-love passion; therefore pardon me,
+And not impute this yielding to light love,
+Which the dark night hath so discovered.
+
+ROMEO.
+Lady, by yonder blessed moon I vow,
+That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops,—
+
+JULIET.
+O swear not by the moon, th’inconstant moon,
+That monthly changes in her circled orb,
+Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
+
+ROMEO.
+What shall I swear by?
+
+JULIET.
+Do not swear at all.
+Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
+Which is the god of my idolatry,
+And I’ll believe thee.
+
+ROMEO.
+If my heart’s dear love,—
+
+JULIET.
+Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee,
+I have no joy of this contract tonight;
+It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden,
+Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
+Ere one can say “It lightens.” Sweet, good night.
+This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,
+May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
+Good night, good night. As sweet repose and rest
+Come to thy heart as that within my breast.
+
+ROMEO.
+O wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?
+
+JULIET.
+What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?
+
+ROMEO.
+Th’exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine.
+
+JULIET.
+I gave thee mine before thou didst request it;
+And yet I would it were to give again.
+
+ROMEO.
+Would’st thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?
+
+JULIET.
+But to be frank and give it thee again.
+And yet I wish but for the thing I have;
+My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
+My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
+The more I have, for both are infinite.
+I hear some noise within. Dear love, adieu.
+[_Nurse calls within._]
+Anon, good Nurse!—Sweet Montague be true.
+Stay but a little, I will come again.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+ROMEO.
+O blessed, blessed night. I am afeard,
+Being in night, all this is but a dream,
+Too flattering sweet to be substantial.
+
+ Enter Juliet above.
+
+JULIET.
+Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed.
+If that thy bent of love be honourable,
+Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow,
+By one that I’ll procure to come to thee,
+Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite,
+And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay
+And follow thee my lord throughout the world.
+
+NURSE.
+[_Within._] Madam.
+
+JULIET.
+I come, anon.— But if thou meanest not well,
+I do beseech thee,—
+
+NURSE.
+[_Within._] Madam.
+
+JULIET.
+By and by I come—
+To cease thy strife and leave me to my grief.
+Tomorrow will I send.
+
+ROMEO.
+So thrive my soul,—
+
+JULIET.
+A thousand times good night.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+ROMEO.
+A thousand times the worse, to want thy light.
+Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books,
+But love from love, towards school with heavy looks.
+
+ [_Retiring slowly._]
+
+ Re-enter Juliet, above.
+
+JULIET.
+Hist! Romeo, hist! O for a falconer’s voice
+To lure this tassel-gentle back again.
+Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud,
+Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies,
+And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine
+With repetition of my Romeo’s name.
+
+ROMEO.
+It is my soul that calls upon my name.
+How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night,
+Like softest music to attending ears.
+
+JULIET.
+Romeo.
+
+ROMEO.
+My nyas?
+
+JULIET.
+What o’clock tomorrow
+Shall I send to thee?
+
+ROMEO.
+By the hour of nine.
+
+JULIET.
+I will not fail. ’Tis twenty years till then.
+I have forgot why I did call thee back.
+
+ROMEO.
+Let me stand here till thou remember it.
+
+JULIET.
+I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,
+Remembering how I love thy company.
+
+ROMEO.
+And I’ll still stay, to have thee still forget,
+Forgetting any other home but this.
+
+JULIET.
+’Tis almost morning; I would have thee gone,
+And yet no farther than a wanton’s bird,
+That lets it hop a little from her hand,
+Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,
+And with a silk thread plucks it back again,
+So loving-jealous of his liberty.
+
+ROMEO.
+I would I were thy bird.
+
+JULIET.
+Sweet, so would I:
+Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
+Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow
+That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+ROMEO.
+Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast.
+Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest.
+Hence will I to my ghostly Sire’s cell,
+His help to crave and my dear hap to tell.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+SCENE III. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.
+
+ Enter Friar Lawrence with a basket.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night,
+Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light;
+And fleckled darkness like a drunkard reels
+From forth day’s pathway, made by Titan’s fiery wheels
+Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
+The day to cheer, and night’s dank dew to dry,
+I must upfill this osier cage of ours
+With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
+The earth that’s nature’s mother, is her tomb;
+What is her burying grave, that is her womb:
+And from her womb children of divers kind
+We sucking on her natural bosom find.
+Many for many virtues excellent,
+None but for some, and yet all different.
+O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
+In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities.
+For naught so vile that on the earth doth live
+But to the earth some special good doth give;
+Nor aught so good but, strain’d from that fair use,
+Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
+Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied,
+And vice sometime’s by action dignified.
+
+ Enter Romeo.
+
+Within the infant rind of this weak flower
+Poison hath residence, and medicine power:
+For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
+Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
+Two such opposed kings encamp them still
+In man as well as herbs,—grace and rude will;
+And where the worser is predominant,
+Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.
+
+ROMEO.
+Good morrow, father.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Benedicite!
+What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?
+Young son, it argues a distemper’d head
+So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed.
+Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,
+And where care lodges sleep will never lie;
+But where unbruised youth with unstuff’d brain
+Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.
+Therefore thy earliness doth me assure
+Thou art uprous’d with some distemperature;
+Or if not so, then here I hit it right,
+Our Romeo hath not been in bed tonight.
+
+ROMEO.
+That last is true; the sweeter rest was mine.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+God pardon sin. Wast thou with Rosaline?
+
+ROMEO.
+With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No.
+I have forgot that name, and that name’s woe.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+That’s my good son. But where hast thou been then?
+
+ROMEO.
+I’ll tell thee ere thou ask it me again.
+I have been feasting with mine enemy,
+Where on a sudden one hath wounded me
+That’s by me wounded. Both our remedies
+Within thy help and holy physic lies.
+I bear no hatred, blessed man; for lo,
+My intercession likewise steads my foe.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;
+Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.
+
+ROMEO.
+Then plainly know my heart’s dear love is set
+On the fair daughter of rich Capulet.
+As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;
+And all combin’d, save what thou must combine
+By holy marriage. When, and where, and how
+We met, we woo’d, and made exchange of vow,
+I’ll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,
+That thou consent to marry us today.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Holy Saint Francis! What a change is here!
+Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear,
+So soon forsaken? Young men’s love then lies
+Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
+Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine
+Hath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!
+How much salt water thrown away in waste,
+To season love, that of it doth not taste.
+The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,
+Thy old groans yet ring in mine ancient ears.
+Lo here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit
+Of an old tear that is not wash’d off yet.
+If ere thou wast thyself, and these woes thine,
+Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline,
+And art thou chang’d? Pronounce this sentence then,
+Women may fall, when there’s no strength in men.
+
+ROMEO.
+Thou chidd’st me oft for loving Rosaline.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.
+
+ROMEO.
+And bad’st me bury love.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Not in a grave
+To lay one in, another out to have.
+
+ROMEO.
+I pray thee chide me not, her I love now
+Doth grace for grace and love for love allow.
+The other did not so.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+O, she knew well
+Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell.
+But come young waverer, come go with me,
+In one respect I’ll thy assistant be;
+For this alliance may so happy prove,
+To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.
+
+ROMEO.
+O let us hence; I stand on sudden haste.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE IV. A Street.
+
+ Enter Benvolio and Mercutio.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home tonight?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Not to his father’s; I spoke with his man.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, torments him so
+that he will sure run mad.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet, hath sent a letter to his father’s
+house.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+A challenge, on my life.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Romeo will answer it.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Any man that can write may answer a letter.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Nay, he will answer the letter’s master, how he dares, being dared.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Alas poor Romeo, he is already dead, stabbed with a white wench’s black
+eye; run through the ear with a love song, the very pin of his heart
+cleft with the blind bow-boy’s butt-shaft. And is he a man to encounter
+Tybalt?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Why, what is Tybalt?
+
+MERCUTIO.
+More than Prince of cats. O, he’s the courageous captain of
+compliments. He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance,
+and proportion. He rests his minim rest, one, two, and the third in
+your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist;
+a gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah,
+the immortal passado, the punto reverso, the hay.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+The what?
+
+MERCUTIO.
+The pox of such antic lisping, affecting phantasies; these new tuners
+of accent. By Jesu, a very good blade, a very tall man, a very good
+whore. Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should
+be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers,
+these pardon-me’s, who stand so much on the new form that they cannot
+sit at ease on the old bench? O their bones, their bones!
+
+ Enter Romeo.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo!
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art thou
+fishified! Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in. Laura, to
+his lady, was but a kitchen wench,—marry, she had a better love to
+berhyme her: Dido a dowdy; Cleopatra a gypsy; Helen and Hero hildings
+and harlots; Thisbe a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior
+Romeo, bonjour! There’s a French salutation to your French slop. You
+gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.
+
+ROMEO.
+Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?
+
+MERCUTIO.
+The slip sir, the slip; can you not conceive?
+
+ROMEO.
+Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was great, and in such a case as
+mine a man may strain courtesy.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+That’s as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a man to bow
+in the hams.
+
+ROMEO.
+Meaning, to curtsy.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Thou hast most kindly hit it.
+
+ROMEO.
+A most courteous exposition.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.
+
+ROMEO.
+Pink for flower.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Right.
+
+ROMEO.
+Why, then is my pump well flowered.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Sure wit, follow me this jest now, till thou hast worn out thy pump,
+that when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain after the
+wearing, solely singular.
+
+ROMEO.
+O single-soled jest, solely singular for the singleness!
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Come between us, good Benvolio; my wits faint.
+
+ROMEO.
+Swits and spurs, swits and spurs; or I’ll cry a match.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done. For thou hast
+more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits, than I am sure, I have in my
+whole five. Was I with you there for the goose?
+
+ROMEO.
+Thou wast never with me for anything, when thou wast not there for the
+goose.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.
+
+ROMEO.
+Nay, good goose, bite not.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting, it is a most sharp sauce.
+
+ROMEO.
+And is it not then well served in to a sweet goose?
+
+MERCUTIO.
+O here’s a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an inch narrow to an
+ell broad.
+
+ROMEO.
+I stretch it out for that word broad, which added to the goose, proves
+thee far and wide a broad goose.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou
+sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as
+well as by nature. For this drivelling love is like a great natural,
+that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Stop there, stop there.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+O, thou art deceived; I would have made it short, for I was come to the
+whole depth of my tale, and meant indeed to occupy the argument no
+longer.
+
+ Enter Nurse and Peter.
+
+ROMEO.
+Here’s goodly gear!
+A sail, a sail!
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Two, two; a shirt and a smock.
+
+NURSE.
+Peter!
+
+PETER.
+Anon.
+
+NURSE.
+My fan, Peter.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Good Peter, to hide her face; for her fan’s the fairer face.
+
+NURSE.
+God ye good morrow, gentlemen.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+God ye good-den, fair gentlewoman.
+
+NURSE.
+Is it good-den?
+
+MERCUTIO.
+’Tis no less, I tell ye; for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the
+prick of noon.
+
+NURSE.
+Out upon you! What a man are you?
+
+ROMEO.
+One, gentlewoman, that God hath made for himself to mar.
+
+NURSE.
+By my troth, it is well said; for himself to mar, quoth a? Gentlemen,
+can any of you tell me where I may find the young Romeo?
+
+ROMEO.
+I can tell you: but young Romeo will be older when you have found him
+than he was when you sought him. I am the youngest of that name, for
+fault of a worse.
+
+NURSE.
+You say well.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Yea, is the worst well? Very well took, i’faith; wisely, wisely.
+
+NURSE.
+If you be he, sir, I desire some confidence with you.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+She will endite him to some supper.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho!
+
+ROMEO.
+What hast thou found?
+
+MERCUTIO.
+No hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is something
+stale and hoar ere it be spent.
+[_Sings._]
+    An old hare hoar,
+    And an old hare hoar,
+  Is very good meat in Lent;
+    But a hare that is hoar
+    Is too much for a score
+  When it hoars ere it be spent.
+Romeo, will you come to your father’s? We’ll to dinner thither.
+
+ROMEO.
+I will follow you.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Farewell, ancient lady; farewell, lady, lady, lady.
+
+ [_Exeunt Mercutio and Benvolio._]
+
+NURSE.
+I pray you, sir, what saucy merchant was this that was so full of his
+ropery?
+
+ROMEO.
+A gentleman, Nurse, that loves to hear himself talk, and will speak
+more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.
+
+NURSE.
+And a speak anything against me, I’ll take him down, and a were lustier
+than he is, and twenty such Jacks. And if I cannot, I’ll find those
+that shall. Scurvy knave! I am none of his flirt-gills; I am none of
+his skains-mates.—And thou must stand by too and suffer every knave to
+use me at his pleasure!
+
+PETER.
+I saw no man use you at his pleasure; if I had, my weapon should
+quickly have been out. I warrant you, I dare draw as soon as another
+man, if I see occasion in a good quarrel, and the law on my side.
+
+NURSE.
+Now, afore God, I am so vexed that every part about me quivers. Scurvy
+knave. Pray you, sir, a word: and as I told you, my young lady bid me
+enquire you out; what she bade me say, I will keep to myself. But first
+let me tell ye, if ye should lead her in a fool’s paradise, as they
+say, it were a very gross kind of behaviour, as they say; for the
+gentlewoman is young. And therefore, if you should deal double with
+her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered to any gentlewoman, and
+very weak dealing.
+
+ROMEO. Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. I protest unto
+thee,—
+
+NURSE.
+Good heart, and i’faith I will tell her as much. Lord, Lord, she will
+be a joyful woman.
+
+ROMEO.
+What wilt thou tell her, Nurse? Thou dost not mark me.
+
+NURSE.
+I will tell her, sir, that you do protest, which, as I take it, is a
+gentlemanlike offer.
+
+ROMEO.
+Bid her devise
+Some means to come to shrift this afternoon,
+And there she shall at Friar Lawrence’ cell
+Be shriv’d and married. Here is for thy pains.
+
+NURSE.
+No truly, sir; not a penny.
+
+ROMEO.
+Go to; I say you shall.
+
+NURSE.
+This afternoon, sir? Well, she shall be there.
+
+ROMEO.
+And stay, good Nurse, behind the abbey wall.
+Within this hour my man shall be with thee,
+And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair,
+Which to the high topgallant of my joy
+Must be my convoy in the secret night.
+Farewell, be trusty, and I’ll quit thy pains;
+Farewell; commend me to thy mistress.
+
+NURSE.
+Now God in heaven bless thee. Hark you, sir.
+
+ROMEO.
+What say’st thou, my dear Nurse?
+
+NURSE.
+Is your man secret? Did you ne’er hear say,
+Two may keep counsel, putting one away?
+
+ROMEO.
+I warrant thee my man’s as true as steel.
+
+NURSE.
+Well, sir, my mistress is the sweetest lady. Lord, Lord! When ’twas a
+little prating thing,—O, there is a nobleman in town, one Paris, that
+would fain lay knife aboard; but she, good soul, had as lief see a
+toad, a very toad, as see him. I anger her sometimes, and tell her that
+Paris is the properer man, but I’ll warrant you, when I say so, she
+looks as pale as any clout in the versal world. Doth not rosemary and
+Romeo begin both with a letter?
+
+ROMEO.
+Ay, Nurse; what of that? Both with an R.
+
+NURSE.
+Ah, mocker! That’s the dog’s name. R is for the—no, I know it begins
+with some other letter, and she hath the prettiest sententious of it,
+of you and rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it.
+
+ROMEO.
+Commend me to thy lady.
+
+NURSE.
+Ay, a thousand times. Peter!
+
+ [_Exit Romeo._]
+
+PETER.
+Anon.
+
+NURSE.
+Before and apace.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE V. Capulet’s Garden.
+
+ Enter Juliet.
+
+JULIET.
+The clock struck nine when I did send the Nurse,
+In half an hour she promised to return.
+Perchance she cannot meet him. That’s not so.
+O, she is lame. Love’s heralds should be thoughts,
+Which ten times faster glides than the sun’s beams,
+Driving back shadows over lowering hills:
+Therefore do nimble-pinion’d doves draw love,
+And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.
+Now is the sun upon the highmost hill
+Of this day’s journey, and from nine till twelve
+Is three long hours, yet she is not come.
+Had she affections and warm youthful blood,
+She’d be as swift in motion as a ball;
+My words would bandy her to my sweet love,
+And his to me.
+But old folks, many feign as they were dead;
+Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.
+
+ Enter Nurse and Peter.
+
+O God, she comes. O honey Nurse, what news?
+Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away.
+
+NURSE.
+Peter, stay at the gate.
+
+ [_Exit Peter._]
+
+JULIET.
+Now, good sweet Nurse,—O Lord, why look’st thou sad?
+Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily;
+If good, thou sham’st the music of sweet news
+By playing it to me with so sour a face.
+
+NURSE.
+I am aweary, give me leave awhile;
+Fie, how my bones ache! What a jaunt have I had!
+
+JULIET.
+I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news:
+Nay come, I pray thee speak; good, good Nurse, speak.
+
+NURSE.
+Jesu, what haste? Can you not stay a while? Do you not see that I am
+out of breath?
+
+JULIET.
+How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath
+To say to me that thou art out of breath?
+The excuse that thou dost make in this delay
+Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse.
+Is thy news good or bad? Answer to that;
+Say either, and I’ll stay the circumstance.
+Let me be satisfied, is’t good or bad?
+
+NURSE.
+Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to choose a man.
+Romeo? No, not he. Though his face be better than any man’s, yet his
+leg excels all men’s, and for a hand and a foot, and a body, though
+they be not to be talked on, yet they are past compare. He is not the
+flower of courtesy, but I’ll warrant him as gentle as a lamb. Go thy
+ways, wench, serve God. What, have you dined at home?
+
+JULIET.
+No, no. But all this did I know before.
+What says he of our marriage? What of that?
+
+NURSE.
+Lord, how my head aches! What a head have I!
+It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.
+My back o’ t’other side,—O my back, my back!
+Beshrew your heart for sending me about
+To catch my death with jauncing up and down.
+
+JULIET.
+I’faith, I am sorry that thou art not well.
+Sweet, sweet, sweet Nurse, tell me, what says my love?
+
+NURSE.
+Your love says like an honest gentleman,
+And a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome,
+And I warrant a virtuous,—Where is your mother?
+
+JULIET.
+Where is my mother? Why, she is within.
+Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest.
+‘Your love says, like an honest gentleman,
+‘Where is your mother?’
+
+NURSE.
+O God’s lady dear,
+Are you so hot? Marry, come up, I trow.
+Is this the poultice for my aching bones?
+Henceforward do your messages yourself.
+
+JULIET.
+Here’s such a coil. Come, what says Romeo?
+
+NURSE.
+Have you got leave to go to shrift today?
+
+JULIET.
+I have.
+
+NURSE.
+Then hie you hence to Friar Lawrence’ cell;
+There stays a husband to make you a wife.
+Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks,
+They’ll be in scarlet straight at any news.
+Hie you to church. I must another way,
+To fetch a ladder by the which your love
+Must climb a bird’s nest soon when it is dark.
+I am the drudge, and toil in your delight;
+But you shall bear the burden soon at night.
+Go. I’ll to dinner; hie you to the cell.
+
+JULIET.
+Hie to high fortune! Honest Nurse, farewell.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE VI. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.
+
+ Enter Friar Lawrence and Romeo.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+So smile the heavens upon this holy act
+That after-hours with sorrow chide us not.
+
+ROMEO.
+Amen, amen, but come what sorrow can,
+It cannot countervail the exchange of joy
+That one short minute gives me in her sight.
+Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
+Then love-devouring death do what he dare,
+It is enough I may but call her mine.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+These violent delights have violent ends,
+And in their triumph die; like fire and powder,
+Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey
+Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,
+And in the taste confounds the appetite.
+Therefore love moderately: long love doth so;
+Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
+
+ Enter Juliet.
+
+Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot
+Will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint.
+A lover may bestride the gossamers
+That idles in the wanton summer air
+And yet not fall; so light is vanity.
+
+JULIET.
+Good even to my ghostly confessor.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both.
+
+JULIET.
+As much to him, else is his thanks too much.
+
+ROMEO.
+Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy
+Be heap’d like mine, and that thy skill be more
+To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath
+This neighbour air, and let rich music’s tongue
+Unfold the imagin’d happiness that both
+Receive in either by this dear encounter.
+
+JULIET.
+Conceit more rich in matter than in words,
+Brags of his substance, not of ornament.
+They are but beggars that can count their worth;
+But my true love is grown to such excess,
+I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Come, come with me, and we will make short work,
+For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone
+Till holy church incorporate two in one.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+
+
+
+ACT III
+
+SCENE I. A public Place.
+
+
+ Enter Mercutio, Benvolio, Page and Servants.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+I pray thee, good Mercutio, let’s retire:
+The day is hot, the Capulets abroad,
+And if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl,
+For now these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Thou art like one of these fellows that, when he enters the confines of
+a tavern, claps me his sword upon the table, and says ‘God send me no
+need of thee!’ and by the operation of the second cup draws him on the
+drawer, when indeed there is no need.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Am I like such a fellow?
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy; and as
+soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+And what to?
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Nay, an there were two such, we should have none shortly, for one would
+kill the other. Thou? Why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a
+hair more or a hair less in his beard than thou hast. Thou wilt quarrel
+with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou
+hast hazel eyes. What eye but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel?
+Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and yet thy
+head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling. Thou hast
+quarrelled with a man for coughing in the street, because he hath
+wakened thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall
+out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter? with
+another for tying his new shoes with an old riband? And yet thou wilt
+tutor me from quarrelling!
+
+BENVOLIO.
+And I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man should buy the fee
+simple of my life for an hour and a quarter.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+The fee simple! O simple!
+
+ Enter Tybalt and others.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+By my head, here comes the Capulets.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+By my heel, I care not.
+
+TYBALT.
+Follow me close, for I will speak to them.
+Gentlemen, good-den: a word with one of you.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something; make it a
+word and a blow.
+
+TYBALT.
+You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, and you will give me
+occasion.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Could you not take some occasion without giving?
+
+TYBALT.
+Mercutio, thou consortest with Romeo.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Consort? What, dost thou make us minstrels? And thou make minstrels of
+us, look to hear nothing but discords. Here’s my fiddlestick, here’s
+that shall make you dance. Zounds, consort!
+
+BENVOLIO.
+We talk here in the public haunt of men.
+Either withdraw unto some private place,
+And reason coldly of your grievances,
+Or else depart; here all eyes gaze on us.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Men’s eyes were made to look, and let them gaze.
+I will not budge for no man’s pleasure, I.
+
+ Enter Romeo.
+
+TYBALT.
+Well, peace be with you, sir, here comes my man.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+But I’ll be hanged, sir, if he wear your livery.
+Marry, go before to field, he’ll be your follower;
+Your worship in that sense may call him man.
+
+TYBALT.
+Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford
+No better term than this: Thou art a villain.
+
+ROMEO.
+Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee
+Doth much excuse the appertaining rage
+To such a greeting. Villain am I none;
+Therefore farewell; I see thou know’st me not.
+
+TYBALT.
+Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries
+That thou hast done me, therefore turn and draw.
+
+ROMEO.
+I do protest I never injur’d thee,
+But love thee better than thou canst devise
+Till thou shalt know the reason of my love.
+And so good Capulet, which name I tender
+As dearly as mine own, be satisfied.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+O calm, dishonourable, vile submission!
+[_Draws._] Alla stoccata carries it away.
+Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?
+
+TYBALT.
+What wouldst thou have with me?
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives; that I mean to
+make bold withal, and, as you shall use me hereafter, dry-beat the rest
+of the eight. Will you pluck your sword out of his pilcher by the ears?
+Make haste, lest mine be about your ears ere it be out.
+
+TYBALT.
+[_Drawing._] I am for you.
+
+ROMEO.
+Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Come, sir, your passado.
+
+ [_They fight._]
+
+ROMEO.
+Draw, Benvolio; beat down their weapons.
+Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage,
+Tybalt, Mercutio, the Prince expressly hath
+Forbid this bandying in Verona streets.
+Hold, Tybalt! Good Mercutio!
+
+ [_Exeunt Tybalt with his Partizans._]
+
+MERCUTIO.
+I am hurt.
+A plague o’ both your houses. I am sped.
+Is he gone, and hath nothing?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+What, art thou hurt?
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch. Marry, ’tis enough.
+Where is my page? Go villain, fetch a surgeon.
+
+ [_Exit Page._]
+
+ROMEO.
+Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but ’tis
+enough, ’twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a
+grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o’ both
+your houses. Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to
+death. A braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of
+arithmetic!—Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your
+arm.
+
+ROMEO.
+I thought all for the best.
+
+MERCUTIO.
+Help me into some house, Benvolio,
+Or I shall faint. A plague o’ both your houses.
+They have made worms’ meat of me.
+I have it, and soundly too. Your houses!
+
+ [_Exeunt Mercutio and Benvolio._]
+
+ROMEO.
+This gentleman, the Prince’s near ally,
+My very friend, hath got his mortal hurt
+In my behalf; my reputation stain’d
+With Tybalt’s slander,—Tybalt, that an hour
+Hath been my cousin. O sweet Juliet,
+Thy beauty hath made me effeminate
+And in my temper soften’d valour’s steel.
+
+ Re-enter Benvolio.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio’s dead,
+That gallant spirit hath aspir’d the clouds,
+Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.
+
+ROMEO.
+This day’s black fate on mo days doth depend;
+This but begins the woe others must end.
+
+ Re-enter Tybalt.
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Here comes the furious Tybalt back again.
+
+ROMEO.
+Again in triumph, and Mercutio slain?
+Away to heaven respective lenity,
+And fire-ey’d fury be my conduct now!
+Now, Tybalt, take the ‘villain’ back again
+That late thou gav’st me, for Mercutio’s soul
+Is but a little way above our heads,
+Staying for thine to keep him company.
+Either thou or I, or both, must go with him.
+
+TYBALT.
+Thou wretched boy, that didst consort him here,
+Shalt with him hence.
+
+ROMEO.
+This shall determine that.
+
+ [_They fight; Tybalt falls._]
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Romeo, away, be gone!
+The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain.
+Stand not amaz’d. The Prince will doom thee death
+If thou art taken. Hence, be gone, away!
+
+ROMEO.
+O, I am fortune’s fool!
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Why dost thou stay?
+
+ [_Exit Romeo._]
+
+ Enter Citizens.
+
+FIRST CITIZEN.
+Which way ran he that kill’d Mercutio?
+Tybalt, that murderer, which way ran he?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+There lies that Tybalt.
+
+FIRST CITIZEN.
+Up, sir, go with me.
+I charge thee in the Prince’s name obey.
+
+ Enter Prince, attended; Montague, Capulet, their Wives and others.
+
+PRINCE.
+Where are the vile beginners of this fray?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+O noble Prince, I can discover all
+The unlucky manage of this fatal brawl.
+There lies the man, slain by young Romeo,
+That slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Tybalt, my cousin! O my brother’s child!
+O Prince! O husband! O, the blood is spill’d
+Of my dear kinsman! Prince, as thou art true,
+For blood of ours shed blood of Montague.
+O cousin, cousin.
+
+PRINCE.
+Benvolio, who began this bloody fray?
+
+BENVOLIO.
+Tybalt, here slain, whom Romeo’s hand did slay;
+Romeo, that spoke him fair, bid him bethink
+How nice the quarrel was, and urg’d withal
+Your high displeasure. All this uttered
+With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow’d
+Could not take truce with the unruly spleen
+Of Tybalt, deaf to peace, but that he tilts
+With piercing steel at bold Mercutio’s breast,
+Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point,
+And, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats
+Cold death aside, and with the other sends
+It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity
+Retorts it. Romeo he cries aloud,
+‘Hold, friends! Friends, part!’ and swifter than his tongue,
+His agile arm beats down their fatal points,
+And ’twixt them rushes; underneath whose arm
+An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life
+Of stout Mercutio, and then Tybalt fled.
+But by and by comes back to Romeo,
+Who had but newly entertain’d revenge,
+And to’t they go like lightning; for, ere I
+Could draw to part them was stout Tybalt slain;
+And as he fell did Romeo turn and fly.
+This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+He is a kinsman to the Montague.
+Affection makes him false, he speaks not true.
+Some twenty of them fought in this black strife,
+And all those twenty could but kill one life.
+I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give;
+Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live.
+
+PRINCE.
+Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio.
+Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?
+
+MONTAGUE.
+Not Romeo, Prince, he was Mercutio’s friend;
+His fault concludes but what the law should end,
+The life of Tybalt.
+
+PRINCE.
+And for that offence
+Immediately we do exile him hence.
+I have an interest in your hate’s proceeding,
+My blood for your rude brawls doth lie a-bleeding.
+But I’ll amerce you with so strong a fine
+That you shall all repent the loss of mine.
+I will be deaf to pleading and excuses;
+Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses.
+Therefore use none. Let Romeo hence in haste,
+Else, when he is found, that hour is his last.
+Bear hence this body, and attend our will.
+Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE II. A Room in Capulet’s House.
+
+ Enter Juliet.
+
+JULIET.
+Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
+Towards Phoebus’ lodging. Such a waggoner
+As Phaeton would whip you to the west
+And bring in cloudy night immediately.
+Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
+That runaway’s eyes may wink, and Romeo
+Leap to these arms, untalk’d of and unseen.
+Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
+By their own beauties: or, if love be blind,
+It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
+Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
+And learn me how to lose a winning match,
+Play’d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.
+Hood my unmann’d blood, bating in my cheeks,
+With thy black mantle, till strange love, grow bold,
+Think true love acted simple modesty.
+Come, night, come Romeo; come, thou day in night;
+For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
+Whiter than new snow upon a raven’s back.
+Come gentle night, come loving black-brow’d night,
+Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die,
+Take him and cut him out in little stars,
+And he will make the face of heaven so fine
+That all the world will be in love with night,
+And pay no worship to the garish sun.
+O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
+But not possess’d it; and though I am sold,
+Not yet enjoy’d. So tedious is this day
+As is the night before some festival
+To an impatient child that hath new robes
+And may not wear them. O, here comes my Nurse,
+And she brings news, and every tongue that speaks
+But Romeo’s name speaks heavenly eloquence.
+
+ Enter Nurse, with cords.
+
+Now, Nurse, what news? What hast thou there?
+The cords that Romeo bid thee fetch?
+
+NURSE.
+Ay, ay, the cords.
+
+ [_Throws them down._]
+
+JULIET.
+Ay me, what news? Why dost thou wring thy hands?
+
+NURSE.
+Ah, well-a-day, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead!
+We are undone, lady, we are undone.
+Alack the day, he’s gone, he’s kill’d, he’s dead.
+
+JULIET.
+Can heaven be so envious?
+
+NURSE.
+Romeo can,
+Though heaven cannot. O Romeo, Romeo.
+Who ever would have thought it? Romeo!
+
+JULIET.
+What devil art thou, that dost torment me thus?
+This torture should be roar’d in dismal hell.
+Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but Ay,
+And that bare vowel I shall poison more
+Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.
+I am not I if there be such an I;
+Or those eyes shut that make thee answer Ay.
+If he be slain, say Ay; or if not, No.
+Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.
+
+NURSE.
+I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes,
+God save the mark!—here on his manly breast.
+A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse;
+Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub’d in blood,
+All in gore-blood. I swounded at the sight.
+
+JULIET.
+O, break, my heart. Poor bankrout, break at once.
+To prison, eyes; ne’er look on liberty.
+Vile earth to earth resign; end motion here,
+And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier.
+
+NURSE.
+O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had.
+O courteous Tybalt, honest gentleman!
+That ever I should live to see thee dead.
+
+JULIET.
+What storm is this that blows so contrary?
+Is Romeo slaughter’d and is Tybalt dead?
+My dearest cousin, and my dearer lord?
+Then dreadful trumpet sound the general doom,
+For who is living, if those two are gone?
+
+NURSE.
+Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished,
+Romeo that kill’d him, he is banished.
+
+JULIET.
+O God! Did Romeo’s hand shed Tybalt’s blood?
+
+NURSE.
+It did, it did; alas the day, it did.
+
+JULIET.
+O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
+Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
+Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical,
+Dove-feather’d raven, wolvish-ravening lamb!
+Despised substance of divinest show!
+Just opposite to what thou justly seem’st,
+A damned saint, an honourable villain!
+O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell
+When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend
+In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?
+Was ever book containing such vile matter
+So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell
+In such a gorgeous palace.
+
+NURSE.
+There’s no trust,
+No faith, no honesty in men. All perjur’d,
+All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.
+Ah, where’s my man? Give me some aqua vitae.
+These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old.
+Shame come to Romeo.
+
+JULIET.
+Blister’d be thy tongue
+For such a wish! He was not born to shame.
+Upon his brow shame is asham’d to sit;
+For ’tis a throne where honour may be crown’d
+Sole monarch of the universal earth.
+O, what a beast was I to chide at him!
+
+NURSE.
+Will you speak well of him that kill’d your cousin?
+
+JULIET.
+Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
+Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
+When I thy three-hours’ wife have mangled it?
+But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?
+That villain cousin would have kill’d my husband.
+Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring,
+Your tributary drops belong to woe,
+Which you mistaking offer up to joy.
+My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain,
+And Tybalt’s dead, that would have slain my husband.
+All this is comfort; wherefore weep I then?
+Some word there was, worser than Tybalt’s death,
+That murder’d me. I would forget it fain,
+But O, it presses to my memory
+Like damned guilty deeds to sinners’ minds.
+Tybalt is dead, and Romeo banished.
+That ‘banished,’ that one word ‘banished,’
+Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt’s death
+Was woe enough, if it had ended there.
+Or if sour woe delights in fellowship,
+And needly will be rank’d with other griefs,
+Why follow’d not, when she said Tybalt’s dead,
+Thy father or thy mother, nay or both,
+Which modern lamentation might have mov’d?
+But with a rear-ward following Tybalt’s death,
+‘Romeo is banished’—to speak that word
+Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,
+All slain, all dead. Romeo is banished,
+There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,
+In that word’s death, no words can that woe sound.
+Where is my father and my mother, Nurse?
+
+NURSE.
+Weeping and wailing over Tybalt’s corse.
+Will you go to them? I will bring you thither.
+
+JULIET.
+Wash they his wounds with tears. Mine shall be spent,
+When theirs are dry, for Romeo’s banishment.
+Take up those cords. Poor ropes, you are beguil’d,
+Both you and I; for Romeo is exil’d.
+He made you for a highway to my bed,
+But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed.
+Come cords, come Nurse, I’ll to my wedding bed,
+And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead.
+
+NURSE.
+Hie to your chamber. I’ll find Romeo
+To comfort you. I wot well where he is.
+Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night.
+I’ll to him, he is hid at Lawrence’ cell.
+
+JULIET.
+O find him, give this ring to my true knight,
+And bid him come to take his last farewell.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE III. Friar Lawrence’s cell.
+
+ Enter Friar Lawrence.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful man.
+Affliction is enanmour’d of thy parts
+And thou art wedded to calamity.
+
+ Enter Romeo.
+
+ROMEO.
+Father, what news? What is the Prince’s doom?
+What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand,
+That I yet know not?
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Too familiar
+Is my dear son with such sour company.
+I bring thee tidings of the Prince’s doom.
+
+ROMEO.
+What less than doomsday is the Prince’s doom?
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+A gentler judgment vanish’d from his lips,
+Not body’s death, but body’s banishment.
+
+ROMEO.
+Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say death;
+For exile hath more terror in his look,
+Much more than death. Do not say banishment.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Hence from Verona art thou banished.
+Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.
+
+ROMEO.
+There is no world without Verona walls,
+But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
+Hence banished is banish’d from the world,
+And world’s exile is death. Then banished
+Is death misterm’d. Calling death banished,
+Thou cutt’st my head off with a golden axe,
+And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+O deadly sin, O rude unthankfulness!
+Thy fault our law calls death, but the kind Prince,
+Taking thy part, hath brush’d aside the law,
+And turn’d that black word death to banishment.
+This is dear mercy, and thou see’st it not.
+
+ROMEO.
+’Tis torture, and not mercy. Heaven is here
+Where Juliet lives, and every cat and dog,
+And little mouse, every unworthy thing,
+Live here in heaven and may look on her,
+But Romeo may not. More validity,
+More honourable state, more courtship lives
+In carrion flies than Romeo. They may seize
+On the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand,
+And steal immortal blessing from her lips,
+Who, even in pure and vestal modesty
+Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.
+But Romeo may not, he is banished.
+This may flies do, when I from this must fly.
+They are free men but I am banished.
+And say’st thou yet that exile is not death?
+Hadst thou no poison mix’d, no sharp-ground knife,
+No sudden mean of death, though ne’er so mean,
+But banished to kill me? Banished?
+O Friar, the damned use that word in hell.
+Howling attends it. How hast thou the heart,
+Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,
+A sin-absolver, and my friend profess’d,
+To mangle me with that word banished?
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Thou fond mad man, hear me speak a little,
+
+ROMEO.
+O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+I’ll give thee armour to keep off that word,
+Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,
+To comfort thee, though thou art banished.
+
+ROMEO.
+Yet banished? Hang up philosophy.
+Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
+Displant a town, reverse a Prince’s doom,
+It helps not, it prevails not, talk no more.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+O, then I see that mad men have no ears.
+
+ROMEO.
+How should they, when that wise men have no eyes?
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.
+
+ROMEO.
+Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel.
+Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,
+An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,
+Doting like me, and like me banished,
+Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair,
+And fall upon the ground as I do now,
+Taking the measure of an unmade grave.
+
+ [_Knocking within._]
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Arise; one knocks. Good Romeo, hide thyself.
+
+ROMEO.
+Not I, unless the breath of heartsick groans
+Mist-like infold me from the search of eyes.
+
+ [_Knocking._]
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Hark, how they knock!—Who’s there?—Romeo, arise,
+Thou wilt be taken.—Stay awhile.—Stand up.
+
+ [_Knocking._]
+
+Run to my study.—By-and-by.—God’s will,
+What simpleness is this.—I come, I come.
+
+ [_Knocking._]
+
+Who knocks so hard? Whence come you, what’s your will?
+
+NURSE.
+[_Within._] Let me come in, and you shall know my errand.
+I come from Lady Juliet.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Welcome then.
+
+ Enter Nurse.
+
+NURSE.
+O holy Friar, O, tell me, holy Friar,
+Where is my lady’s lord, where’s Romeo?
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.
+
+NURSE.
+O, he is even in my mistress’ case.
+Just in her case! O woeful sympathy!
+Piteous predicament. Even so lies she,
+Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering.
+Stand up, stand up; stand, and you be a man.
+For Juliet’s sake, for her sake, rise and stand.
+Why should you fall into so deep an O?
+
+ROMEO.
+Nurse.
+
+NURSE.
+Ah sir, ah sir, death’s the end of all.
+
+ROMEO.
+Spakest thou of Juliet? How is it with her?
+Doth not she think me an old murderer,
+Now I have stain’d the childhood of our joy
+With blood remov’d but little from her own?
+Where is she? And how doth she? And what says
+My conceal’d lady to our cancell’d love?
+
+NURSE.
+O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps;
+And now falls on her bed, and then starts up,
+And Tybalt calls, and then on Romeo cries,
+And then down falls again.
+
+ROMEO.
+As if that name,
+Shot from the deadly level of a gun,
+Did murder her, as that name’s cursed hand
+Murder’d her kinsman. O, tell me, Friar, tell me,
+In what vile part of this anatomy
+Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack
+The hateful mansion.
+
+ [_Drawing his sword._]
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Hold thy desperate hand.
+Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art.
+Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote
+The unreasonable fury of a beast.
+Unseemly woman in a seeming man,
+And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!
+Thou hast amaz’d me. By my holy order,
+I thought thy disposition better temper’d.
+Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself?
+And slay thy lady, that in thy life lives,
+By doing damned hate upon thyself?
+Why rail’st thou on thy birth, the heaven and earth?
+Since birth, and heaven and earth, all three do meet
+In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose.
+Fie, fie, thou sham’st thy shape, thy love, thy wit,
+Which, like a usurer, abound’st in all,
+And usest none in that true use indeed
+Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.
+Thy noble shape is but a form of wax,
+Digressing from the valour of a man;
+Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,
+Killing that love which thou hast vow’d to cherish;
+Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,
+Misshapen in the conduct of them both,
+Like powder in a skilless soldier’s flask,
+Is set afire by thine own ignorance,
+And thou dismember’d with thine own defence.
+What, rouse thee, man. Thy Juliet is alive,
+For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead.
+There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,
+But thou slew’st Tybalt; there art thou happy.
+The law that threaten’d death becomes thy friend,
+And turns it to exile; there art thou happy.
+A pack of blessings light upon thy back;
+Happiness courts thee in her best array;
+But like a misshaped and sullen wench,
+Thou putt’st up thy Fortune and thy love.
+Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.
+Go, get thee to thy love as was decreed,
+Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her.
+But look thou stay not till the watch be set,
+For then thou canst not pass to Mantua;
+Where thou shalt live till we can find a time
+To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,
+Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back
+With twenty hundred thousand times more joy
+Than thou went’st forth in lamentation.
+Go before, Nurse. Commend me to thy lady,
+And bid her hasten all the house to bed,
+Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto.
+Romeo is coming.
+
+NURSE.
+O Lord, I could have stay’d here all the night
+To hear good counsel. O, what learning is!
+My lord, I’ll tell my lady you will come.
+
+ROMEO.
+Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.
+
+NURSE.
+Here sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir.
+Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+ROMEO.
+How well my comfort is reviv’d by this.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Go hence, good night, and here stands all your state:
+Either be gone before the watch be set,
+Or by the break of day disguis’d from hence.
+Sojourn in Mantua. I’ll find out your man,
+And he shall signify from time to time
+Every good hap to you that chances here.
+Give me thy hand; ’tis late; farewell; good night.
+
+ROMEO.
+But that a joy past joy calls out on me,
+It were a grief so brief to part with thee.
+Farewell.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE IV. A Room in Capulet’s House.
+
+ Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet and Paris.
+
+CAPULET.
+Things have fallen out, sir, so unluckily
+That we have had no time to move our daughter.
+Look you, she lov’d her kinsman Tybalt dearly,
+And so did I. Well, we were born to die.
+’Tis very late; she’ll not come down tonight.
+I promise you, but for your company,
+I would have been abed an hour ago.
+
+PARIS.
+These times of woe afford no tune to woo.
+Madam, good night. Commend me to your daughter.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+I will, and know her mind early tomorrow;
+Tonight she’s mew’d up to her heaviness.
+
+CAPULET.
+Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender
+Of my child’s love. I think she will be rul’d
+In all respects by me; nay more, I doubt it not.
+Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed,
+Acquaint her here of my son Paris’ love,
+And bid her, mark you me, on Wednesday next,
+But, soft, what day is this?
+
+PARIS.
+Monday, my lord.
+
+CAPULET.
+Monday! Ha, ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon,
+A Thursday let it be; a Thursday, tell her,
+She shall be married to this noble earl.
+Will you be ready? Do you like this haste?
+We’ll keep no great ado,—a friend or two,
+For, hark you, Tybalt being slain so late,
+It may be thought we held him carelessly,
+Being our kinsman, if we revel much.
+Therefore we’ll have some half a dozen friends,
+And there an end. But what say you to Thursday?
+
+PARIS.
+My lord, I would that Thursday were tomorrow.
+
+CAPULET.
+Well, get you gone. A Thursday be it then.
+Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed,
+Prepare her, wife, against this wedding day.
+Farewell, my lord.—Light to my chamber, ho!
+Afore me, it is so very very late that we
+May call it early by and by. Good night.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE V. An open Gallery to Juliet’s Chamber, overlooking the Garden.
+
+ Enter Romeo and Juliet.
+
+JULIET.
+Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.
+It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
+That pierc’d the fearful hollow of thine ear;
+Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree.
+Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
+
+ROMEO.
+It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
+No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks
+Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.
+Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
+Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
+I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
+
+JULIET.
+Yond light is not daylight, I know it, I.
+It is some meteor that the sun exhales
+To be to thee this night a torchbearer
+And light thee on thy way to Mantua.
+Therefore stay yet, thou need’st not to be gone.
+
+ROMEO.
+Let me be ta’en, let me be put to death,
+I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
+I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye,
+’Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow.
+Nor that is not the lark whose notes do beat
+The vaulty heaven so high above our heads.
+I have more care to stay than will to go.
+Come, death, and welcome. Juliet wills it so.
+How is’t, my soul? Let’s talk. It is not day.
+
+JULIET.
+It is, it is! Hie hence, be gone, away.
+It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
+Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
+Some say the lark makes sweet division;
+This doth not so, for she divideth us.
+Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes.
+O, now I would they had chang’d voices too,
+Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
+Hunting thee hence with hunt’s-up to the day.
+O now be gone, more light and light it grows.
+
+ROMEO.
+More light and light, more dark and dark our woes.
+
+ Enter Nurse.
+
+NURSE.
+Madam.
+
+JULIET.
+Nurse?
+
+NURSE.
+Your lady mother is coming to your chamber.
+The day is broke, be wary, look about.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+JULIET.
+Then, window, let day in, and let life out.
+
+ROMEO.
+Farewell, farewell, one kiss, and I’ll descend.
+
+ [_Descends._]
+
+JULIET.
+Art thou gone so? Love, lord, ay husband, friend,
+I must hear from thee every day in the hour,
+For in a minute there are many days.
+O, by this count I shall be much in years
+Ere I again behold my Romeo.
+
+ROMEO.
+Farewell!
+I will omit no opportunity
+That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.
+
+JULIET.
+O thinkest thou we shall ever meet again?
+
+ROMEO.
+I doubt it not, and all these woes shall serve
+For sweet discourses in our time to come.
+
+JULIET.
+O God! I have an ill-divining soul!
+Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low,
+As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.
+Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale.
+
+ROMEO.
+And trust me, love, in my eye so do you.
+Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu.
+
+ [_Exit below._]
+
+JULIET.
+O Fortune, Fortune! All men call thee fickle,
+If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him
+That is renown’d for faith? Be fickle, Fortune;
+For then, I hope thou wilt not keep him long
+But send him back.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+[_Within._] Ho, daughter, are you up?
+
+JULIET.
+Who is’t that calls? Is it my lady mother?
+Is she not down so late, or up so early?
+What unaccustom’d cause procures her hither?
+
+ Enter Lady Capulet.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Why, how now, Juliet?
+
+JULIET.
+Madam, I am not well.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Evermore weeping for your cousin’s death?
+What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?
+And if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live.
+Therefore have done: some grief shows much of love,
+But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
+
+JULIET.
+Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend
+Which you weep for.
+
+JULIET.
+Feeling so the loss,
+I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Well, girl, thou weep’st not so much for his death
+As that the villain lives which slaughter’d him.
+
+JULIET.
+What villain, madam?
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+That same villain Romeo.
+
+JULIET.
+Villain and he be many miles asunder.
+God pardon him. I do, with all my heart.
+And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+That is because the traitor murderer lives.
+
+JULIET.
+Ay madam, from the reach of these my hands.
+Would none but I might venge my cousin’s death.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not.
+Then weep no more. I’ll send to one in Mantua,
+Where that same banish’d runagate doth live,
+Shall give him such an unaccustom’d dram
+That he shall soon keep Tybalt company:
+And then I hope thou wilt be satisfied.
+
+JULIET.
+Indeed I never shall be satisfied
+With Romeo till I behold him—dead—
+Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vex’d.
+Madam, if you could find out but a man
+To bear a poison, I would temper it,
+That Romeo should upon receipt thereof,
+Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors
+To hear him nam’d, and cannot come to him,
+To wreak the love I bore my cousin
+Upon his body that hath slaughter’d him.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Find thou the means, and I’ll find such a man.
+But now I’ll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.
+
+JULIET.
+And joy comes well in such a needy time.
+What are they, I beseech your ladyship?
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child;
+One who to put thee from thy heaviness,
+Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy,
+That thou expects not, nor I look’d not for.
+
+JULIET.
+Madam, in happy time, what day is that?
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn
+The gallant, young, and noble gentleman,
+The County Paris, at Saint Peter’s Church,
+Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.
+
+JULIET.
+Now by Saint Peter’s Church, and Peter too,
+He shall not make me there a joyful bride.
+I wonder at this haste, that I must wed
+Ere he that should be husband comes to woo.
+I pray you tell my lord and father, madam,
+I will not marry yet; and when I do, I swear
+It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate,
+Rather than Paris. These are news indeed.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Here comes your father, tell him so yourself,
+And see how he will take it at your hands.
+
+ Enter Capulet and Nurse.
+
+CAPULET.
+When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;
+But for the sunset of my brother’s son
+It rains downright.
+How now? A conduit, girl? What, still in tears?
+Evermore showering? In one little body
+Thou counterfeits a bark, a sea, a wind.
+For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,
+Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is,
+Sailing in this salt flood, the winds, thy sighs,
+Who raging with thy tears and they with them,
+Without a sudden calm will overset
+Thy tempest-tossed body. How now, wife?
+Have you deliver’d to her our decree?
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks.
+I would the fool were married to her grave.
+
+CAPULET.
+Soft. Take me with you, take me with you, wife.
+How, will she none? Doth she not give us thanks?
+Is she not proud? Doth she not count her blest,
+Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought
+So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom?
+
+JULIET.
+Not proud you have, but thankful that you have.
+Proud can I never be of what I hate;
+But thankful even for hate that is meant love.
+
+CAPULET.
+How now, how now, chopp’d logic? What is this?
+Proud, and, I thank you, and I thank you not;
+And yet not proud. Mistress minion you,
+Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds,
+But fettle your fine joints ’gainst Thursday next
+To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s Church,
+Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.
+Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage!
+You tallow-face!
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Fie, fie! What, are you mad?
+
+JULIET.
+Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
+Hear me with patience but to speak a word.
+
+CAPULET.
+Hang thee young baggage, disobedient wretch!
+I tell thee what,—get thee to church a Thursday,
+Or never after look me in the face.
+Speak not, reply not, do not answer me.
+My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest
+That God had lent us but this only child;
+But now I see this one is one too much,
+And that we have a curse in having her.
+Out on her, hilding.
+
+NURSE.
+God in heaven bless her.
+You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.
+
+CAPULET.
+And why, my lady wisdom? Hold your tongue,
+Good prudence; smatter with your gossips, go.
+
+NURSE.
+I speak no treason.
+
+CAPULET.
+O God ye good-en!
+
+NURSE.
+May not one speak?
+
+CAPULET.
+Peace, you mumbling fool!
+Utter your gravity o’er a gossip’s bowl,
+For here we need it not.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+You are too hot.
+
+CAPULET.
+God’s bread, it makes me mad!
+Day, night, hour, ride, time, work, play,
+Alone, in company, still my care hath been
+To have her match’d, and having now provided
+A gentleman of noble parentage,
+Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly allied,
+Stuff’d, as they say, with honourable parts,
+Proportion’d as one’s thought would wish a man,
+And then to have a wretched puling fool,
+A whining mammet, in her fortune’s tender,
+To answer, ‘I’ll not wed, I cannot love,
+I am too young, I pray you pardon me.’
+But, and you will not wed, I’ll pardon you.
+Graze where you will, you shall not house with me.
+Look to’t, think on’t, I do not use to jest.
+Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise.
+And you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend;
+And you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,
+For by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee,
+Nor what is mine shall never do thee good.
+Trust to’t, bethink you, I’ll not be forsworn.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+JULIET.
+Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
+That sees into the bottom of my grief?
+O sweet my mother, cast me not away,
+Delay this marriage for a month, a week,
+Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed
+In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word.
+Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+JULIET.
+O God! O Nurse, how shall this be prevented?
+My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven.
+How shall that faith return again to earth,
+Unless that husband send it me from heaven
+By leaving earth? Comfort me, counsel me.
+Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems
+Upon so soft a subject as myself.
+What say’st thou? Hast thou not a word of joy?
+Some comfort, Nurse.
+
+NURSE.
+Faith, here it is.
+Romeo is banished; and all the world to nothing
+That he dares ne’er come back to challenge you.
+Or if he do, it needs must be by stealth.
+Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,
+I think it best you married with the County.
+O, he’s a lovely gentleman.
+Romeo’s a dishclout to him. An eagle, madam,
+Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye
+As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,
+I think you are happy in this second match,
+For it excels your first: or if it did not,
+Your first is dead, or ’twere as good he were,
+As living here and you no use of him.
+
+JULIET.
+Speakest thou from thy heart?
+
+NURSE.
+And from my soul too,
+Or else beshrew them both.
+
+JULIET.
+Amen.
+
+NURSE.
+What?
+
+JULIET.
+Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much.
+Go in, and tell my lady I am gone,
+Having displeas’d my father, to Lawrence’ cell,
+To make confession and to be absolv’d.
+
+NURSE.
+Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+JULIET.
+Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!
+Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,
+Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue
+Which she hath prais’d him with above compare
+So many thousand times? Go, counsellor.
+Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.
+I’ll to the Friar to know his remedy.
+If all else fail, myself have power to die.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+
+
+
+ACT IV
+
+SCENE I. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.
+
+
+ Enter Friar Lawrence and Paris.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+On Thursday, sir? The time is very short.
+
+PARIS.
+My father Capulet will have it so;
+And I am nothing slow to slack his haste.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+You say you do not know the lady’s mind.
+Uneven is the course; I like it not.
+
+PARIS.
+Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt’s death,
+And therefore have I little talk’d of love;
+For Venus smiles not in a house of tears.
+Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous
+That she do give her sorrow so much sway;
+And in his wisdom, hastes our marriage,
+To stop the inundation of her tears,
+Which, too much minded by herself alone,
+May be put from her by society.
+Now do you know the reason of this haste.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+[_Aside._] I would I knew not why it should be slow’d.—
+Look, sir, here comes the lady toward my cell.
+
+ Enter Juliet.
+
+PARIS.
+Happily met, my lady and my wife!
+
+JULIET.
+That may be, sir, when I may be a wife.
+
+PARIS.
+That may be, must be, love, on Thursday next.
+
+JULIET.
+What must be shall be.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+That’s a certain text.
+
+PARIS.
+Come you to make confession to this father?
+
+JULIET.
+To answer that, I should confess to you.
+
+PARIS.
+Do not deny to him that you love me.
+
+JULIET.
+I will confess to you that I love him.
+
+PARIS.
+So will ye, I am sure, that you love me.
+
+JULIET.
+If I do so, it will be of more price,
+Being spoke behind your back than to your face.
+
+PARIS.
+Poor soul, thy face is much abus’d with tears.
+
+JULIET.
+The tears have got small victory by that;
+For it was bad enough before their spite.
+
+PARIS.
+Thou wrong’st it more than tears with that report.
+
+JULIET.
+That is no slander, sir, which is a truth,
+And what I spake, I spake it to my face.
+
+PARIS.
+Thy face is mine, and thou hast slander’d it.
+
+JULIET.
+It may be so, for it is not mine own.
+Are you at leisure, holy father, now,
+Or shall I come to you at evening mass?
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now.—
+My lord, we must entreat the time alone.
+
+PARIS.
+God shield I should disturb devotion!—
+Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse ye,
+Till then, adieu; and keep this holy kiss.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+JULIET.
+O shut the door, and when thou hast done so,
+Come weep with me, past hope, past cure, past help!
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+O Juliet, I already know thy grief;
+It strains me past the compass of my wits.
+I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it,
+On Thursday next be married to this County.
+
+JULIET.
+Tell me not, Friar, that thou hear’st of this,
+Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it.
+If in thy wisdom, thou canst give no help,
+Do thou but call my resolution wise,
+And with this knife I’ll help it presently.
+God join’d my heart and Romeo’s, thou our hands;
+And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo’s seal’d,
+Shall be the label to another deed,
+Or my true heart with treacherous revolt
+Turn to another, this shall slay them both.
+Therefore, out of thy long-experienc’d time,
+Give me some present counsel, or behold
+’Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife
+Shall play the empire, arbitrating that
+Which the commission of thy years and art
+Could to no issue of true honour bring.
+Be not so long to speak. I long to die,
+If what thou speak’st speak not of remedy.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Hold, daughter. I do spy a kind of hope,
+Which craves as desperate an execution
+As that is desperate which we would prevent.
+If, rather than to marry County Paris
+Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,
+Then is it likely thou wilt undertake
+A thing like death to chide away this shame,
+That cop’st with death himself to scape from it.
+And if thou dar’st, I’ll give thee remedy.
+
+JULIET.
+O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
+From off the battlements of yonder tower,
+Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk
+Where serpents are. Chain me with roaring bears;
+Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house,
+O’er-cover’d quite with dead men’s rattling bones,
+With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls.
+Or bid me go into a new-made grave,
+And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;
+Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble,
+And I will do it without fear or doubt,
+To live an unstain’d wife to my sweet love.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Hold then. Go home, be merry, give consent
+To marry Paris. Wednesday is tomorrow;
+Tomorrow night look that thou lie alone,
+Let not thy Nurse lie with thee in thy chamber.
+Take thou this vial, being then in bed,
+And this distilled liquor drink thou off,
+When presently through all thy veins shall run
+A cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse
+Shall keep his native progress, but surcease.
+No warmth, no breath shall testify thou livest,
+The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade
+To paly ashes; thy eyes’ windows fall,
+Like death when he shuts up the day of life.
+Each part depriv’d of supple government,
+Shall stiff and stark and cold appear like death.
+And in this borrow’d likeness of shrunk death
+Thou shalt continue two and forty hours,
+And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.
+Now when the bridegroom in the morning comes
+To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead.
+Then as the manner of our country is,
+In thy best robes, uncover’d, on the bier,
+Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault
+Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.
+In the meantime, against thou shalt awake,
+Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift,
+And hither shall he come, and he and I
+Will watch thy waking, and that very night
+Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.
+And this shall free thee from this present shame,
+If no inconstant toy nor womanish fear
+Abate thy valour in the acting it.
+
+JULIET.
+Give me, give me! O tell not me of fear!
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Hold; get you gone, be strong and prosperous
+In this resolve. I’ll send a friar with speed
+To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.
+
+JULIET.
+Love give me strength, and strength shall help afford.
+Farewell, dear father.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE II. Hall in Capulet’s House.
+
+ Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet, Nurse and Servants.
+
+CAPULET.
+So many guests invite as here are writ.
+
+ [_Exit first Servant._]
+
+Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.
+
+SECOND SERVANT.
+You shall have none ill, sir; for I’ll try if they can lick their
+fingers.
+
+CAPULET.
+How canst thou try them so?
+
+SECOND SERVANT.
+Marry, sir, ’tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers;
+therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with me.
+
+CAPULET.
+Go, begone.
+
+ [_Exit second Servant._]
+
+We shall be much unfurnish’d for this time.
+What, is my daughter gone to Friar Lawrence?
+
+NURSE.
+Ay, forsooth.
+
+CAPULET.
+Well, he may chance to do some good on her.
+A peevish self-will’d harlotry it is.
+
+ Enter Juliet.
+
+NURSE.
+See where she comes from shrift with merry look.
+
+CAPULET.
+How now, my headstrong. Where have you been gadding?
+
+JULIET.
+Where I have learnt me to repent the sin
+Of disobedient opposition
+To you and your behests; and am enjoin’d
+By holy Lawrence to fall prostrate here,
+To beg your pardon. Pardon, I beseech you.
+Henceforward I am ever rul’d by you.
+
+CAPULET.
+Send for the County, go tell him of this.
+I’ll have this knot knit up tomorrow morning.
+
+JULIET.
+I met the youthful lord at Lawrence’ cell,
+And gave him what becomed love I might,
+Not stepping o’er the bounds of modesty.
+
+CAPULET.
+Why, I am glad on’t. This is well. Stand up.
+This is as’t should be. Let me see the County.
+Ay, marry. Go, I say, and fetch him hither.
+Now afore God, this reverend holy Friar,
+All our whole city is much bound to him.
+
+JULIET.
+Nurse, will you go with me into my closet,
+To help me sort such needful ornaments
+As you think fit to furnish me tomorrow?
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+No, not till Thursday. There is time enough.
+
+CAPULET.
+Go, Nurse, go with her. We’ll to church tomorrow.
+
+ [_Exeunt Juliet and Nurse._]
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+We shall be short in our provision,
+’Tis now near night.
+
+CAPULET.
+Tush, I will stir about,
+And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife.
+Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her.
+I’ll not to bed tonight, let me alone.
+I’ll play the housewife for this once.—What, ho!—
+They are all forth: well, I will walk myself
+To County Paris, to prepare him up
+Against tomorrow. My heart is wondrous light
+Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim’d.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE III. Juliet’s Chamber.
+
+ Enter Juliet and Nurse.
+
+JULIET.
+Ay, those attires are best. But, gentle Nurse,
+I pray thee leave me to myself tonight;
+For I have need of many orisons
+To move the heavens to smile upon my state,
+Which, well thou know’st, is cross and full of sin.
+
+ Enter Lady Capulet.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+What, are you busy, ho? Need you my help?
+
+JULIET.
+No, madam; we have cull’d such necessaries
+As are behoveful for our state tomorrow.
+So please you, let me now be left alone,
+And let the nurse this night sit up with you,
+For I am sure you have your hands full all
+In this so sudden business.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Good night.
+Get thee to bed and rest, for thou hast need.
+
+ [_Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse._]
+
+JULIET.
+Farewell. God knows when we shall meet again.
+I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins
+That almost freezes up the heat of life.
+I’ll call them back again to comfort me.
+Nurse!—What should she do here?
+My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
+Come, vial.
+What if this mixture do not work at all?
+Shall I be married then tomorrow morning?
+No, No! This shall forbid it. Lie thou there.
+
+ [_Laying down her dagger._]
+
+What if it be a poison, which the Friar
+Subtly hath minister’d to have me dead,
+Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour’d,
+Because he married me before to Romeo?
+I fear it is. And yet methinks it should not,
+For he hath still been tried a holy man.
+How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
+I wake before the time that Romeo
+Come to redeem me? There’s a fearful point!
+Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,
+To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
+And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
+Or, if I live, is it not very like,
+The horrible conceit of death and night,
+Together with the terror of the place,
+As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
+Where for this many hundred years the bones
+Of all my buried ancestors are pack’d,
+Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
+Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
+At some hours in the night spirits resort—
+Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
+So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
+And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
+That living mortals, hearing them, run mad.
+O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
+Environed with all these hideous fears,
+And madly play with my forefathers’ joints?
+And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
+And, in this rage, with some great kinsman’s bone,
+As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
+O look, methinks I see my cousin’s ghost
+Seeking out Romeo that did spit his body
+Upon a rapier’s point. Stay, Tybalt, stay!
+Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, here’s drink! I drink to thee.
+
+ [_Throws herself on the bed._]
+
+SCENE IV. Hall in Capulet’s House.
+
+ Enter Lady Capulet and Nurse.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Hold, take these keys and fetch more spices, Nurse.
+
+NURSE.
+They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.
+
+ Enter Capulet.
+
+CAPULET.
+Come, stir, stir, stir! The second cock hath crow’d,
+The curfew bell hath rung, ’tis three o’clock.
+Look to the bak’d meats, good Angelica;
+Spare not for cost.
+
+NURSE.
+Go, you cot-quean, go,
+Get you to bed; faith, you’ll be sick tomorrow
+For this night’s watching.
+
+CAPULET.
+No, not a whit. What! I have watch’d ere now
+All night for lesser cause, and ne’er been sick.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time;
+But I will watch you from such watching now.
+
+ [_Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse._]
+
+CAPULET.
+A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!
+
+ Enter Servants, with spits, logs and baskets.
+
+Now, fellow, what’s there?
+
+FIRST SERVANT.
+Things for the cook, sir; but I know not what.
+
+CAPULET.
+Make haste, make haste.
+
+ [_Exit First Servant._]
+
+—Sirrah, fetch drier logs.
+Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.
+
+SECOND SERVANT.
+I have a head, sir, that will find out logs
+And never trouble Peter for the matter.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+CAPULET.
+Mass and well said; a merry whoreson, ha.
+Thou shalt be loggerhead.—Good faith, ’tis day.
+The County will be here with music straight,
+For so he said he would. I hear him near.
+
+ [_Play music._]
+
+Nurse! Wife! What, ho! What, Nurse, I say!
+
+ Re-enter Nurse.
+
+Go waken Juliet, go and trim her up.
+I’ll go and chat with Paris. Hie, make haste,
+Make haste; the bridegroom he is come already.
+Make haste I say.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE V. Juliet’s Chamber; Juliet on the bed.
+
+ Enter Nurse.
+
+NURSE.
+Mistress! What, mistress! Juliet! Fast, I warrant her, she.
+Why, lamb, why, lady, fie, you slug-abed!
+Why, love, I say! Madam! Sweetheart! Why, bride!
+What, not a word? You take your pennyworths now.
+Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant,
+The County Paris hath set up his rest
+That you shall rest but little. God forgive me!
+Marry and amen. How sound is she asleep!
+I needs must wake her. Madam, madam, madam!
+Ay, let the County take you in your bed,
+He’ll fright you up, i’faith. Will it not be?
+What, dress’d, and in your clothes, and down again?
+I must needs wake you. Lady! Lady! Lady!
+Alas, alas! Help, help! My lady’s dead!
+O, well-a-day that ever I was born.
+Some aqua vitae, ho! My lord! My lady!
+
+ Enter Lady Capulet.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+What noise is here?
+
+NURSE.
+O lamentable day!
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+What is the matter?
+
+NURSE.
+Look, look! O heavy day!
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+O me, O me! My child, my only life.
+Revive, look up, or I will die with thee.
+Help, help! Call help.
+
+ Enter Capulet.
+
+CAPULET.
+For shame, bring Juliet forth, her lord is come.
+
+NURSE.
+She’s dead, deceas’d, she’s dead; alack the day!
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Alack the day, she’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead!
+
+CAPULET.
+Ha! Let me see her. Out alas! She’s cold,
+Her blood is settled and her joints are stiff.
+Life and these lips have long been separated.
+Death lies on her like an untimely frost
+Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
+
+NURSE.
+O lamentable day!
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+O woful time!
+
+CAPULET.
+Death, that hath ta’en her hence to make me wail,
+Ties up my tongue and will not let me speak.
+
+ Enter Friar Lawrence and Paris with Musicians.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Come, is the bride ready to go to church?
+
+CAPULET.
+Ready to go, but never to return.
+O son, the night before thy wedding day
+Hath death lain with thy bride. There she lies,
+Flower as she was, deflowered by him.
+Death is my son-in-law, death is my heir;
+My daughter he hath wedded. I will die
+And leave him all; life, living, all is death’s.
+
+PARIS.
+Have I thought long to see this morning’s face,
+And doth it give me such a sight as this?
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+Accurs’d, unhappy, wretched, hateful day.
+Most miserable hour that e’er time saw
+In lasting labour of his pilgrimage.
+But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,
+But one thing to rejoice and solace in,
+And cruel death hath catch’d it from my sight.
+
+NURSE.
+O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day.
+Most lamentable day, most woeful day
+That ever, ever, I did yet behold!
+O day, O day, O day, O hateful day.
+Never was seen so black a day as this.
+O woeful day, O woeful day.
+
+PARIS.
+Beguil’d, divorced, wronged, spited, slain.
+Most detestable death, by thee beguil’d,
+By cruel, cruel thee quite overthrown.
+O love! O life! Not life, but love in death!
+
+CAPULET.
+Despis’d, distressed, hated, martyr’d, kill’d.
+Uncomfortable time, why cam’st thou now
+To murder, murder our solemnity?
+O child! O child! My soul, and not my child,
+Dead art thou. Alack, my child is dead,
+And with my child my joys are buried.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Peace, ho, for shame. Confusion’s cure lives not
+In these confusions. Heaven and yourself
+Had part in this fair maid, now heaven hath all,
+And all the better is it for the maid.
+Your part in her you could not keep from death,
+But heaven keeps his part in eternal life.
+The most you sought was her promotion,
+For ’twas your heaven she should be advanc’d,
+And weep ye now, seeing she is advanc’d
+Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?
+O, in this love, you love your child so ill
+That you run mad, seeing that she is well.
+She’s not well married that lives married long,
+But she’s best married that dies married young.
+Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary
+On this fair corse, and, as the custom is,
+And in her best array bear her to church;
+For though fond nature bids us all lament,
+Yet nature’s tears are reason’s merriment.
+
+CAPULET.
+All things that we ordained festival
+Turn from their office to black funeral:
+Our instruments to melancholy bells,
+Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast;
+Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change;
+Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,
+And all things change them to the contrary.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Sir, go you in, and, madam, go with him,
+And go, Sir Paris, everyone prepare
+To follow this fair corse unto her grave.
+The heavens do lower upon you for some ill;
+Move them no more by crossing their high will.
+
+ [_Exeunt Capulet, Lady Capulet, Paris and Friar._]
+
+FIRST MUSICIAN.
+Faith, we may put up our pipes and be gone.
+
+NURSE.
+Honest good fellows, ah, put up, put up,
+For well you know this is a pitiful case.
+
+FIRST MUSICIAN.
+Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended.
+
+ [_Exit Nurse._]
+
+ Enter Peter.
+
+PETER.
+Musicians, O, musicians, ‘Heart’s ease,’ ‘Heart’s ease’, O, and you
+will have me live, play ‘Heart’s ease.’
+
+FIRST MUSICIAN.
+Why ‘Heart’s ease’?
+
+PETER.
+O musicians, because my heart itself plays ‘My heart is full’. O play
+me some merry dump to comfort me.
+
+FIRST MUSICIAN.
+Not a dump we, ’tis no time to play now.
+
+PETER.
+You will not then?
+
+FIRST MUSICIAN.
+No.
+
+PETER.
+I will then give it you soundly.
+
+FIRST MUSICIAN.
+What will you give us?
+
+PETER.
+No money, on my faith, but the gleek! I will give you the minstrel.
+
+FIRST MUSICIAN.
+Then will I give you the serving-creature.
+
+PETER.
+Then will I lay the serving-creature’s dagger on your pate. I will
+carry no crotchets. I’ll re you, I’ll fa you. Do you note me?
+
+FIRST MUSICIAN.
+And you re us and fa us, you note us.
+
+SECOND MUSICIAN.
+Pray you put up your dagger, and put out your wit.
+
+PETER.
+Then have at you with my wit. I will dry-beat you with an iron wit, and
+put up my iron dagger. Answer me like men.
+    ‘When griping griefs the heart doth wound,
+      And doleful dumps the mind oppress,
+    Then music with her silver sound’—
+Why ‘silver sound’? Why ‘music with her silver sound’? What say you,
+Simon Catling?
+
+FIRST MUSICIAN.
+Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound.
+
+PETER.
+Prates. What say you, Hugh Rebeck?
+
+SECOND MUSICIAN.
+I say ‘silver sound’ because musicians sound for silver.
+
+PETER.
+Prates too! What say you, James Soundpost?
+
+THIRD MUSICIAN.
+Faith, I know not what to say.
+
+PETER.
+O, I cry you mercy, you are the singer. I will say for you. It is
+‘music with her silver sound’ because musicians have no gold for
+sounding.
+      ‘Then music with her silver sound
+      With speedy help doth lend redress.’
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+FIRST MUSICIAN.
+What a pestilent knave is this same!
+
+SECOND MUSICIAN.
+Hang him, Jack. Come, we’ll in here, tarry for the mourners, and stay
+dinner.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+
+
+
+ACT V
+
+SCENE I. Mantua. A Street.
+
+
+ Enter Romeo.
+
+ROMEO.
+If I may trust the flattering eye of sleep,
+My dreams presage some joyful news at hand.
+My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne;
+And all this day an unaccustom’d spirit
+Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
+I dreamt my lady came and found me dead,—
+Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think!—
+And breath’d such life with kisses in my lips,
+That I reviv’d, and was an emperor.
+Ah me, how sweet is love itself possess’d,
+When but love’s shadows are so rich in joy.
+
+ Enter Balthasar.
+
+News from Verona! How now, Balthasar?
+Dost thou not bring me letters from the Friar?
+How doth my lady? Is my father well?
+How fares my Juliet? That I ask again;
+For nothing can be ill if she be well.
+
+BALTHASAR.
+Then she is well, and nothing can be ill.
+Her body sleeps in Capel’s monument,
+And her immortal part with angels lives.
+I saw her laid low in her kindred’s vault,
+And presently took post to tell it you.
+O pardon me for bringing these ill news,
+Since you did leave it for my office, sir.
+
+ROMEO.
+Is it even so? Then I defy you, stars!
+Thou know’st my lodging. Get me ink and paper,
+And hire post-horses. I will hence tonight.
+
+BALTHASAR.
+I do beseech you sir, have patience.
+Your looks are pale and wild, and do import
+Some misadventure.
+
+ROMEO.
+Tush, thou art deceiv’d.
+Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do.
+Hast thou no letters to me from the Friar?
+
+BALTHASAR.
+No, my good lord.
+
+ROMEO.
+No matter. Get thee gone,
+And hire those horses. I’ll be with thee straight.
+
+ [_Exit Balthasar._]
+
+Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight.
+Let’s see for means. O mischief thou art swift
+To enter in the thoughts of desperate men.
+I do remember an apothecary,—
+And hereabouts he dwells,—which late I noted
+In tatter’d weeds, with overwhelming brows,
+Culling of simples, meagre were his looks,
+Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;
+And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
+An alligator stuff’d, and other skins
+Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
+A beggarly account of empty boxes,
+Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,
+Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses
+Were thinly scatter’d, to make up a show.
+Noting this penury, to myself I said,
+And if a man did need a poison now,
+Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
+Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.
+O, this same thought did but forerun my need,
+And this same needy man must sell it me.
+As I remember, this should be the house.
+Being holiday, the beggar’s shop is shut.
+What, ho! Apothecary!
+
+ Enter Apothecary.
+
+APOTHECARY.
+Who calls so loud?
+
+ROMEO.
+Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor.
+Hold, there is forty ducats. Let me have
+A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear
+As will disperse itself through all the veins,
+That the life-weary taker may fall dead,
+And that the trunk may be discharg’d of breath
+As violently as hasty powder fir’d
+Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb.
+
+APOTHECARY.
+Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua’s law
+Is death to any he that utters them.
+
+ROMEO.
+Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
+And fear’st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks,
+Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,
+Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back.
+The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law;
+The world affords no law to make thee rich;
+Then be not poor, but break it and take this.
+
+APOTHECARY.
+My poverty, but not my will consents.
+
+ROMEO.
+I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.
+
+APOTHECARY.
+Put this in any liquid thing you will
+And drink it off; and, if you had the strength
+Of twenty men, it would despatch you straight.
+
+ROMEO.
+There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls,
+Doing more murder in this loathsome world
+Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
+I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none.
+Farewell, buy food, and get thyself in flesh.
+Come, cordial and not poison, go with me
+To Juliet’s grave, for there must I use thee.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+SCENE II. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.
+
+ Enter Friar John.
+
+FRIAR JOHN.
+Holy Franciscan Friar! Brother, ho!
+
+ Enter Friar Lawrence.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+This same should be the voice of Friar John.
+Welcome from Mantua. What says Romeo?
+Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.
+
+FRIAR JOHN.
+Going to find a barefoot brother out,
+One of our order, to associate me,
+Here in this city visiting the sick,
+And finding him, the searchers of the town,
+Suspecting that we both were in a house
+Where the infectious pestilence did reign,
+Seal’d up the doors, and would not let us forth,
+So that my speed to Mantua there was stay’d.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Who bare my letter then to Romeo?
+
+FRIAR JOHN.
+I could not send it,—here it is again,—
+Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,
+So fearful were they of infection.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Unhappy fortune! By my brotherhood,
+The letter was not nice, but full of charge,
+Of dear import, and the neglecting it
+May do much danger. Friar John, go hence,
+Get me an iron crow and bring it straight
+Unto my cell.
+
+FRIAR JOHN.
+Brother, I’ll go and bring it thee.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Now must I to the monument alone.
+Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake.
+She will beshrew me much that Romeo
+Hath had no notice of these accidents;
+But I will write again to Mantua,
+And keep her at my cell till Romeo come.
+Poor living corse, clos’d in a dead man’s tomb.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+SCENE III. A churchyard; in it a Monument belonging to the Capulets.
+
+ Enter Paris, and his Page bearing flowers and a torch.
+
+PARIS.
+Give me thy torch, boy. Hence and stand aloof.
+Yet put it out, for I would not be seen.
+Under yond yew tree lay thee all along,
+Holding thy ear close to the hollow ground;
+So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread,
+Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves,
+But thou shalt hear it. Whistle then to me,
+As signal that thou hear’st something approach.
+Give me those flowers. Do as I bid thee, go.
+
+PAGE.
+[_Aside._] I am almost afraid to stand alone
+Here in the churchyard; yet I will adventure.
+
+ [_Retires._]
+
+PARIS.
+Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew.
+O woe, thy canopy is dust and stones,
+Which with sweet water nightly I will dew,
+Or wanting that, with tears distill’d by moans.
+The obsequies that I for thee will keep,
+Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep.
+
+ [_The Page whistles._]
+
+The boy gives warning something doth approach.
+What cursed foot wanders this way tonight,
+To cross my obsequies and true love’s rite?
+What, with a torch! Muffle me, night, awhile.
+
+ [_Retires._]
+
+ Enter Romeo and Balthasar with a torch, mattock, &c.
+
+ROMEO.
+Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron.
+Hold, take this letter; early in the morning
+See thou deliver it to my lord and father.
+Give me the light; upon thy life I charge thee,
+Whate’er thou hear’st or seest, stand all aloof
+And do not interrupt me in my course.
+Why I descend into this bed of death
+Is partly to behold my lady’s face,
+But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger
+A precious ring, a ring that I must use
+In dear employment. Therefore hence, be gone.
+But if thou jealous dost return to pry
+In what I further shall intend to do,
+By heaven I will tear thee joint by joint,
+And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs.
+The time and my intents are savage-wild;
+More fierce and more inexorable far
+Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.
+
+BALTHASAR.
+I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you.
+
+ROMEO.
+So shalt thou show me friendship. Take thou that.
+Live, and be prosperous, and farewell, good fellow.
+
+BALTHASAR.
+For all this same, I’ll hide me hereabout.
+His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.
+
+ [_Retires_]
+
+ROMEO.
+Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
+Gorg’d with the dearest morsel of the earth,
+Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,
+
+ [_Breaking open the door of the monument._]
+
+And in despite, I’ll cram thee with more food.
+
+PARIS.
+This is that banish’d haughty Montague
+That murder’d my love’s cousin,—with which grief,
+It is supposed, the fair creature died,—
+And here is come to do some villainous shame
+To the dead bodies. I will apprehend him.
+
+ [_Advances._]
+
+Stop thy unhallow’d toil, vile Montague.
+Can vengeance be pursu’d further than death?
+Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee.
+Obey, and go with me, for thou must die.
+
+ROMEO.
+I must indeed; and therefore came I hither.
+Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man.
+Fly hence and leave me. Think upon these gone;
+Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth,
+Put not another sin upon my head
+By urging me to fury. O be gone.
+By heaven I love thee better than myself;
+For I come hither arm’d against myself.
+Stay not, be gone, live, and hereafter say,
+A madman’s mercy bid thee run away.
+
+PARIS.
+I do defy thy conjuration,
+And apprehend thee for a felon here.
+
+ROMEO.
+Wilt thou provoke me? Then have at thee, boy!
+
+ [_They fight._]
+
+PAGE.
+O lord, they fight! I will go call the watch.
+
+ [_Exit._]
+
+PARIS.
+O, I am slain! [_Falls._] If thou be merciful,
+Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet.
+
+ [_Dies._]
+
+ROMEO.
+In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face.
+Mercutio’s kinsman, noble County Paris!
+What said my man, when my betossed soul
+Did not attend him as we rode? I think
+He told me Paris should have married Juliet.
+Said he not so? Or did I dream it so?
+Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet,
+To think it was so? O, give me thy hand,
+One writ with me in sour misfortune’s book.
+I’ll bury thee in a triumphant grave.
+A grave? O no, a lantern, slaught’red youth,
+For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
+This vault a feasting presence full of light.
+Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr’d.
+
+ [_Laying Paris in the monument._]
+
+How oft when men are at the point of death
+Have they been merry! Which their keepers call
+A lightning before death. O, how may I
+Call this a lightning? O my love, my wife,
+Death that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath,
+Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
+Thou art not conquer’d. Beauty’s ensign yet
+Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
+And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.
+Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
+O, what more favour can I do to thee
+Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain
+To sunder his that was thine enemy?
+Forgive me, cousin. Ah, dear Juliet,
+Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
+That unsubstantial death is amorous;
+And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
+Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
+For fear of that I still will stay with thee,
+And never from this palace of dim night
+Depart again. Here, here will I remain
+With worms that are thy chambermaids. O, here
+Will I set up my everlasting rest;
+And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
+From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last.
+Arms, take your last embrace! And, lips, O you
+The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
+A dateless bargain to engrossing death.
+Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide.
+Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
+The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark.
+Here’s to my love! [_Drinks._] O true apothecary!
+Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
+
+ [_Dies._]
+
+ Enter, at the other end of the Churchyard, Friar Lawrence, with a
+ lantern, crow, and spade.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Saint Francis be my speed. How oft tonight
+Have my old feet stumbled at graves? Who’s there?
+Who is it that consorts, so late, the dead?
+
+BALTHASAR.
+Here’s one, a friend, and one that knows you well.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Bliss be upon you. Tell me, good my friend,
+What torch is yond that vainly lends his light
+To grubs and eyeless skulls? As I discern,
+It burneth in the Capels’ monument.
+
+BALTHASAR.
+It doth so, holy sir, and there’s my master,
+One that you love.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Who is it?
+
+BALTHASAR.
+Romeo.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+How long hath he been there?
+
+BALTHASAR.
+Full half an hour.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Go with me to the vault.
+
+BALTHASAR.
+I dare not, sir;
+My master knows not but I am gone hence,
+And fearfully did menace me with death
+If I did stay to look on his intents.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Stay then, I’ll go alone. Fear comes upon me.
+O, much I fear some ill unlucky thing.
+
+BALTHASAR.
+As I did sleep under this yew tree here,
+I dreamt my master and another fought,
+And that my master slew him.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+Romeo! [_Advances._]
+Alack, alack, what blood is this which stains
+The stony entrance of this sepulchre?
+What mean these masterless and gory swords
+To lie discolour’d by this place of peace?
+
+ [_Enters the monument._]
+
+Romeo! O, pale! Who else? What, Paris too?
+And steep’d in blood? Ah what an unkind hour
+Is guilty of this lamentable chance?
+The lady stirs.
+
+ [_Juliet wakes and stirs._]
+
+JULIET.
+O comfortable Friar, where is my lord?
+I do remember well where I should be,
+And there I am. Where is my Romeo?
+
+ [_Noise within._]
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+I hear some noise. Lady, come from that nest
+Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep.
+A greater power than we can contradict
+Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away.
+Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead;
+And Paris too. Come, I’ll dispose of thee
+Among a sisterhood of holy nuns.
+Stay not to question, for the watch is coming.
+Come, go, good Juliet. I dare no longer stay.
+
+JULIET.
+Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.
+
+ [_Exit Friar Lawrence._]
+
+What’s here? A cup clos’d in my true love’s hand?
+Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.
+O churl. Drink all, and left no friendly drop
+To help me after? I will kiss thy lips.
+Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,
+To make me die with a restorative.
+
+ [_Kisses him._]
+
+Thy lips are warm!
+
+FIRST WATCH.
+[_Within._] Lead, boy. Which way?
+
+JULIET.
+Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger.
+
+ [_Snatching Romeo’s dagger._]
+
+This is thy sheath. [_stabs herself_] There rest, and let me die.
+
+ [_Falls on Romeo’s body and dies._]
+
+ Enter Watch with the Page of Paris.
+
+PAGE.
+This is the place. There, where the torch doth burn.
+
+FIRST WATCH.
+The ground is bloody. Search about the churchyard.
+Go, some of you, whoe’er you find attach.
+
+ [_Exeunt some of the Watch._]
+
+Pitiful sight! Here lies the County slain,
+And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,
+Who here hath lain this two days buried.
+Go tell the Prince; run to the Capulets.
+Raise up the Montagues, some others search.
+
+ [_Exeunt others of the Watch._]
+
+We see the ground whereon these woes do lie,
+But the true ground of all these piteous woes
+We cannot without circumstance descry.
+
+ Re-enter some of the Watch with Balthasar.
+
+SECOND WATCH.
+Here’s Romeo’s man. We found him in the churchyard.
+
+FIRST WATCH.
+Hold him in safety till the Prince come hither.
+
+ Re-enter others of the Watch with Friar Lawrence.
+
+THIRD WATCH. Here is a Friar that trembles, sighs, and weeps.
+We took this mattock and this spade from him
+As he was coming from this churchyard side.
+
+FIRST WATCH.
+A great suspicion. Stay the Friar too.
+
+ Enter the Prince and Attendants.
+
+PRINCE.
+What misadventure is so early up,
+That calls our person from our morning’s rest?
+
+ Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet and others.
+
+CAPULET.
+What should it be that they so shriek abroad?
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+O the people in the street cry Romeo,
+Some Juliet, and some Paris, and all run
+With open outcry toward our monument.
+
+PRINCE.
+What fear is this which startles in our ears?
+
+FIRST WATCH.
+Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain,
+And Romeo dead, and Juliet, dead before,
+Warm and new kill’d.
+
+PRINCE.
+Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.
+
+FIRST WATCH.
+Here is a Friar, and slaughter’d Romeo’s man,
+With instruments upon them fit to open
+These dead men’s tombs.
+
+CAPULET.
+O heaven! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds!
+This dagger hath mista’en, for lo, his house
+Is empty on the back of Montague,
+And it mis-sheathed in my daughter’s bosom.
+
+LADY CAPULET.
+O me! This sight of death is as a bell
+That warns my old age to a sepulchre.
+
+ Enter Montague and others.
+
+PRINCE.
+Come, Montague, for thou art early up,
+To see thy son and heir more early down.
+
+MONTAGUE.
+Alas, my liege, my wife is dead tonight.
+Grief of my son’s exile hath stopp’d her breath.
+What further woe conspires against mine age?
+
+PRINCE.
+Look, and thou shalt see.
+
+MONTAGUE.
+O thou untaught! What manners is in this,
+To press before thy father to a grave?
+
+PRINCE.
+Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,
+Till we can clear these ambiguities,
+And know their spring, their head, their true descent,
+And then will I be general of your woes,
+And lead you even to death. Meantime forbear,
+And let mischance be slave to patience.
+Bring forth the parties of suspicion.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+I am the greatest, able to do least,
+Yet most suspected, as the time and place
+Doth make against me, of this direful murder.
+And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
+Myself condemned and myself excus’d.
+
+PRINCE.
+Then say at once what thou dost know in this.
+
+FRIAR LAWRENCE.
+I will be brief, for my short date of breath
+Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
+Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet,
+And she, there dead, that Romeo’s faithful wife.
+I married them; and their stol’n marriage day
+Was Tybalt’s doomsday, whose untimely death
+Banish’d the new-made bridegroom from this city;
+For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin’d.
+You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
+Betroth’d, and would have married her perforce
+To County Paris. Then comes she to me,
+And with wild looks, bid me devise some means
+To rid her from this second marriage,
+Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
+Then gave I her, so tutored by my art,
+A sleeping potion, which so took effect
+As I intended, for it wrought on her
+The form of death. Meantime I writ to Romeo
+That he should hither come as this dire night
+To help to take her from her borrow’d grave,
+Being the time the potion’s force should cease.
+But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
+Was stay’d by accident; and yesternight
+Return’d my letter back. Then all alone
+At the prefixed hour of her waking
+Came I to take her from her kindred’s vault,
+Meaning to keep her closely at my cell
+Till I conveniently could send to Romeo.
+But when I came, some minute ere the time
+Of her awaking, here untimely lay
+The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.
+She wakes; and I entreated her come forth
+And bear this work of heaven with patience.
+But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
+And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
+But, as it seems, did violence on herself.
+All this I know; and to the marriage
+Her Nurse is privy. And if ought in this
+Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
+Be sacrific’d, some hour before his time,
+Unto the rigour of severest law.
+
+PRINCE.
+We still have known thee for a holy man.
+Where’s Romeo’s man? What can he say to this?
+
+BALTHASAR.
+I brought my master news of Juliet’s death,
+And then in post he came from Mantua
+To this same place, to this same monument.
+This letter he early bid me give his father,
+And threaten’d me with death, going in the vault,
+If I departed not, and left him there.
+
+PRINCE.
+Give me the letter, I will look on it.
+Where is the County’s Page that rais’d the watch?
+Sirrah, what made your master in this place?
+
+PAGE.
+He came with flowers to strew his lady’s grave,
+And bid me stand aloof, and so I did.
+Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb,
+And by and by my master drew on him,
+And then I ran away to call the watch.
+
+PRINCE.
+This letter doth make good the Friar’s words,
+Their course of love, the tidings of her death.
+And here he writes that he did buy a poison
+Of a poor ’pothecary, and therewithal
+Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.
+Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague,
+See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
+That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!
+And I, for winking at your discords too,
+Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punish’d.
+
+CAPULET.
+O brother Montague, give me thy hand.
+This is my daughter’s jointure, for no more
+Can I demand.
+
+MONTAGUE.
+But I can give thee more,
+For I will raise her statue in pure gold,
+That whiles Verona by that name is known,
+There shall no figure at such rate be set
+As that of true and faithful Juliet.
+
+CAPULET.
+As rich shall Romeo’s by his lady’s lie,
+Poor sacrifices of our enmity.
+
+PRINCE.
+A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
+The sun for sorrow will not show his head.
+Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.
+Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished,
+For never was a story of more woe
+Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
+
+ [_Exeunt._]
+
+
diff --git a/search-engine/books/The Great Gatsby.txt b/search-engine/books/The Great Gatsby.txt
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+++ b/search-engine/books/The Great Gatsby.txt
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+Title: The Great Gatsby
+Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
+
+                           The Great Gatsby
+                                  by
+                          F. Scott Fitzgerald
+
+
+                           Table of Contents
+
+I
+II
+III
+IV
+V
+VI
+VII
+VIII
+IX
+
+
+                              Once again
+                                  to
+                                 Zelda
+
+
+  Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
+  If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
+  Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
+  I must have you!”
+
+  Thomas Parke d’Invilliers
+
+
+                                  I
+
+In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice
+that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
+
+“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just
+remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages
+that you’ve had.”
+
+He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative
+in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more
+than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a
+habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me
+the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to
+detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal
+person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of
+being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild,
+unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have
+feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by
+some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on
+the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least
+the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and
+marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of
+infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I
+forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly
+repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out
+unequally at birth.
+
+And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission
+that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the
+wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded
+on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted
+the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I
+wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the
+human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was
+exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I
+have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of
+successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some
+heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related
+to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten
+thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that
+flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the
+“creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a
+romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and
+which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out
+all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust
+floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my
+interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle
+Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a
+clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of
+Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s
+brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil
+War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father
+carries on today.
+
+I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with
+special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in
+father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of
+a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that
+delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the
+counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being
+the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the
+ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond
+business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it
+could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it
+over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said,
+“Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance
+me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I
+thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
+
+The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm
+season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly
+trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a
+house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He
+found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a
+month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and
+I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a
+few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who
+made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to
+herself over the electric stove.
+
+It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more
+recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
+
+“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
+
+I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide,
+a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the
+freedom of the neighbourhood.
+
+And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the
+trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar
+conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
+
+There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to
+be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen
+volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they
+stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint,
+promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and
+Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other
+books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a
+series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now
+I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become
+again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.”
+This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at
+from a single window, after all.
+
+It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of
+the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender
+riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where
+there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of
+land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in
+contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most
+domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great
+wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the
+egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact
+end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual
+wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more
+interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular
+except shape and size.
+
+I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though
+this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little
+sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the
+egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge
+places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on
+my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual
+imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one
+side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble
+swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was
+Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a
+mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an
+eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I
+had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and
+the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a
+month.
+
+Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg
+glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins
+on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom
+Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom
+in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in
+Chicago.
+
+Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of
+the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a
+national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute
+limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of
+anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his
+freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago
+and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for
+instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake
+Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was
+wealthy enough to do that.
+
+Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for
+no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully
+wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a
+permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe
+it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift
+on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of
+some irrecoverable football game.
+
+And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East
+Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house
+was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white
+Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at
+the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile,
+jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when
+it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though
+from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French
+windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm
+windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with
+his legs apart on the front porch.
+
+He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy
+straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a
+supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established
+dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning
+aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding
+clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill
+those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could
+see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his
+thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
+
+His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of
+fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in
+it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who
+had hated his guts.
+
+“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to
+say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We
+were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I
+always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like
+him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
+
+We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
+
+“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about
+restlessly.
+
+Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the
+front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half
+acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped
+the tide offshore.
+
+“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again,
+politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
+
+We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space,
+fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The
+windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside
+that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through
+the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale
+flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the
+ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow
+on it as wind does on the sea.
+
+The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous
+couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an
+anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were
+rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a
+short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments
+listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a
+picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the
+rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the
+curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the
+floor.
+
+The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full
+length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her
+chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which
+was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes
+she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring
+an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
+
+The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly
+forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd,
+charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the
+room.
+
+“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
+
+She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my
+hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was
+no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she
+had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was
+Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people
+lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less
+charming.)
+
+At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost
+imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object
+she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her
+something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips.
+Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned
+tribute from me.
+
+I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low,
+thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and
+down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be
+played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it,
+bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement
+in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget:
+a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had
+done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay,
+exciting things hovering in the next hour.
+
+I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East,
+and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
+
+“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
+
+“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel
+painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all
+night along the north shore.”
+
+“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added
+irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
+
+“I’d like to.”
+
+“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
+
+Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped
+and rested his hand on my shoulder.
+
+“What you doing, Nick?”
+
+“I’m a bond man.”
+
+“Who with?”
+
+I told him.
+
+“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
+
+This annoyed me.
+
+“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at
+Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something
+more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
+
+At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that
+I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the
+room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned
+and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
+
+“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long
+as I can remember.”
+
+“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to
+New York all afternoon.”
+
+“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the
+pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
+
+Her host looked at her incredulously.
+
+“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom
+of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
+
+I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I
+enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with
+an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward
+at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked
+back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming,
+discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a
+picture of her, somewhere before.
+
+“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody
+there.”
+
+“I don’t know a single—”
+
+“You must know Gatsby.”
+
+“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
+
+Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced;
+wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled
+me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
+
+Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two
+young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward
+the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the
+diminished wind.
+
+“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her
+fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She
+looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day
+of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in
+the year and then miss it.”
+
+“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the
+table as if she were getting into bed.
+
+“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me
+helplessly: “What do people plan?”
+
+Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her
+little finger.
+
+“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
+
+We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
+
+“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to,
+but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a
+great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
+
+“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in
+kidding.”
+
+“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
+
+Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a
+bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool
+as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all
+desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a
+polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew
+that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too
+would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the
+West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its
+close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer
+nervous dread of the moment itself.
+
+“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass
+of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or
+something?”
+
+I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in
+an unexpected way.
+
+“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve
+gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise
+of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
+
+“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
+
+“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is
+if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly
+submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
+
+“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of
+unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in
+them. What was that word we—”
+
+“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her
+impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to
+us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will
+have control of things.”
+
+“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously
+toward the fervent sun.
+
+“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom
+interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
+
+“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are,
+and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a
+slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the
+things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all
+that. Do you see?”
+
+There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his
+complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more.
+When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler
+left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned
+towards me.
+
+“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically.
+“It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s
+nose?”
+
+“That’s why I came over tonight.”
+
+“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher
+for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred
+people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it
+began to affect his nose—”
+
+“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
+
+“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up
+his position.”
+
+For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her
+glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I
+listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering
+regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
+
+The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear,
+whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went
+inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned
+forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
+
+“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an
+absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation:
+“An absolute rose?”
+
+This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only
+extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart
+was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless,
+thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and
+excused herself and went into the house.
+
+Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of
+meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!”
+in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the
+room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to
+hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down,
+mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
+
+“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
+
+“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
+
+“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
+
+“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised.
+“I thought everybody knew.”
+
+“I don’t.”
+
+“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
+
+“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
+
+Miss Baker nodded.
+
+“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time.
+Don’t you think?”
+
+Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a
+dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at
+the table.
+
+“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
+
+She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and
+continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic
+outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a
+nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing
+away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
+
+“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light
+enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
+
+The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head
+decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects,
+vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes
+at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I
+was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to
+avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but
+I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain
+hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill
+metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation
+might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone
+immediately for the police.
+
+The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss
+Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into
+the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while,
+trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed
+Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In
+its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
+
+Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and
+her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that
+turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be
+some sedative questions about her little girl.
+
+“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even
+if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
+
+“I wasn’t back from the war.”
+
+“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick,
+and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
+
+Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn’t say any more,
+and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her
+daughter.
+
+“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
+
+“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you
+what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
+
+“Very much.”
+
+“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was
+less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of
+the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right
+away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I
+turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a
+girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be
+in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
+
+“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a
+convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I
+know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.”
+Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and
+she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m
+sophisticated!”
+
+The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my
+belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me
+uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to
+exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a
+moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as
+if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret
+society to which she and Tom belonged.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at
+either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the
+Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running
+together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and
+dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as
+she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
+
+When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
+
+“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in
+our very next issue.”
+
+Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she
+stood up.
+
+“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the
+ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
+
+“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy,
+“over at Westchester.”
+
+“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
+
+I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous
+expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the
+sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard
+some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I
+had forgotten long ago.
+
+“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
+
+“If you’ll get up.”
+
+“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
+
+“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a
+marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you
+together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push
+you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
+
+“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a
+word.”
+
+“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let
+her run around the country this way.”
+
+“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
+
+“Her family.”
+
+“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s
+going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots
+of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be
+very good for her.”
+
+Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
+
+“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
+
+“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our
+beautiful white—”
+
+“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?”
+demanded Tom suddenly.
+
+“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we
+talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept
+up on us and first thing you know—”
+
+“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
+
+I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes
+later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood
+side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor
+Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!
+
+“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were
+engaged to a girl out West.”
+
+“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were
+engaged.”
+
+“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
+
+“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again
+in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be
+true.”
+
+Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even
+vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one
+of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old
+friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention
+of being rumoured into marriage.
+
+Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely
+rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove
+away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out
+of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such
+intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman
+in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been
+depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of
+stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his
+peremptory heart.
+
+Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside
+garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and
+when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and
+sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had
+blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the
+trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth
+blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered
+across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I
+was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of
+my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets
+regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely
+movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested
+that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was
+his of our local heavens.
+
+I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and
+that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he
+gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched
+out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was
+from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced
+seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute
+and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked
+once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the
+unquiet darkness.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily
+joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as
+to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley
+of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and
+hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and
+chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of
+ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery
+air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track,
+gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the
+ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable
+cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
+
+But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift
+endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T.
+J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and
+gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face,
+but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass
+over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set
+them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then
+sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved
+away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun
+and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.
+
+The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and,
+when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on
+waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an
+hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute, and it was
+because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress.
+
+The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His
+acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular cafés
+with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with
+whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her, I had no desire
+to meet her—but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one
+afternoon, and when we stopped by the ash-heaps he jumped to his feet
+and, taking hold of my elbow, literally forced me from the car.
+
+“We’re getting off,” he insisted. “I want you to meet my girl.”
+
+I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon, and his determination
+to have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption
+was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.
+
+I followed him over a low whitewashed railroad fence, and we walked
+back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg’s
+persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of
+yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact
+Main Street ministering to it, and contiguous to absolutely nothing.
+One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an
+all-night restaurant, approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a
+garage—Repairs. George B. Wilson. Cars bought and sold.—and I followed
+Tom inside.
+
+The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the
+dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had
+occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind, and that
+sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead, when the
+proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands
+on a piece of waste. He was a blond, spiritless man, anaemic, and
+faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his
+light blue eyes.
+
+“Hello, Wilson, old man,” said Tom, slapping him jovially on the
+shoulder. “How’s business?”
+
+“I can’t complain,” answered Wilson unconvincingly. “When are you
+going to sell me that car?”
+
+“Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.”
+
+“Works pretty slow, don’t he?”
+
+“No, he doesn’t,” said Tom coldly. “And if you feel that way about it,
+maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.”
+
+“I don’t mean that,” explained Wilson quickly. “I just meant—”
+
+His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage.
+Then I heard footsteps on a stairs, and in a moment the thickish
+figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was
+in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her flesh
+sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark
+blue crêpe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there
+was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of
+her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and, walking
+through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom,
+looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without
+turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:
+
+“Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.”
+
+“Oh, sure,” agreed Wilson hurriedly, and went toward the little
+office, mingling immediately with the cement colour of the walls. A
+white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled
+everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom.
+
+“I want to see you,” said Tom intently. “Get on the next train.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+“I’ll meet you by the newsstand on the lower level.”
+
+She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with
+two chairs from his office door.
+
+We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days
+before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was
+setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track.
+
+“Terrible place, isn’t it,” said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor
+Eckleburg.
+
+“Awful.”
+
+“It does her good to get away.”
+
+“Doesn’t her husband object?”
+
+“Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He’s so
+dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.”
+
+So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York—or not
+quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom
+deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might
+be on the train.
+
+She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin, which stretched
+tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in
+New York. At the newsstand she bought a copy of Town Tattle and a
+moving-picture magazine, and in the station drugstore some cold cream
+and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, in the solemn echoing drive
+she let four taxicabs drive away before she selected a new one,
+lavender-coloured with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from
+the mass of the station into the glowing sunshine. But immediately she
+turned sharply from the window and, leaning forward, tapped on the
+front glass.
+
+“I want to get one of those dogs,” she said earnestly. “I want to get
+one for the apartment. They’re nice to have—a dog.”
+
+We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John
+D. Rockefeller. In a basket swung from his neck cowered a dozen very
+recent puppies of an indeterminate breed.
+
+“What kind are they?” asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly, as he came to the
+taxi-window.
+
+“All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?”
+
+“I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got
+that kind?”
+
+The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and
+drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck.
+
+“That’s no police dog,” said Tom.
+
+“No, it’s not exactly a police dog,” said the man with disappointment
+in his voice. “It’s more of an Airedale.” He passed his hand over the
+brown washrag of a back. “Look at that coat. Some coat. That’s a dog
+that’ll never bother you with catching cold.”
+
+“I think it’s cute,” said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. “How much is
+it?”
+
+“That dog?” He looked at it admiringly. “That dog will cost you ten
+dollars.”
+
+The Airedale—undoubtedly there was an Airedale concerned in it
+somewhere, though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and
+settled down into Mrs. Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the
+weatherproof coat with rapture.
+
+“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked delicately.
+
+“That dog? That dog’s a boy.”
+
+“It’s a bitch,” said Tom decisively. “Here’s your money. Go and buy
+ten more dogs with it.”
+
+We drove over to Fifth Avenue, warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the
+summer Sunday afternoon. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great
+flock of white sheep turn the corner.
+
+“Hold on,” I said, “I have to leave you here.”
+
+“No you don’t,” interposed Tom quickly. “Myrtle’ll be hurt if you
+don’t come up to the apartment. Won’t you, Myrtle?”
+
+“Come on,” she urged. “I’ll telephone my sister Catherine. She’s said
+to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.”
+
+“Well, I’d like to, but—”
+
+We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds.
+At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of
+apartment-houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the
+neighbourhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other
+purchases, and went haughtily in.
+
+“I’m going to have the McKees come up,” she announced as we rose in
+the elevator. “And, of course, I got to call up my sister, too.”
+
+The apartment was on the top floor—a small living-room, a small
+dining-room, a small bedroom, and a bath. The living-room was crowded
+to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for
+it, so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of
+ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles. The only picture was an
+over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock.
+Looked at from a distance, however, the hen resolved itself into a
+bonnet, and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the
+room. Several old copies of Town Tattle lay on the table together with
+a copy of Simon Called Peter, and some of the small scandal magazines
+of Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog. A reluctant
+elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk, to which he
+added on his own initiative a tin of large, hard dog biscuits—one of
+which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk all
+afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whisky from a locked
+bureau door.
+
+I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that
+afternoon; so everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it,
+although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful
+sun. Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the
+telephone; then there were no cigarettes, and I went out to buy some
+at the drugstore on the corner. When I came back they had both
+disappeared, so I sat down discreetly in the living-room and read a
+chapter of Simon Called Peter—either it was terrible stuff or the
+whisky distorted things, because it didn’t make any sense to me.
+
+Just as Tom and Myrtle (after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called
+each other by our first names) reappeared, company commenced to arrive
+at the apartment door.
+
+The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty,
+with a solid, sticky bob of red hair, and a complexion powdered milky
+white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more
+rakish angle, but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the
+old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about
+there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets
+jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary
+haste, and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I
+wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed
+immoderately, repeated my question aloud, and told me she lived with a
+girl friend at a hotel.
+
+Mr. McKee was a pale, feminine man from the flat below. He had just
+shaved, for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone, and he
+was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. He
+informed me that he was in the “artistic game,” and I gathered later
+that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of
+Mrs. Wilson’s mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His
+wife was shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible. She told me with
+pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven
+times since they had been married.
+
+Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before, and was now
+attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream-coloured chiffon,
+which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With
+the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a
+change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage
+was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her
+assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she
+expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be
+revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.
+
+“My dear,” she told her sister in a high, mincing shout, “most of
+these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I
+had a woman up here last week to look at my feet, and when she gave me
+the bill you’d of thought she had my appendicitis out.”
+
+“What was the name of the woman?” asked Mrs. McKee.
+
+“Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people’s feet in their own
+homes.”
+
+“I like your dress,” remarked Mrs. McKee, “I think it’s adorable.”
+
+Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.
+
+“It’s just a crazy old thing,” she said. “I just slip it on sometimes
+when I don’t care what I look like.”
+
+“But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean,” pursued Mrs.
+McKee. “If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could
+make something of it.”
+
+We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson, who removed a strand of hair
+from over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr.
+McKee regarded her intently with his head on one side, and then moved
+his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.
+
+“I should change the light,” he said after a moment. “I’d like to
+bring out the modelling of the features. And I’d try to get hold of
+all the back hair.”
+
+“I wouldn’t think of changing the light,” cried Mrs. McKee. “I think
+it’s—”
+
+Her husband said “Sh!” and we all looked at the subject again,
+whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.
+
+“You McKees have something to drink,” he said. “Get some more ice and
+mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep.”
+
+“I told that boy about the ice.” Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair
+at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. “These people! You have to
+keep after them all the time.”
+
+She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to
+the dog, kissed it with ecstasy, and swept into the kitchen, implying
+that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.
+
+“I’ve done some nice things out on Long Island,” asserted Mr. McKee.
+
+Tom looked at him blankly.
+
+“Two of them we have framed downstairs.”
+
+“Two what?” demanded Tom.
+
+“Two studies. One of them I call Montauk Point—The Gulls, and the
+other I call Montauk Point—The Sea.”
+
+The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.
+
+“Do you live down on Long Island, too?” she inquired.
+
+“I live at West Egg.”
+
+“Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named
+Gatsby’s. Do you know him?”
+
+“I live next door to him.”
+
+“Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm’s. That’s
+where all his money comes from.”
+
+“Really?”
+
+She nodded.
+
+“I’m scared of him. I’d hate to have him get anything on me.”
+
+This absorbing information about my neighbour was interrupted by Mrs.
+McKee’s pointing suddenly at Catherine:
+
+“Chester, I think you could do something with her,” she broke out, but
+Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way, and turned his attention to Tom.
+
+“I’d like to do more work on Long Island, if I could get the entry.
+All I ask is that they should give me a start.”
+
+“Ask Myrtle,” said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as
+Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. “She’ll give you a letter of
+introduction, won’t you, Myrtle?”
+
+“Do what?” she asked, startled.
+
+“You’ll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can
+do some studies of him.” His lips moved silently for a moment as he
+invented, “ ‘George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,’ or something like
+that.”
+
+Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear:
+
+“Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to.”
+
+“Can’t they?”
+
+“Can’t stand them.” She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. “What I say
+is, why go on living with them if they can’t stand them? If I was them
+I’d get a divorce and get married to each other right away.”
+
+“Doesn’t she like Wilson either?”
+
+The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle, who had
+overheard the question, and it was violent and obscene.
+
+“You see,” cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again.
+“It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and
+they don’t believe in divorce.”
+
+Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the
+elaborateness of the lie.
+
+“When they do get married,” continued Catherine, “they’re going West
+to live for a while until it blows over.”
+
+“It’d be more discreet to go to Europe.”
+
+“Oh, do you like Europe?” she exclaimed surprisingly. “I just got back
+from Monte Carlo.”
+
+“Really.”
+
+“Just last year. I went over there with another girl.”
+
+“Stay long?”
+
+“No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of
+Marseilles. We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started, but we
+got gyped out of it all in two days in the private rooms. We had an
+awful time getting back, I can tell you. God, how I hated that town!”
+
+The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the
+blue honey of the Mediterranean—then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee
+called me back into the room.
+
+“I almost made a mistake, too,” she declared vigorously. “I almost
+married a little kike who’d been after me for years. I knew he was
+below me. Everybody kept saying to me: ‘Lucille, that man’s way below
+you!’ But if I hadn’t met Chester, he’d of got me sure.”
+
+“Yes, but listen,” said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down,
+“at least you didn’t marry him.”
+
+“I know I didn’t.”
+
+“Well, I married him,” said Myrtle, ambiguously. “And that’s the
+difference between your case and mine.”
+
+“Why did you, Myrtle?” demanded Catherine. “Nobody forced you to.”
+
+Myrtle considered.
+
+“I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,” she said
+finally. “I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t
+fit to lick my shoe.”
+
+“You were crazy about him for a while,” said Catherine.
+
+“Crazy about him!” cried Myrtle incredulously. “Who said I was crazy
+about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that
+man there.”
+
+She pointed suddenly at me, and everyone looked at me accusingly. I
+tried to show by my expression that I expected no affection.
+
+“The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made
+a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and
+never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he
+was out: ‘Oh, is that your suit?’ I said. ‘This is the first I ever
+heard about it.’ But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to
+beat the band all afternoon.”
+
+“She really ought to get away from him,” resumed Catherine to me.
+“They’ve been living over that garage for eleven years. And Tom’s the
+first sweetie she ever had.”
+
+The bottle of whisky—a second one—was now in constant demand by all
+present, excepting Catherine, who “felt just as good on nothing at
+all.” Tom rang for the janitor and sent him for some celebrated
+sandwiches, which were a complete supper in themselves. I wanted to
+get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight,
+but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident
+argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet
+high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed
+their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening
+streets, and I saw him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and
+without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible
+variety of life.
+
+Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath
+poured over me the story of her first meeting with Tom.
+
+“It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the
+last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my
+sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather
+shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked
+at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his
+head. When we came into the station he was next to me, and his white
+shirtfront pressed against my arm, and so I told him I’d have to call
+a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into
+a taxi with him I didn’t hardly know I wasn’t getting into a subway
+train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live
+forever; you can’t live forever.’ ”
+
+She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her artificial
+laughter.
+
+“My dear,” she cried, “I’m going to give you this dress as soon as I’m
+through with it. I’ve got to get another one tomorrow. I’m going to
+make a list of all the things I’ve got to get. A massage and a wave,
+and a collar for the dog, and one of those cute little ashtrays where
+you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother’s
+grave that’ll last all summer. I got to write down a list so I won’t
+forget all the things I got to do.”
+
+It was nine o’clock—almost immediately afterward I looked at my watch
+and found it was ten. Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair with his fists
+clenched in his lap, like a photograph of a man of action. Taking out
+my handkerchief I wiped from his cheek the spot of dried lather that
+had worried me all the afternoon.
+
+The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes
+through the smoke, and from time to time groaning faintly. People
+disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost
+each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet
+away. Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood
+face to face discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. Wilson
+had any right to mention Daisy’s name.
+
+“Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs. Wilson. “I’ll say it whenever I
+want to! Daisy! Dai—”
+
+Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his
+open hand.
+
+Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women’s
+voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of
+pain. Mr. McKee awoke from his doze and started in a daze toward the
+door. When he had gone halfway he turned around and stared at the
+scene—his wife and Catherine scolding and consoling as they stumbled
+here and there among the crowded furniture with articles of aid, and
+the despairing figure on the couch, bleeding fluently, and trying to
+spread a copy of Town Tattle over the tapestry scenes of
+Versailles. Then Mr. McKee turned and continued on out the door.
+Taking my hat from the chandelier, I followed.
+
+“Come to lunch some day,” he suggested, as we groaned down in the
+elevator.
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Anywhere.”
+
+“Keep your hands off the lever,” snapped the elevator boy.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. McKee with dignity, “I didn’t know I was
+touching it.”
+
+“All right,” I agreed, “I’ll be glad to.”
+
+… I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the
+sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.
+
+“Beauty and the Beast … Loneliness … Old Grocery Horse … Brook’n
+Bridge …”
+
+Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the
+Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning Tribune, and waiting for
+the four o’clock train.
+
+
+                                 III
+
+There was music from my neighbour’s house through the summer nights.
+In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the
+whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the
+afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or
+taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats
+slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of
+foam. On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties
+to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past
+midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to
+meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra
+gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers
+and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.
+
+Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a
+fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left
+his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in
+the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in
+half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a
+butler’s thumb.
+
+At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several
+hundred feet of canvas and enough coloured lights to make a Christmas
+tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with
+glistening hors-d’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of
+harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark
+gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and
+stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that
+most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.
+
+By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair,
+but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and
+cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have
+come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from
+New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and
+salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colours, and hair bobbed in
+strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is
+in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden
+outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual
+innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic
+meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.
+
+The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and
+now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of
+voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute,
+spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups
+change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the
+same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave
+here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp,
+joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph,
+glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and colour under
+the constantly changing light.
+
+Suddenly one of these gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail
+out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like
+Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the
+orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a
+burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda
+Gray’s understudy from the Follies. The party has begun.
+
+I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one
+of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not
+invited—they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out
+to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door. Once there
+they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they
+conducted themselves according to the rules of behaviour associated
+with an amusement park. Sometimes they came and went without having
+met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that
+was its own ticket of admission.
+
+I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a uniform of robin’s-egg
+blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly
+formal note from his employer: the honour would be entirely Gatsby’s,
+it said, if I would attend his “little party” that night. He had seen
+me several times, and had intended to call on me long before, but a
+peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it—signed Jay
+Gatsby, in a majestic hand.
+
+Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after
+seven, and wandered around rather ill at ease among swirls and eddies
+of people I didn’t know—though here and there was a face I had noticed
+on the commuting train. I was immediately struck by the number of
+young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little
+hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous
+Americans. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or
+insurance or automobiles. They were at least agonizingly aware of the
+easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few
+words in the right key.
+
+As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or
+three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an
+amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements,
+that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table—the only place
+in the garden where a single man could linger without looking
+purposeless and alone.
+
+I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when
+Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble
+steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous
+interest down into the garden.
+
+Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone
+before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passersby.
+
+“Hello!” I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally
+loud across the garden.
+
+“I thought you might be here,” she responded absently as I came up.
+“I remembered you lived next door to—”
+
+She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that she’d take care of me
+in a minute, and gave ear to two girls in twin yellow dresses, who
+stopped at the foot of the steps.
+
+“Hello!” they cried together. “Sorry you didn’t win.”
+
+That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week
+before.
+
+“You don’t know who we are,” said one of the girls in yellow, “but we
+met you here about a month ago.”
+
+“You’ve dyed your hair since then,” remarked Jordan, and I started,
+but the girls had moved casually on and her remark was addressed to
+the premature moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a
+caterer’s basket. With Jordan’s slender golden arm resting in mine, we
+descended the steps and sauntered about the garden. A tray of
+cocktails floated at us through the twilight, and we sat down at a
+table with the two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced
+to us as Mr. Mumble.
+
+“Do you come to these parties often?” inquired Jordan of the girl
+beside her.
+
+“The last one was the one I met you at,” answered the girl, in an
+alert confident voice. She turned to her companion: “Wasn’t it for
+you, Lucille?”
+
+It was for Lucille, too.
+
+“I like to come,” Lucille said. “I never care what I do, so I always
+have a good time. When I was here last I tore my gown on a chair, and
+he asked me my name and address—inside of a week I got a package from
+Croirier’s with a new evening gown in it.”
+
+“Did you keep it?” asked Jordan.
+
+“Sure I did. I was going to wear it tonight, but it was too big in the
+bust and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two
+hundred and sixty-five dollars.”
+
+“There’s something funny about a fellow that’ll do a thing like that,”
+said the other girl eagerly. “He doesn’t want any trouble with
+anybody.”
+
+“Who doesn’t?” I inquired.
+
+“Gatsby. Somebody told me—”
+
+The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially.
+
+“Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.”
+
+A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and
+listened eagerly.
+
+“I don’t think it’s so much that,” argued Lucille sceptically; “It’s
+more that he was a German spy during the war.”
+
+One of the men nodded in confirmation.
+
+“I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in
+Germany,” he assured us positively.
+
+“Oh, no,” said the first girl, “it couldn’t be that, because he was in
+the American army during the war.” As our credulity switched back to
+her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. “You look at him sometimes
+when he thinks nobody’s looking at him. I’ll bet he killed a man.”
+
+She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned
+and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic
+speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those
+who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this
+world.
+
+The first supper—there would be another one after midnight—was now
+being served, and Jordan invited me to join her own party, who were
+spread around a table on the other side of the garden. There were
+three married couples and Jordan’s escort, a persistent undergraduate
+given to violent innuendo, and obviously under the impression that
+sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up her person to a
+greater or lesser degree. Instead of rambling, this party had
+preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the function
+of representing the staid nobility of the countryside—East Egg
+condescending to West Egg and carefully on guard against its
+spectroscopic gaiety.
+
+“Let’s get out,” whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and
+inappropriate half-hour; “this is much too polite for me.”
+
+We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host: I
+had never met him, she said, and it was making me uneasy. The
+undergraduate nodded in a cynical, melancholy way.
+
+The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded, but Gatsby was not
+there. She couldn’t find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn’t
+on the veranda. On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and
+walked into a high Gothic library, panelled with carved English oak,
+and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.
+
+A stout, middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was
+sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with
+unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he
+wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.
+
+“What do you think?” he demanded impetuously.
+
+“About what?”
+
+He waved his hand toward the bookshelves.
+
+“About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to ascertain. I
+ascertained. They’re real.”
+
+“The books?”
+
+He nodded.
+
+“Absolutely real—have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice
+durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real.  Pages
+and—Here! Lemme show you.”
+
+Taking our scepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and
+returned with Volume One of the Stoddard Lectures.
+
+“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona-fide piece of printed
+matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a
+triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop,
+too—didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”
+
+He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf,
+muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable
+to collapse.
+
+“Who brought you?” he demanded. “Or did you just come? I was brought.
+Most people were brought.”
+
+Jordan looked at him alertly, cheerfully, without answering.
+
+“I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt,” he continued. “Mrs. Claud
+Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I’ve been
+drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit
+in a library.”
+
+“Has it?”
+
+“A little bit, I think. I can’t tell yet. I’ve only been here an hour.
+Did I tell you about the books? They’re real. They’re—”
+
+“You told us.”
+
+We shook hands with him gravely and went back outdoors.
+
+There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden; old men pushing
+young girls backward in eternal graceless circles, superior couples
+holding each other tortuously, fashionably, and keeping in the
+corners—and a great number of single girls dancing individually or
+relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or the
+traps. By midnight the hilarity had increased. A celebrated tenor had
+sung in Italian, and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz, and
+between the numbers people were doing “stunts” all over the garden,
+while happy, vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky. A
+pair of stage twins, who turned out to be the girls in yellow, did a
+baby act in costume, and champagne was served in glasses bigger than
+finger-bowls. The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was
+a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny
+drip of the banjoes on the lawn.
+
+I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man
+of about my age and a rowdy little girl, who gave way upon the
+slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying
+myself now. I had taken two finger-bowls of champagne, and the scene
+had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental, and
+profound.
+
+At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled.
+
+“Your face is familiar,” he said politely. “Weren’t you in the First
+Division during the war?”
+
+“Why yes. I was in the Twenty-eighth Infantry.”
+
+“I was in the Sixteenth until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I’d seen
+you somewhere before.”
+
+We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages in France.
+Evidently he lived in this vicinity, for he told me that he had just
+bought a hydroplane, and was going to try it out in the morning.
+
+“Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound.”
+
+“What time?”
+
+“Any time that suits you best.”
+
+It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jordan looked
+around and smiled.
+
+“Having a gay time now?” she inquired.
+
+“Much better.” I turned again to my new acquaintance. “This is an
+unusual party for me. I haven’t even seen the host. I live over
+there—” I waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, “and
+this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation.”
+
+For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand.
+
+“I’m Gatsby,” he said suddenly.
+
+“What!” I exclaimed. “Oh, I beg your pardon.”
+
+“I thought you knew, old sport. I’m afraid I’m not a very good host.”
+
+He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one
+of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that
+you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to
+face—the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on
+you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you
+just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you
+would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had
+precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to
+convey. Precisely at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an
+elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate
+formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he
+introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his
+words with care.
+
+Almost at the moment when Mr. Gatsby identified himself a butler
+hurried toward him with the information that Chicago was calling him
+on the wire. He excused himself with a small bow that included each of
+us in turn.
+
+“If you want anything just ask for it, old sport,” he urged me.
+“Excuse me. I will rejoin you later.”
+
+When he was gone I turned immediately to Jordan—constrained to assure
+her of my surprise. I had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid
+and corpulent person in his middle years.
+
+“Who is he?” I demanded. “Do you know?”
+
+“He’s just a man named Gatsby.”
+
+“Where is he from, I mean? And what does he do?”
+
+“Now you’re started on the subject,” she answered with a wan smile.
+“Well, he told me once he was an Oxford man.”
+
+A dim background started to take shape behind him, but at her next
+remark it faded away.
+
+“However, I don’t believe it.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“I don’t know,” she insisted, “I just don’t think he went there.”
+
+Something in her tone reminded me of the other girl’s “I think he
+killed a man,” and had the effect of stimulating my curiosity. I would
+have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from
+the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York. That
+was comprehensible. But young men didn’t—at least in my provincial
+inexperience I believed they didn’t—drift coolly out of nowhere and
+buy a palace on Long Island Sound.
+
+“Anyhow, he gives large parties,” said Jordan, changing the subject
+with an urban distaste for the concrete. “And I like large parties.
+They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”
+
+There was the boom of a bass drum, and the voice of the orchestra
+leader rang out suddenly above the echolalia of the garden.
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried. “At the request of Mr. Gatsby we are
+going to play for you Mr. Vladmir Tostoff’s latest work, which
+attracted so much attention at Carnegie Hall last May. If you read the
+papers you know there was a big sensation.” He smiled with jovial
+condescension, and added: “Some sensation!” Whereupon everybody
+laughed.
+
+“The piece is known,” he concluded lustily, “as ‘Vladmir Tostoff’s
+Jazz History of the World!’ ”
+
+The nature of Mr. Tostoff’s composition eluded me, because just as it
+began my eyes fell on Gatsby, standing alone on the marble steps and
+looking from one group to another with approving eyes. His tanned skin
+was drawn attractively tight on his face and his short hair looked as
+though it were trimmed every day. I could see nothing sinister about
+him. I wondered if the fact that he was not drinking helped to set him
+off from his guests, for it seemed to me that he grew more correct as
+the fraternal hilarity increased. When the “Jazz History of the World”
+was over, girls were putting their heads on men’s shoulders in a
+puppyish, convivial way, girls were swooning backward playfully into
+men’s arms, even into groups, knowing that someone would arrest their
+falls—but no one swooned backward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched
+Gatsby’s shoulder, and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby’s
+head for one link.
+
+“I beg your pardon.”
+
+Gatsby’s butler was suddenly standing beside us.
+
+“Miss Baker?” he inquired. “I beg your pardon, but Mr. Gatsby would
+like to speak to you alone.”
+
+“With me?” she exclaimed in surprise.
+
+“Yes, madame.”
+
+She got up slowly, raising her eyebrows at me in astonishment, and
+followed the butler toward the house. I noticed that she wore her
+evening-dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes—there was a
+jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk
+upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings.
+
+I was alone and it was almost two. For some time confused and
+intriguing sounds had issued from a long, many-windowed room which
+overhung the terrace. Eluding Jordan’s undergraduate, who was now
+engaged in an obstetrical conversation with two chorus girls, and who
+implored me to join him, I went inside.
+
+The large room was full of people. One of the girls in yellow was
+playing the piano, and beside her stood a tall, red-haired young lady
+from a famous chorus, engaged in song. She had drunk a quantity of
+champagne, and during the course of her song she had decided, ineptly,
+that everything was very, very sad—she was not only singing, she was
+weeping too. Whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with
+gasping, broken sobs, and then took up the lyric again in a quavering
+soprano. The tears coursed down her cheeks—not freely, however, for
+when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they
+assumed an inky colour, and pursued the rest of their way in slow
+black rivulets. A humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes
+on her face, whereupon she threw up her hands, sank into a chair, and
+went off into a deep vinous sleep.
+
+“She had a fight with a man who says he’s her husband,” explained a
+girl at my elbow.
+
+I looked around. Most of the remaining women were now having fights
+with men said to be their husbands. Even Jordan’s party, the quartet
+from East Egg, were rent asunder by dissension. One of the men was
+talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife, after
+attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent
+way, broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks—at intervals
+she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed:
+“You promised!” into his ear.
+
+The reluctance to go home was not confined to wayward men. The hall
+was at present occupied by two deplorably sober men and their highly
+indignant wives. The wives were sympathizing with each other in
+slightly raised voices.
+
+“Whenever he sees I’m having a good time he wants to go home.”
+
+“Never heard anything so selfish in my life.”
+
+“We’re always the first ones to leave.”
+
+“So are we.”
+
+“Well, we’re almost the last tonight,” said one of the men sheepishly.
+“The orchestra left half an hour ago.”
+
+In spite of the wives’ agreement that such malevolence was beyond
+credibility, the dispute ended in a short struggle, and both wives
+were lifted, kicking, into the night.
+
+As I waited for my hat in the hall the door of the library opened and
+Jordan Baker and Gatsby came out together. He was saying some last
+word to her, but the eagerness in his manner tightened abruptly into
+formality as several people approached him to say goodbye.
+
+Jordan’s party were calling impatiently to her from the porch, but she
+lingered for a moment to shake hands.
+
+“I’ve just heard the most amazing thing,” she whispered. “How long
+were we in there?”
+
+“Why, about an hour.”
+
+“It was … simply amazing,” she repeated abstractedly. “But I swore I
+wouldn’t tell it and here I am tantalizing you.” She yawned gracefully
+in my face. “Please come and see me … Phone book … Under the name of
+Mrs. Sigourney Howard … My aunt …” She was hurrying off as she
+talked—her brown hand waved a jaunty salute as she melted into her
+party at the door.
+
+Rather ashamed that on my first appearance I had stayed so late, I
+joined the last of Gatsby’s guests, who were clustered around him. I
+wanted to explain that I’d hunted for him early in the evening and to
+apologize for not having known him in the garden.
+
+“Don’t mention it,” he enjoined me eagerly. “Don’t give it another
+thought, old sport.” The familiar expression held no more familiarity
+than the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder. “And don’t
+forget we’re going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning, at nine
+o’clock.”
+
+Then the butler, behind his shoulder:
+
+“Philadelphia wants you on the phone, sir.”
+
+“All right, in a minute. Tell them I’ll be right there … Good night.”
+
+“Good night.”
+
+“Good night.” He smiled—and suddenly there seemed to be a pleasant
+significance in having been among the last to go, as if he had desired
+it all the time. “Good night, old sport … Good night.”
+
+But as I walked down the steps I saw that the evening was not quite
+over. Fifty feet from the door a dozen headlights illuminated a
+bizarre and tumultuous scene. In the ditch beside the road, right side
+up, but violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupé which had
+left Gatsby’s drive not two minutes before. The sharp jut of a wall
+accounted for the detachment of the wheel, which was now getting
+considerable attention from half a dozen curious chauffeurs. However,
+as they had left their cars blocking the road, a harsh, discordant din
+from those in the rear had been audible for some time, and added to
+the already violent confusion of the scene.
+
+A man in a long duster had dismounted from the wreck and now stood in
+the middle of the road, looking from the car to the tyre and from the
+tyre to the observers in a pleasant, puzzled way.
+
+“See!” he explained. “It went in the ditch.”
+
+The fact was infinitely astonishing to him, and I recognized first the
+unusual quality of wonder, and then the man—it was the late patron of
+Gatsby’s library.
+
+“How’d it happen?”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I know nothing whatever about mechanics,” he said decisively.
+
+“But how did it happen? Did you run into the wall?”
+
+“Don’t ask me,” said Owl Eyes, washing his hands of the whole
+matter. “I know very little about driving—next to nothing. It
+happened, and that’s all I know.”
+
+“Well, if you’re a poor driver you oughtn’t to try driving at night.”
+
+“But I wasn’t even trying,” he explained indignantly, “I wasn’t even
+trying.”
+
+An awed hush fell upon the bystanders.
+
+“Do you want to commit suicide?”
+
+“You’re lucky it was just a wheel! A bad driver and not even trying!”
+
+“You don’t understand,” explained the criminal. “I wasn’t driving.
+There’s another man in the car.”
+
+The shock that followed this declaration found voice in a sustained
+“Ah-h-h!” as the door of the coupé swung slowly open. The crowd—it was
+now a crowd—stepped back involuntarily, and when the door had opened
+wide there was a ghostly pause. Then, very gradually, part by part, a
+pale, dangling individual stepped out of the wreck, pawing tentatively
+at the ground with a large uncertain dancing shoe.
+
+Blinded by the glare of the headlights and confused by the incessant
+groaning of the horns, the apparition stood swaying for a moment
+before he perceived the man in the duster.
+
+“Wha’s matter?” he inquired calmly. “Did we run outa gas?”
+
+“Look!”
+
+Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel—he stared at it
+for a moment, and then looked upward as though he suspected that it
+had dropped from the sky.
+
+“It came off,” someone explained.
+
+He nodded.
+
+“At first I din’ notice we’d stopped.”
+
+A pause. Then, taking a long breath and straightening his shoulders,
+he remarked in a determined voice:
+
+“Wonder’ff tell me where there’s a gas’line station?”
+
+At least a dozen men, some of them a little better off than he was,
+explained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined by any
+physical bond.
+
+“Back out,” he suggested after a moment. “Put her in reverse.”
+
+“But the wheel’s off!”
+
+He hesitated.
+
+“No harm in trying,” he said.
+
+The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and
+cut across the lawn toward home. I glanced back once. A wafer of a
+moon was shining over Gatsby’s house, making the night fine as before,
+and surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden.
+A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great
+doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who
+stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Reading over what I have written so far, I see I have given the
+impression that the events of three nights several weeks apart were
+all that absorbed me. On the contrary, they were merely casual events
+in a crowded summer, and, until much later, they absorbed me
+infinitely less than my personal affairs.
+
+Most of the time I worked. In the early morning the sun threw my
+shadow westward as I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York
+to the Probity Trust. I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen
+by their first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded
+restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee. I
+even had a short affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and
+worked in the accounting department, but her brother began throwing
+mean looks in my direction, so when she went on her vacation in July I
+let it blow quietly away.
+
+I took dinner usually at the Yale Club—for some reason it was the
+gloomiest event of my day—and then I went upstairs to the library and
+studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour. There
+were generally a few rioters around, but they never came into the
+library, so it was a good place to work. After that, if the night was
+mellow, I strolled down Madison Avenue past the old Murray Hill Hotel,
+and over 33rd Street to the Pennsylvania Station.
+
+I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night,
+and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and
+machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue
+and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few
+minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever
+know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their
+apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and
+smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm
+darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting
+loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others—poor young clerks who
+loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary
+restaurant dinner—young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant
+moments of night and life.
+
+Again at eight o’clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were lined
+five deep with throbbing taxicabs, bound for the theatre district, I
+felt a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they
+waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes,
+and lighted cigarettes made unintelligible circles inside. Imagining
+that I, too, was hurrying towards gaiety and sharing their intimate
+excitement, I wished them well.
+
+For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and then in midsummer I
+found her again. At first I was flattered to go places with her,
+because she was a golf champion, and everyone knew her name. Then it
+was something more. I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of
+tender curiosity. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world
+concealed something—most affectations conceal something eventually,
+even though they don’t in the beginning—and one day I found what it
+was. When we were on a house-party together up in Warwick, she left a
+borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then lied about
+it—and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had eluded me
+that night at Daisy’s. At her first big golf tournament there was a
+row that nearly reached the newspapers—a suggestion that she had moved
+her ball from a bad lie in the semifinal round. The thing approached
+the proportions of a scandal—then died away. A caddy retracted his
+statement, and the only other witness admitted that he might have been
+mistaken. The incident and the name had remained together in my mind.
+
+Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw
+that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence
+from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest.
+She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this
+unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she
+was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to
+the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body.
+
+It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you
+never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot. It was on
+that same house-party that we had a curious conversation about driving
+a car. It started because she passed so close to some workmen that our
+fender flicked a button on one man’s coat.
+
+“You’re a rotten driver,” I protested. “Either you ought to be more
+careful, or you oughtn’t to drive at all.”
+
+“I am careful.”
+
+“No, you’re not.”
+
+“Well, other people are,” she said lightly.
+
+“What’s that got to do with it?”
+
+“They’ll keep out of my way,” she insisted. “It takes two to make an
+accident.”
+
+“Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself.”
+
+“I hope I never will,” she answered. “I hate careless people. That’s
+why I like you.”
+
+Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had
+deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved
+her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as
+brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself
+definitely out of that tangle back home. I’d been writing letters once
+a week and signing them: “Love, Nick,” and all I could think of was
+how, when that certain girl played tennis, a faint moustache of
+perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague
+understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free.
+
+Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and
+this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever
+known.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages alongshore,
+the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby’s house and twinkled
+hilariously on his lawn.
+
+“He’s a bootlegger,” said the young ladies, moving somewhere between
+his cocktails and his flowers. “One time he killed a man who had found
+out that he was nephew to Von Hindenburg and second cousin to the
+devil. Reach me a rose, honey, and pour me a last drop into that there
+crystal glass.”
+
+Once I wrote down on the empty spaces of a timetable the names of
+those who came to Gatsby’s house that summer. It is an old timetable
+now, disintegrating at its folds, and headed “This schedule in effect
+July 5th, 1922.” But I can still read the grey names, and they will
+give you a better impression than my generalities of those who
+accepted Gatsby’s hospitality and paid him the subtle tribute of
+knowing nothing whatever about him.
+
+From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a
+man named Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale, and Doctor Webster Civet, who
+was drowned last summer up in Maine. And the Hornbeams and the Willie
+Voltaires, and a whole clan named Blackbuck, who always gathered in a
+corner and flipped up their noses like goats at whosoever came
+near. And the Ismays and the Chrysties (or rather Hubert Auerbach and
+Mr. Chrystie’s wife), and Edgar Beaver, whose hair, they say, turned
+cotton-white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all.
+
+Clarence Endive was from East Egg, as I remember. He came only once,
+in white knickerbockers, and had a fight with a bum named Etty in the
+garden. From farther out on the Island came the Cheadles and the O.
+R. P. Schraeders, and the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia, and the
+Fishguards and the Ripley Snells. Snell was there three days before he
+went to the penitentiary, so drunk out on the gravel drive that
+Mrs. Ulysses Swett’s automobile ran over his right hand. The Dancies
+came, too, and S. B. Whitebait, who was well over sixty, and Maurice
+A. Flink, and the Hammerheads, and Beluga the tobacco importer, and
+Beluga’s girls.
+
+From West Egg came the Poles and the Mulreadys and Cecil Roebuck and
+Cecil Schoen and Gulick the State senator and Newton Orchid, who
+controlled Films Par Excellence, and Eckhaust and Clyde Cohen and Don
+S. Schwartz (the son) and Arthur McCarty, all connected with the
+movies in one way or another. And the Catlips and the Bembergs and G.
+Earl Muldoon, brother to that Muldoon who afterward strangled his
+wife. Da Fontano the promoter came there, and Ed Legros and James B.
+(“Rot-Gut”) Ferret and the De Jongs and Ernest Lilly—they came to
+gamble, and when Ferret wandered into the garden it meant he was
+cleaned out and Associated Traction would have to fluctuate profitably
+next day.
+
+A man named Klipspringer was there so often that he became known as
+“the boarder”—I doubt if he had any other home. Of theatrical people
+there were Gus Waize and Horace O’Donavan and Lester Myer and George
+Duckweed and Francis Bull. Also from New York were the Chromes and the
+Backhyssons and the Dennickers and Russel Betty and the Corrigans and
+the Kellehers and the Dewars and the Scullys and S. W. Belcher and the
+Smirkes and the young Quinns, divorced now, and Henry L. Palmetto, who
+killed himself by jumping in front of a subway train in Times Square.
+
+Benny McClenahan arrived always with four girls. They were never quite
+the same ones in physical person, but they were so identical one with
+another that it inevitably seemed they had been there before. I have
+forgotten their names—Jaqueline, I think, or else Consuela, or Gloria
+or Judy or June, and their last names were either the melodious names
+of flowers and months or the sterner ones of the great American
+capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess themselves
+to be.
+
+In addition to all these I can remember that Faustina O’Brien came
+there at least once and the Baedeker girls and young Brewer, who had
+his nose shot off in the war, and Mr. Albrucksburger and Miss Haag,
+his fiancée, and Ardita Fitz-Peters and Mr. P. Jewett, once head of
+the American Legion, and Miss Claudia Hip, with a man reputed to be
+her chauffeur, and a prince of something, whom we called Duke, and
+whose name, if I ever knew it, I have forgotten.
+
+All these people came to Gatsby’s house in the summer.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+At nine o’clock, one morning late in July, Gatsby’s gorgeous car
+lurched up the rocky drive to my door and gave out a burst of melody
+from its three-noted horn.
+
+It was the first time he had called on me, though I had gone to two of
+his parties, mounted in his hydroplane, and, at his urgent invitation,
+made frequent use of his beach.
+
+“Good morning, old sport. You’re having lunch with me today and I
+thought we’d ride up together.”
+
+He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that
+resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American—that comes,
+I suppose, with the absence of lifting work in youth and, even more,
+with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. This quality
+was continually breaking through his punctilious manner in the shape
+of restlessness. He was never quite still; there was always a tapping
+foot somewhere or the impatient opening and closing of a hand.
+
+He saw me looking with admiration at his car.
+
+“It’s pretty, isn’t it, old sport?” He jumped off to give me a better
+view. “Haven’t you ever seen it before?”
+
+I’d seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream colour, bright
+with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with
+triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and toolboxes, and terraced with
+a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down
+behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory,
+we started to town.
+
+I had talked with him perhaps half a dozen times in the past month and
+found, to my disappointment, that he had little to say. So my first
+impression, that he was a person of some undefined consequence, had
+gradually faded and he had become simply the proprietor of an
+elaborate roadhouse next door.
+
+And then came that disconcerting ride. We hadn’t reached West Egg
+village before Gatsby began leaving his elegant sentences unfinished
+and slapping himself indecisively on the knee of his caramel-coloured
+suit.
+
+“Look here, old sport,” he broke out surprisingly, “what’s your
+opinion of me, anyhow?”
+
+A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that
+question deserves.
+
+“Well, I’m going to tell you something about my life,” he interrupted.
+“I don’t want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these stories you
+hear.”
+
+So he was aware of the bizarre accusations that flavoured conversation
+in his halls.
+
+“I’ll tell you God’s truth.” His right hand suddenly ordered divine
+retribution to stand by. “I am the son of some wealthy people in the
+Middle West—all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at
+Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many
+years. It is a family tradition.”
+
+He looked at me sideways—and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he
+was lying. He hurried the phrase “educated at Oxford,” or swallowed
+it, or choked on it, as though it had bothered him before. And with
+this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces, and I wondered if
+there wasn’t something a little sinister about him, after all.
+
+“What part of the Middle West?” I inquired casually.
+
+“San Francisco.”
+
+“I see.”
+
+“My family all died and I came into a good deal of money.”
+
+His voice was solemn, as if the memory of that sudden extinction of a
+clan still haunted him. For a moment I suspected that he was pulling
+my leg, but a glance at him convinced me otherwise.
+
+“After that I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of
+Europe—Paris, Venice, Rome—collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting
+big game, painting a little, things for myself only, and trying to
+forget something very sad that had happened to me long ago.”
+
+With an effort I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter. The very
+phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that
+of a turbaned “character” leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued
+a tiger through the Bois de Boulogne.
+
+“Then came the war, old sport. It was a great relief, and I tried very
+hard to die, but I seemed to bear an enchanted life. I accepted a
+commission as first lieutenant when it began. In the Argonne Forest I
+took the remains of my machine-gun battalion so far forward that there
+was a half mile gap on either side of us where the infantry couldn’t
+advance. We stayed there two days and two nights, a hundred and thirty
+men with sixteen Lewis guns, and when the infantry came up at last
+they found the insignia of three German divisions among the piles of
+dead. I was promoted to be a major, and every Allied government gave
+me a decoration—even Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the
+Adriatic Sea!”
+
+Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them—with his
+smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro’s troubled history and
+sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people. It
+appreciated fully the chain of national circumstances which had
+elicited this tribute from Montenegro’s warm little heart. My
+incredulity was submerged in fascination now; it was like skimming
+hastily through a dozen magazines.
+
+He reached in his pocket, and a piece of metal, slung on a ribbon,
+fell into my palm.
+
+“That’s the one from Montenegro.”
+
+To my astonishment, the thing had an authentic look. “Orderi di
+Danilo,” ran the circular legend, “Montenegro, Nicolas Rex.”
+
+“Turn it.”
+
+“Major Jay Gatsby,” I read, “For Valour Extraordinary.”
+
+“Here’s another thing I always carry. A souvenir of Oxford days. It
+was taken in Trinity Quad—the man on my left is now the Earl of
+Doncaster.”
+
+It was a photograph of half a dozen young men in blazers loafing in an
+archway through which were visible a host of spires. There was Gatsby,
+looking a little, not much, younger—with a cricket bat in his hand.
+
+Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace
+on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with
+their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart.
+
+“I’m going to make a big request of you today,” he said, pocketing his
+souvenirs with satisfaction, “so I thought you ought to know something
+about me. I didn’t want you to think I was just some nobody. You see,
+I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there
+trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.” He hesitated.
+“You’ll hear about it this afternoon.”
+
+“At lunch?”
+
+“No, this afternoon. I happened to find out that you’re taking Miss
+Baker to tea.”
+
+“Do you mean you’re in love with Miss Baker?”
+
+“No, old sport, I’m not. But Miss Baker has kindly consented to speak
+to you about this matter.”
+
+I hadn’t the faintest idea what “this matter” was, but I was more
+annoyed than interested. I hadn’t asked Jordan to tea in order to
+discuss Mr. Jay Gatsby. I was sure the request would be something
+utterly fantastic, and for a moment I was sorry I’d ever set foot upon
+his overpopulated lawn.
+
+He wouldn’t say another word. His correctness grew on him as we neared
+the city. We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of
+red-belted oceangoing ships, and sped along a cobbled slum lined with
+the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded-gilt nineteen-hundreds.
+Then the valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a
+glimpse of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting
+vitality as we went by.
+
+With fenders spread like wings we scattered light through half
+Astoria—only half, for as we twisted among the pillars of the elevated
+I heard the familiar “jug-jug-spat!” of a motorcycle, and a frantic
+policeman rode alongside.
+
+“All right, old sport,” called Gatsby. We slowed down. Taking a white
+card from his wallet, he waved it before the man’s eyes.
+
+“Right you are,” agreed the policeman, tipping his cap. “Know you next
+time, Mr. Gatsby. Excuse me!”
+
+“What was that?” I inquired. “The picture of Oxford?”
+
+“I was able to do the commissioner a favour once, and he sends me a
+Christmas card every year.”
+
+Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a
+constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across
+the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of
+nonolfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always
+the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the
+mystery and the beauty in the world.
+
+A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two
+carriages with drawn blinds, and by more cheerful carriages for
+friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short
+upper lips of southeastern Europe, and I was glad that the sight of
+Gatsby’s splendid car was included in their sombre holiday. As we
+crossed Blackwell’s Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white
+chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I
+laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in
+haughty rivalry.
+
+“Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,” I thought;
+“anything at all …”
+
+Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Roaring noon. In a well-fanned Forty-second Street cellar I met Gatsby
+for lunch. Blinking away the brightness of the street outside, my eyes
+picked him out obscurely in the anteroom, talking to another man.
+
+“Mr. Carraway, this is my friend Mr. Wolfshiem.”
+
+A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two
+fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a
+moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the half-darkness.
+
+“—So I took one look at him,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, shaking my hand
+earnestly, “and what do you think I did?”
+
+“What?” I inquired politely.
+
+But evidently he was not addressing me, for he dropped my hand and
+covered Gatsby with his expressive nose.
+
+“I handed the money to Katspaugh and I said: ‘All right, Katspaugh,
+don’t pay him a penny till he shuts his mouth.’ He shut it then and
+there.”
+
+Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved forward into the
+restaurant, whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem swallowed a new sentence he was
+starting and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction.
+
+“Highballs?” asked the head waiter.
+
+“This is a nice restaurant here,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, looking at the
+presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling. “But I like across the street
+better!”
+
+“Yes, highballs,” agreed Gatsby, and then to Mr. Wolfshiem: “It’s too
+hot over there.”
+
+“Hot and small—yes,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, “but full of memories.”
+
+“What place is that?” I asked.
+
+“The old Metropole.”
+
+“The old Metropole,” brooded Mr. Wolfshiem gloomily. “Filled with
+faces dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can’t
+forget so long as I live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there. It
+was six of us at the table, and Rosy had eat and drunk a lot all
+evening. When it was almost morning the waiter came up to him with a
+funny look and says somebody wants to speak to him outside. ‘All
+right,’ says Rosy, and begins to get up, and I pulled him down in his
+chair.
+
+“ ‘Let the bastards come in here if they want you, Rosy, but don’t
+you, so help me, move outside this room.’
+
+“It was four o’clock in the morning then, and if we’d of raised the
+blinds we’d of seen daylight.”
+
+“Did he go?” I asked innocently.
+
+“Sure he went.” Mr. Wolfshiem’s nose flashed at me indignantly. “He
+turned around in the door and says: ‘Don’t let that waiter take away
+my coffee!’ Then he went out on the sidewalk, and they shot him three
+times in his full belly and drove away.”
+
+“Four of them were electrocuted,” I said, remembering.
+
+“Five, with Becker.” His nostrils turned to me in an interested way.
+“I understand you’re looking for a business gonnegtion.”
+
+The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling. Gatsby answered
+for me:
+
+“Oh, no,” he exclaimed, “this isn’t the man.”
+
+“No?” Mr. Wolfshiem seemed disappointed.
+
+“This is just a friend. I told you we’d talk about that some other
+time.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, “I had a wrong man.”
+
+A succulent hash arrived, and Mr. Wolfshiem, forgetting the more
+sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with
+ferocious delicacy. His eyes, meanwhile, roved very slowly all around
+the room—he completed the arc by turning to inspect the people
+directly behind. I think that, except for my presence, he would have
+taken one short glance beneath our own table.
+
+“Look here, old sport,” said Gatsby, leaning toward me, “I’m afraid I
+made you a little angry this morning in the car.”
+
+There was the smile again, but this time I held out against it.
+
+“I don’t like mysteries,” I answered, “and I don’t understand why you
+won’t come out frankly and tell me what you want. Why has it all got
+to come through Miss Baker?”
+
+“Oh, it’s nothing underhand,” he assured me. “Miss Baker’s a great
+sportswoman, you know, and she’d never do anything that wasn’t all
+right.”
+
+Suddenly he looked at his watch, jumped up, and hurried from the room,
+leaving me with Mr. Wolfshiem at the table.
+
+“He has to telephone,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, following him with his
+eyes. “Fine fellow, isn’t he? Handsome to look at and a perfect
+gentleman.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“He’s an Oggsford man.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“He went to Oggsford College in England. You know Oggsford College?”
+
+“I’ve heard of it.”
+
+“It’s one of the most famous colleges in the world.”
+
+“Have you known Gatsby for a long time?” I inquired.
+
+“Several years,” he answered in a gratified way. “I made the pleasure
+of his acquaintance just after the war. But I knew I had discovered a
+man of fine breeding after I talked with him an hour. I said to
+myself: ‘There’s the kind of man you’d like to take home and introduce
+to your mother and sister.’ ” He paused. “I see you’re looking at my
+cuff buttons.”
+
+I hadn’t been looking at them, but I did now. They were composed of
+oddly familiar pieces of ivory.
+
+“Finest specimens of human molars,” he informed me.
+
+“Well!” I inspected them. “That’s a very interesting idea.”
+
+“Yeah.” He flipped his sleeves up under his coat. “Yeah, Gatsby’s very
+careful about women. He would never so much as look at a friend’s
+wife.”
+
+When the subject of this instinctive trust returned to the table and
+sat down Mr. Wolfshiem drank his coffee with a jerk and got to his
+feet.
+
+“I have enjoyed my lunch,” he said, “and I’m going to run off from you
+two young men before I outstay my welcome.”
+
+“Don’t hurry Meyer,” said Gatsby, without enthusiasm. Mr. Wolfshiem
+raised his hand in a sort of benediction.
+
+“You’re very polite, but I belong to another generation,” he announced
+solemnly. “You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies
+and your—” He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his
+hand. “As for me, I am fifty years old, and I won’t impose myself on
+you any longer.”
+
+As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trembling. I
+wondered if I had said anything to offend him.
+
+“He becomes very sentimental sometimes,” explained Gatsby. “This is
+one of his sentimental days. He’s quite a character around New York—a
+denizen of Broadway.”
+
+“Who is he, anyhow, an actor?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“A dentist?”
+
+“Meyer Wolfshiem? No, he’s a gambler.” Gatsby hesitated, then added,
+coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.”
+
+“Fixed the World’s Series?” I repeated.
+
+The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World’s
+Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I
+would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of
+some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could
+start to play with the faith of fifty million people—with the
+single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
+
+“How did he happen to do that?” I asked after a minute.
+
+“He just saw the opportunity.”
+
+“Why isn’t he in jail?”
+
+“They can’t get him, old sport. He’s a smart man.”
+
+I insisted on paying the check. As the waiter brought my change I
+caught sight of Tom Buchanan across the crowded room.
+
+“Come along with me for a minute,” I said; “I’ve got to say hello to
+someone.”
+
+When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our
+direction.
+
+“Where’ve you been?” he demanded eagerly. “Daisy’s furious because you
+haven’t called up.”
+
+“This is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan.”
+
+They shook hands briefly, and a strained, unfamiliar look of
+embarrassment came over Gatsby’s face.
+
+“How’ve you been, anyhow?” demanded Tom of me. “How’d you happen to
+come up this far to eat?”
+
+“I’ve been having lunch with Mr. Gatsby.”
+
+I turned toward Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer there.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+One October day in nineteen-seventeen—
+
+(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a
+straight chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel)
+
+—I was walking along from one place to another, half on the sidewalks
+and half on the lawns. I was happier on the lawns because I had on
+shoes from England with rubber knobs on the soles that bit into the
+soft ground. I had on a new plaid skirt also that blew a little in the
+wind, and whenever this happened the red, white, and blue banners in
+front of all the houses stretched out stiff and said tut-tut-tut-tut,
+in a disapproving way.
+
+The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to
+Daisy Fay’s house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and
+by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She
+dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, and all day long
+the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp
+Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that
+night. “Anyways, for an hour!”
+
+When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was
+beside the kerb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had
+never seen before. They were so engrossed in each other that she
+didn’t see me until I was five feet away.
+
+“Hello, Jordan,” she called unexpectedly. “Please come here.”
+
+I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all the
+older girls I admired her most. She asked me if I was going to the Red
+Cross to make bandages. I was. Well, then, would I tell them that she
+couldn’t come that day? The officer looked at Daisy while she was
+speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at
+sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the
+incident ever since. His name was Jay Gatsby, and I didn’t lay eyes on
+him again for over four years—even after I’d met him on Long Island I
+didn’t realize it was the same man.
+
+That was nineteen-seventeen. By the next year I had a few beaux
+myself, and I began to play in tournaments, so I didn’t see Daisy very
+often. She went with a slightly older crowd—when she went with anyone
+at all. Wild rumours were circulating about her—how her mother had
+found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say
+goodbye to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually
+prevented, but she wasn’t on speaking terms with her family for
+several weeks. After that she didn’t play around with the soldiers any
+more, but only with a few flat-footed, shortsighted young men in town,
+who couldn’t get into the army at all.
+
+By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a début
+after the armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a
+man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago,
+with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He
+came down with a hundred people in four private cars, and hired a
+whole floor of the Muhlbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he
+gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars.
+
+I was a bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the
+bridal dinner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June
+night in her flowered dress—and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle
+of Sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other.
+
+“ ’Gratulate me,” she muttered. “Never had a drink before, but oh how
+I do enjoy it.”
+
+“What’s the matter, Daisy?”
+
+I was scared, I can tell you; I’d never seen a girl like that before.
+
+“Here, dearies.” She groped around in a wastebasket she had with her
+on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. “Take ’em downstairs
+and give ’em back to whoever they belong to. Tell ’em all Daisy’s
+change’ her mine. Say: ‘Daisy’s change’ her mine!’ ”
+
+She began to cry—she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her
+mother’s maid, and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath.
+She wouldn’t let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her
+and squeezed it up in a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the
+soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.
+
+But she didn’t say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and
+put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress, and half
+an hour later, when we walked out of the room, the pearls were around
+her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o’clock she
+married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a
+three months’ trip to the South Seas.
+
+I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came back, and I thought I’d
+never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a
+minute she’d look around uneasily, and say: “Where’s Tom gone?” and
+wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the
+door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the
+hour, rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with
+unfathomable delight. It was touching to see them together—it made you
+laugh in a hushed, fascinated way. That was in August. A week after I
+left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night,
+and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got
+into the papers, too, because her arm was broken—she was one of the
+chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel.
+
+The next April Daisy had her little girl, and they went to France for
+a year. I saw them one spring in Cannes, and later in Deauville, and
+then they came back to Chicago to settle down. Daisy was popular in
+Chicago, as you know. They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young
+and rich and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect
+reputation. Perhaps because she doesn’t drink. It’s a great advantage
+not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue and,
+moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that
+everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care. Perhaps Daisy
+never went in for amour at all—and yet there’s something in that voice
+of hers …
+
+Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first
+time in years. It was when I asked you—do you remember?—if you knew
+Gatsby in West Egg. After you had gone home she came into my room and
+woke me up, and said: “What Gatsby?” and when I described him—I was
+half asleep—she said in the strangest voice that it must be the man
+she used to know. It wasn’t until then that I connected this Gatsby
+with the officer in her white car.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+When Jordan Baker had finished telling all this we had left the Plaza
+for half an hour and were driving in a victoria through Central Park.
+The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in
+the West Fifties, and the clear voices of children, already gathered
+like crickets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight:
+
+ “I’m the Sheik of Araby. Your love belongs to me. At night when
+ you’re asleep Into your tent I’ll creep—”
+
+“It was a strange coincidence,” I said.
+
+“But it wasn’t a coincidence at all.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.”
+
+Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that
+June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of
+his purposeless splendour.
+
+“He wants to know,” continued Jordan, “if you’ll invite Daisy to your
+house some afternoon and then let him come over.”
+
+The modesty of the demand shook me. He had waited five years and
+bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths—so that
+he could “come over” some afternoon to a stranger’s garden.
+
+“Did I have to know all this before he could ask such a little thing?”
+
+“He’s afraid, he’s waited so long. He thought you might be
+offended. You see, he’s regular tough underneath it all.”
+
+Something worried me.
+
+“Why didn’t he ask you to arrange a meeting?”
+
+“He wants her to see his house,” she explained. “And your house is
+right next door.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties, some
+night,” went on Jordan, “but she never did. Then he began asking
+people casually if they knew her, and I was the first one he found. It
+was that night he sent for me at his dance, and you should have heard
+the elaborate way he worked up to it. Of course, I immediately
+suggested a luncheon in New York—and I thought he’d go mad:
+
+“ ‘I don’t want to do anything out of the way!’ he kept saying. ‘I
+want to see her right next door.’
+
+“When I said you were a particular friend of Tom’s, he started to
+abandon the whole idea. He doesn’t know very much about Tom, though he
+says he’s read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of
+catching a glimpse of Daisy’s name.”
+
+It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm
+around Jordan’s golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her
+to dinner. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more,
+but of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal
+scepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my
+arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady
+excitement: “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and
+the tired.”
+
+“And Daisy ought to have something in her life,” murmured Jordan to
+me.
+
+“Does she want to see Gatsby?”
+
+“She’s not to know about it. Gatsby doesn’t want her to know. You’re
+just supposed to invite her to tea.”
+
+We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the façade of Fifty-Ninth
+Street, a block of delicate pale light, beamed down into the park.
+Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face
+floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up
+the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan, scornful mouth
+smiled, and so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face.
+
+
+                                  V
+
+When I came home to West Egg that night I was afraid for a moment that
+my house was on fire. Two o’clock and the whole corner of the
+peninsula was blazing with light, which fell unreal on the shrubbery
+and made thin elongating glints upon the roadside wires. Turning a
+corner, I saw that it was Gatsby’s house, lit from tower to cellar.
+
+At first I thought it was another party, a wild rout that had resolved
+itself into “hide-and-go-seek” or “sardines-in-the-box” with all the
+house thrown open to the game. But there wasn’t a sound. Only wind in
+the trees, which blew the wires and made the lights go off and on
+again as if the house had winked into the darkness. As my taxi groaned
+away I saw Gatsby walking toward me across his lawn.
+
+“Your place looks like the World’s Fair,” I said.
+
+“Does it?” He turned his eyes toward it absently. “I have been
+glancing into some of the rooms. Let’s go to Coney Island, old
+sport. In my car.”
+
+“It’s too late.”
+
+“Well, suppose we take a plunge in the swimming pool? I haven’t made
+use of it all summer.”
+
+“I’ve got to go to bed.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+He waited, looking at me with suppressed eagerness.
+
+“I talked with Miss Baker,” I said after a moment. “I’m going to call
+up Daisy tomorrow and invite her over here to tea.”
+
+“Oh, that’s all right,” he said carelessly. “I don’t want to put you
+to any trouble.”
+
+“What day would suit you?”
+
+“What day would suit you?” he corrected me quickly. “I don’t want to
+put you to any trouble, you see.”
+
+“How about the day after tomorrow?”
+
+He considered for a moment. Then, with reluctance: “I want to get the
+grass cut,” he said.
+
+We both looked down at the grass—there was a sharp line where my
+ragged lawn ended and the darker, well-kept expanse of his began. I
+suspected that he meant my grass.
+
+“There’s another little thing,” he said uncertainly, and hesitated.
+
+“Would you rather put it off for a few days?” I asked.
+
+“Oh, it isn’t about that. At least—” He fumbled with a series of
+beginnings. “Why, I thought—why, look here, old sport, you don’t make
+much money, do you?”
+
+“Not very much.”
+
+This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently.
+
+“I thought you didn’t, if you’ll pardon my—you see, I carry on a
+little business on the side, a sort of side line, you understand. And
+I thought that if you don’t make very much—You’re selling bonds,
+aren’t you, old sport?”
+
+“Trying to.”
+
+“Well, this would interest you. It wouldn’t take up much of your time
+and you might pick up a nice bit of money. It happens to be a rather
+confidential sort of thing.”
+
+I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation
+might have been one of the crises of my life. But, because the offer
+was obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no
+choice except to cut him off there.
+
+“I’ve got my hands full,” I said. “I’m much obliged but I couldn’t
+take on any more work.”
+
+“You wouldn’t have to do any business with Wolfshiem.” Evidently he
+thought that I was shying away from the “gonnegtion” mentioned at
+lunch, but I assured him he was wrong. He waited a moment longer,
+hoping I’d begin a conversation, but I was too absorbed to be
+responsive, so he went unwillingly home.
+
+The evening had made me lightheaded and happy; I think I walked into a
+deep sleep as I entered my front door. So I don’t know whether or not
+Gatsby went to Coney Island, or for how many hours he “glanced into
+rooms” while his house blazed gaudily on. I called up Daisy from the
+office next morning, and invited her to come to tea.
+
+“Don’t bring Tom,” I warned her.
+
+“What?”
+
+“Don’t bring Tom.”
+
+“Who is ‘Tom’?” she asked innocently.
+
+The day agreed upon was pouring rain. At eleven o’clock a man in a
+raincoat, dragging a lawn-mower, tapped at my front door and said that
+Mr. Gatsby had sent him over to cut my grass. This reminded me that I
+had forgotten to tell my Finn to come back, so I drove into West Egg
+Village to search for her among soggy whitewashed alleys and to buy
+some cups and lemons and flowers.
+
+The flowers were unnecessary, for at two o’clock a greenhouse arrived
+from Gatsby’s, with innumerable receptacles to contain it. An hour
+later the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby in a white flannel
+suit, silver shirt, and gold-coloured tie, hurried in. He was pale,
+and there were dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes.
+
+“Is everything all right?” he asked immediately.
+
+“The grass looks fine, if that’s what you mean.”
+
+“What grass?” he inquired blankly. “Oh, the grass in the yard.” He
+looked out the window at it, but, judging from his expression, I don’t
+believe he saw a thing.
+
+“Looks very good,” he remarked vaguely. “One of the papers said they
+thought the rain would stop about four. I think it was The
+Journal. Have you got everything you need in the shape of—of tea?”
+
+I took him into the pantry, where he looked a little reproachfully at
+the Finn. Together we scrutinized the twelve lemon cakes from the
+delicatessen shop.
+
+“Will they do?” I asked.
+
+“Of course, of course! They’re fine!” and he added hollowly, “… old
+sport.”
+
+The rain cooled about half-past three to a damp mist, through which
+occasional thin drops swam like dew. Gatsby looked with vacant eyes
+through a copy of Clay’s Economics, starting at the Finnish tread that
+shook the kitchen floor, and peering towards the bleared windows from
+time to time as if a series of invisible but alarming happenings were
+taking place outside. Finally he got up and informed me, in an
+uncertain voice, that he was going home.
+
+“Why’s that?”
+
+“Nobody’s coming to tea. It’s too late!” He looked at his watch as if
+there was some pressing demand on his time elsewhere. “I can’t wait
+all day.”
+
+“Don’t be silly; it’s just two minutes to four.”
+
+He sat down miserably, as if I had pushed him, and simultaneously
+there was the sound of a motor turning into my lane. We both jumped
+up, and, a little harrowed myself, I went out into the yard.
+
+Under the dripping bare lilac-trees a large open car was coming up the
+drive. It stopped. Daisy’s face, tipped sideways beneath a
+three-cornered lavender hat, looked out at me with a bright ecstatic
+smile.
+
+“Is this absolutely where you live, my dearest one?”
+
+The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain. I
+had to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear
+alone, before any words came through. A damp streak of hair lay like a
+dash of blue paint across her cheek, and her hand was wet with
+glistening drops as I took it to help her from the car.
+
+“Are you in love with me,” she said low in my ear, “or why did I have
+to come alone?”
+
+“That’s the secret of Castle Rackrent. Tell your chauffeur to go far
+away and spend an hour.”
+
+“Come back in an hour, Ferdie.” Then in a grave murmur: “His name is
+Ferdie.”
+
+“Does the gasoline affect his nose?”
+
+“I don’t think so,” she said innocently. “Why?”
+
+We went in. To my overwhelming surprise the living-room was deserted.
+
+“Well, that’s funny,” I exclaimed.
+
+“What’s funny?”
+
+She turned her head as there was a light dignified knocking at the
+front door. I went out and opened it. Gatsby, pale as death, with his
+hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a
+puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes.
+
+With his hands still in his coat pockets he stalked by me into the
+hall, turned sharply as if he were on a wire, and disappeared into the
+living-room. It wasn’t a bit funny. Aware of the loud beating of my
+own heart I pulled the door to against the increasing rain.
+
+For half a minute there wasn’t a sound. Then from the living-room I
+heard a sort of choking murmur and part of a laugh, followed by
+Daisy’s voice on a clear artificial note:
+
+“I certainly am awfully glad to see you again.”
+
+A pause; it endured horribly. I had nothing to do in the hall, so I
+went into the room.
+
+Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the
+mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of
+boredom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face
+of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position his distraught
+eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but graceful,
+on the edge of a stiff chair.
+
+“We’ve met before,” muttered Gatsby. His eyes glanced momentarily at
+me, and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily
+the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his
+head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and
+set it back in place. Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm
+of the sofa and his chin in his hand.
+
+“I’m sorry about the clock,” he said.
+
+My own face had now assumed a deep tropical burn. I couldn’t muster up
+a single commonplace out of the thousand in my head.
+
+“It’s an old clock,” I told them idiotically.
+
+I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on
+the floor.
+
+“We haven’t met for many years,” said Daisy, her voice as
+matter-of-fact as it could ever be.
+
+“Five years next November.”
+
+The automatic quality of Gatsby’s answer set us all back at least
+another minute. I had them both on their feet with the desperate
+suggestion that they help me make tea in the kitchen when the demoniac
+Finn brought it in on a tray.
+
+Amid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes a certain physical
+decency established itself. Gatsby got himself into a shadow and,
+while Daisy and I talked, looked conscientiously from one to the other
+of us with tense, unhappy eyes. However, as calmness wasn’t an end in
+itself, I made an excuse at the first possible moment, and got to my
+feet.
+
+“Where are you going?” demanded Gatsby in immediate alarm.
+
+“I’ll be back.”
+
+“I’ve got to speak to you about something before you go.”
+
+He followed me wildly into the kitchen, closed the door, and
+whispered: “Oh, God!” in a miserable way.
+
+“What’s the matter?”
+
+“This is a terrible mistake,” he said, shaking his head from side to
+side, “a terrible, terrible mistake.”
+
+“You’re just embarrassed, that’s all,” and luckily I added: “Daisy’s
+embarrassed too.”
+
+“She’s embarrassed?” he repeated incredulously.
+
+“Just as much as you are.”
+
+“Don’t talk so loud.”
+
+“You’re acting like a little boy,” I broke out impatiently. “Not only
+that, but you’re rude. Daisy’s sitting in there all alone.”
+
+He raised his hand to stop my words, looked at me with unforgettable
+reproach, and, opening the door cautiously, went back into the other
+room.
+
+I walked out the back way—just as Gatsby had when he had made his
+nervous circuit of the house half an hour before—and ran for a huge
+black knotted tree, whose massed leaves made a fabric against the
+rain. Once more it was pouring, and my irregular lawn, well-shaved by
+Gatsby’s gardener, abounded in small muddy swamps and prehistoric
+marshes. There was nothing to look at from under the tree except
+Gatsby’s enormous house, so I stared at it, like Kant at his church
+steeple, for half an hour. A brewer had built it early in the “period”
+craze, a decade before, and there was a story that he’d agreed to pay
+five years’ taxes on all the neighbouring cottages if the owners would
+have their roofs thatched with straw. Perhaps their refusal took the
+heart out of his plan to Found a Family—he went into an immediate
+decline. His children sold his house with the black wreath still on
+the door. Americans, while willing, even eager, to be serfs, have
+always been obstinate about being peasantry.
+
+After half an hour, the sun shone again, and the grocer’s automobile
+rounded Gatsby’s drive with the raw material for his servants’
+dinner—I felt sure he wouldn’t eat a spoonful. A maid began opening
+the upper windows of his house, appeared momentarily in each, and,
+leaning from the large central bay, spat meditatively into the
+garden. It was time I went back. While the rain continued it had
+seemed like the murmur of their voices, rising and swelling a little
+now and then with gusts of emotion. But in the new silence I felt that
+silence had fallen within the house too.
+
+I went in—after making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of
+pushing over the stove—but I don’t believe they heard a sound. They
+were sitting at either end of the couch, looking at each other as if
+some question had been asked, or was in the air, and every vestige of
+embarrassment was gone. Daisy’s face was smeared with tears, and when
+I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief
+before a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply
+confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of
+exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little
+room.
+
+“Oh, hello, old sport,” he said, as if he hadn’t seen me for years. I
+thought for a moment he was going to shake hands.
+
+“It’s stopped raining.”
+
+“Has it?” When he realized what I was talking about, that there were
+twinkle-bells of sunshine in the room, he smiled like a weather man,
+like an ecstatic patron of recurrent light, and repeated the news to
+Daisy. “What do you think of that? It’s stopped raining.”
+
+“I’m glad, Jay.” Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told
+only of her unexpected joy.
+
+“I want you and Daisy to come over to my house,” he said, “I’d like to
+show her around.”
+
+“You’re sure you want me to come?”
+
+“Absolutely, old sport.”
+
+Daisy went upstairs to wash her face—too late I thought with
+humiliation of my towels—while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn.
+
+“My house looks well, doesn’t it?” he demanded. “See how the whole
+front of it catches the light.”
+
+I agreed that it was splendid.
+
+“Yes.” His eyes went over it, every arched door and square tower. “It
+took me just three years to earn the money that bought it.”
+
+“I thought you inherited your money.”
+
+“I did, old sport,” he said automatically, “but I lost most of it in
+the big panic—the panic of the war.”
+
+I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what
+business he was in he answered: “That’s my affair,” before he realized
+that it wasn’t an appropriate reply.
+
+“Oh, I’ve been in several things,” he corrected himself. “I was in the
+drug business and then I was in the oil business. But I’m not in
+either one now.” He looked at me with more attention. “Do you mean
+you’ve been thinking over what I proposed the other night?”
+
+Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the house and two rows of
+brass buttons on her dress gleamed in the sunlight.
+
+“That huge place there?” she cried pointing.
+
+“Do you like it?”
+
+“I love it, but I don’t see how you live there all alone.”
+
+“I keep it always full of interesting people, night and day. People
+who do interesting things. Celebrated people.”
+
+Instead of taking the shortcut along the Sound we went down to the
+road and entered by the big postern. With enchanting murmurs Daisy
+admired this aspect or that of the feudal silhouette against the sky,
+admired the gardens, the sparkling odour of jonquils and the frothy
+odour of hawthorn and plum blossoms and the pale gold odour of
+kiss-me-at-the-gate. It was strange to reach the marble steps and find
+no stir of bright dresses in and out the door, and hear no sound but
+bird voices in the trees.
+
+And inside, as we wandered through Marie Antoinette music-rooms and
+Restoration Salons, I felt that there were guests concealed behind
+every couch and table, under orders to be breathlessly silent until we
+had passed through. As Gatsby closed the door of “the Merton College
+Library” I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into
+ghostly laughter.
+
+We went upstairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender
+silk and vivid with new flowers, through dressing-rooms and poolrooms,
+and bathrooms with sunken baths—intruding into one chamber where a
+dishevelled man in pyjamas was doing liver exercises on the floor. It
+was Mr. Klipspringer, the “boarder.” I had seen him wandering hungrily
+about the beach that morning. Finally we came to Gatsby’s own
+apartment, a bedroom and a bath, and an Adam’s study, where we sat
+down and drank a glass of some Chartreuse he took from a cupboard in
+the wall.
+
+He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued
+everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew
+from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes too, he stared around at his
+possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding
+presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a
+flight of stairs.
+
+His bedroom was the simplest room of all—except where the dresser was
+garnished with a toilet set of pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush
+with delight, and smoothed her hair, whereupon Gatsby sat down and
+shaded his eyes and began to laugh.
+
+“It’s the funniest thing, old sport,” he said hilariously. “I
+can’t—When I try to—”
+
+He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a
+third. After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed
+with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long,
+dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to
+speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction,
+he was running down like an over-wound clock.
+
+Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent
+cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and
+his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.
+
+“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a
+selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”
+
+He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one,
+before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel,
+which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in
+many-coloured disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft
+rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in
+coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of
+indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into
+the shirts and began to cry stormily.
+
+“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the
+thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such
+beautiful shirts before.”
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swimming pool, and
+the hydroplane, and the midsummer flowers—but outside Gatsby’s window
+it began to rain again, so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated
+surface of the Sound.
+
+“If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,”
+said Gatsby. “You always have a green light that burns all night at
+the end of your dock.”
+
+Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what
+he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal
+significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the
+great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very
+near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to
+the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of
+enchanted objects had diminished by one.
+
+I began to walk about the room, examining various indefinite objects
+in the half darkness. A large photograph of an elderly man in yachting
+costume attracted me, hung on the wall over his desk.
+
+“Who’s this?”
+
+“That? That’s Mr. Dan Cody, old sport.”
+
+The name sounded faintly familiar.
+
+“He’s dead now. He used to be my best friend years ago.”
+
+There was a small picture of Gatsby, also in yachting costume, on the
+bureau—Gatsby with his head thrown back defiantly—taken apparently
+when he was about eighteen.
+
+“I adore it,” exclaimed Daisy. “The pompadour! You never told me you
+had a pompadour—or a yacht.”
+
+“Look at this,” said Gatsby quickly. “Here’s a lot of clippings—about
+you.”
+
+They stood side by side examining it. I was going to ask to see the
+rubies when the phone rang, and Gatsby took up the receiver.
+
+“Yes … Well, I can’t talk now … I can’t talk now, old sport … I said a
+small town … He must know what a small town is … Well, he’s no use to
+us if Detroit is his idea of a small town …”
+
+He rang off.
+
+“Come here quick!” cried Daisy at the window.
+
+The rain was still falling, but the darkness had parted in the west,
+and there was a pink and golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea.
+
+“Look at that,” she whispered, and then after a moment: “I’d like to
+just get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you
+around.”
+
+I tried to go then, but they wouldn’t hear of it; perhaps my presence
+made them feel more satisfactorily alone.
+
+“I know what we’ll do,” said Gatsby, “we’ll have Klipspringer play the
+piano.”
+
+He went out of the room calling “Ewing!” and returned in a few minutes
+accompanied by an embarrassed, slightly worn young man, with
+shell-rimmed glasses and scanty blond hair. He was now decently
+clothed in a “sport shirt,” open at the neck, sneakers, and duck
+trousers of a nebulous hue.
+
+“Did we interrupt your exercise?” inquired Daisy politely.
+
+“I was asleep,” cried Mr. Klipspringer, in a spasm of embarrassment.
+“That is, I’d been asleep. Then I got up …”
+
+“Klipspringer plays the piano,” said Gatsby, cutting him off. “Don’t
+you, Ewing, old sport?”
+
+“I don’t play well. I don’t—hardly play at all. I’m all out of prac—”
+
+“We’ll go downstairs,” interrupted Gatsby. He flipped a switch. The
+grey windows disappeared as the house glowed full of light.
+
+In the music-room Gatsby turned on a solitary lamp beside the piano.
+He lit Daisy’s cigarette from a trembling match, and sat down with her
+on a couch far across the room, where there was no light save what the
+gleaming floor bounced in from the hall.
+
+When Klipspringer had played “The Love Nest” he turned around on the
+bench and searched unhappily for Gatsby in the gloom.
+
+“I’m all out of practice, you see. I told you I couldn’t play. I’m all
+out of prac—”
+
+“Don’t talk so much, old sport,” commanded Gatsby. “Play!”
+
+ “In the morning, In the evening, Ain’t we got fun—”
+
+Outside the wind was loud and there was a faint flow of thunder along
+the Sound. All the lights were going on in West Egg now; the electric
+trains, men-carrying, were plunging home through the rain from New
+York. It was the hour of a profound human change, and excitement was
+generating on the air.
+
+ “One thing’s sure and nothing’s surer The rich get richer and the
+ poor get—children. In the meantime, In between time—”
+
+As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of
+bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt
+had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost
+five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when
+Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but
+because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond
+her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative
+passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright
+feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can
+challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.
+
+As I watched him he adjusted himself a little, visibly. His hand took
+hold of hers, and as she said something low in his ear he turned
+toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most,
+with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be
+over-dreamed—that voice was a deathless song.
+
+They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand;
+Gatsby didn’t know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they
+looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went
+out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them
+there together.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+About this time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one
+morning at Gatsby’s door and asked him if he had anything to say.
+
+“Anything to say about what?” inquired Gatsby politely.
+
+“Why—any statement to give out.”
+
+It transpired after a confused five minutes that the man had heard
+Gatsby’s name around his office in a connection which he either
+wouldn’t reveal or didn’t fully understand. This was his day off and
+with laudable initiative he had hurried out “to see.”
+
+It was a random shot, and yet the reporter’s instinct was right.
+Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his
+hospitality and so become authorities upon his past, had increased all
+summer until he fell just short of being news. Contemporary legends
+such as the “underground pipeline to Canada” attached themselves to
+him, and there was one persistent story that he didn’t live in a house
+at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly
+up and down the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions were a
+source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn’t easy to
+say.
+
+James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had
+changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that
+witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht
+drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was
+James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a
+torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay
+Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the Tuolomee, and
+informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an
+hour.
+
+I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. His
+parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination
+had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was
+that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic
+conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means
+anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business,
+the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented
+just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be
+likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.
+
+For over a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of
+Lake Superior as a clam-digger and a salmon-fisher or in any other
+capacity that brought him food and bed. His brown, hardening body
+lived naturally through the half-fierce, half-lazy work of the bracing
+days. He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he became
+contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of
+the others because they were hysterical about things which in his
+overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted.
+
+But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque
+and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of
+ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock
+ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled
+clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his
+fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an
+oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for
+his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of
+reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on
+a fairy’s wing.
+
+An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before,
+to the small Lutheran College of St. Olaf’s in southern Minnesota. He
+stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the
+drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor’s
+work with which he was to pay his way through. Then he drifted back to
+Lake Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the
+day that Dan Cody’s yacht dropped anchor in the shallows alongshore.
+
+Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields,
+of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five. The
+transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire
+found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and,
+suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him
+from his money. The none too savoury ramifications by which Ella Kaye,
+the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and
+sent him to sea in a yacht, were common property of the turgid
+journalism in 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable
+shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz’s destiny in
+Little Girl Bay.
+
+To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck,
+that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world. I
+suppose he smiled at Cody—he had probably discovered that people liked
+him when he smiled. At any rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of
+them elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick and
+extravagantly ambitious. A few days later he took him to Duluth and
+bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white duck trousers, and a
+yachting cap. And when the Tuolomee left for the West Indies and the
+Barbary Coast, Gatsby left too.
+
+He was employed in a vague personal capacity—while he remained with
+Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even
+jailor, for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk
+might soon be about, and he provided for such contingencies by
+reposing more and more trust in Gatsby. The arrangement lasted five
+years, during which the boat went three times around the Continent.
+It might have lasted indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye
+came on board one night in Boston and a week later Dan Cody
+inhospitably died.
+
+I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby’s bedroom, a grey, florid
+man with a hard, empty face—the pioneer debauchee, who during one
+phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage
+violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly due to
+Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay
+parties women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he
+formed the habit of letting liquor alone.
+
+And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five
+thousand dollars. He didn’t get it. He never understood the legal
+device that was used against him, but what remained of the millions
+went intact to Ella Kaye. He was left with his singularly appropriate
+education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the
+substantiality of a man.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+He told me all this very much later, but I’ve put it down here with
+the idea of exploding those first wild rumours about his antecedents,
+which weren’t even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a time
+of confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and
+nothing about him. So I take advantage of this short halt, while
+Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of
+misconceptions away.
+
+It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. For several
+weeks I didn’t see him or hear his voice on the phone—mostly I was in
+New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself
+with her senile aunt—but finally I went over to his house one Sunday
+afternoon. I hadn’t been there two minutes when somebody brought Tom
+Buchanan in for a drink. I was startled, naturally, but the really
+surprising thing was that it hadn’t happened before.
+
+They were a party of three on horseback—Tom and a man named Sloane and
+a pretty woman in a brown riding-habit, who had been there previously.
+
+“I’m delighted to see you,” said Gatsby, standing on his porch. “I’m
+delighted that you dropped in.”
+
+As though they cared!
+
+“Sit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar.” He walked around the
+room quickly, ringing bells. “I’ll have something to drink for you in
+just a minute.”
+
+He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he
+would be uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in
+a vague way that that was all they came for. Mr. Sloane wanted
+nothing. A lemonade? No, thanks. A little champagne? Nothing at all,
+thanks … I’m sorry—
+
+“Did you have a nice ride?”
+
+“Very good roads around here.”
+
+“I suppose the automobiles—”
+
+“Yeah.”
+
+Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom, who had
+accepted the introduction as a stranger.
+
+“I believe we’ve met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Tom, gruffly polite, but obviously not remembering.
+“So we did. I remember very well.”
+
+“About two weeks ago.”
+
+“That’s right. You were with Nick here.”
+
+“I know your wife,” continued Gatsby, almost aggressively.
+
+“That so?”
+
+Tom turned to me.
+
+“You live near here, Nick?”
+
+“Next door.”
+
+“That so?”
+
+Mr. Sloane didn’t enter into the conversation, but lounged back
+haughtily in his chair; the woman said nothing either—until
+unexpectedly, after two highballs, she became cordial.
+
+“We’ll all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby,” she suggested.
+“What do you say?”
+
+“Certainly; I’d be delighted to have you.”
+
+“Be ver’ nice,” said Mr. Sloane, without gratitude. “Well—think ought
+to be starting home.”
+
+“Please don’t hurry,” Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself
+now, and he wanted to see more of Tom. “Why don’t you—why don’t you
+stay for supper? I wouldn’t be surprised if some other people dropped
+in from New York.”
+
+“You come to supper with me,” said the lady enthusiastically. “Both of
+you.”
+
+This included me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet.
+
+“Come along,” he said—but to her only.
+
+“I mean it,” she insisted. “I’d love to have you. Lots of room.”
+
+Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go and he didn’t see
+that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn’t.
+
+“I’m afraid I won’t be able to,” I said.
+
+“Well, you come,” she urged, concentrating on Gatsby.
+
+Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear.
+
+“We won’t be late if we start now,” she insisted aloud.
+
+“I haven’t got a horse,” said Gatsby. “I used to ride in the army, but
+I’ve never bought a horse. I’ll have to follow you in my car. Excuse
+me for just a minute.”
+
+The rest of us walked out on the porch, where Sloane and the lady
+began an impassioned conversation aside.
+
+“My God, I believe the man’s coming,” said Tom. “Doesn’t he know she
+doesn’t want him?”
+
+“She says she does want him.”
+
+“She has a big dinner party and he won’t know a soul there.” He
+frowned. “I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be
+old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to
+suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.”
+
+Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and mounted
+their horses.
+
+“Come on,” said Mr. Sloane to Tom, “we’re late. We’ve got to go.”  And
+then to me: “Tell him we couldn’t wait, will you?”
+
+Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us exchanged a cool nod, and they
+trotted quickly down the drive, disappearing under the August foliage
+just as Gatsby, with hat and light overcoat in hand, came out the
+front door.
+
+Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy’s running around alone, for on
+the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby’s
+party. Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of
+oppressiveness—it stands out in my memory from Gatsby’s other parties
+that summer. There were the same people, or at least the same sort of
+people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-coloured,
+many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a
+pervading harshness that hadn’t been there before. Or perhaps I had
+merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete
+in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to
+nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was
+looking at it again, through Daisy’s eyes. It is invariably saddening
+to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your
+own powers of adjustment.
+
+They arrived at twilight, and, as we strolled out among the sparkling
+hundreds, Daisy’s voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat.
+
+“These things excite me so,” she whispered. “If you want to kiss me
+any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know and I’ll be glad
+to arrange it for you. Just mention my name. Or present a green card.
+I’m giving out green—”
+
+“Look around,” suggested Gatsby.
+
+“I’m looking around. I’m having a marvellous—”
+
+“You must see the faces of many people you’ve heard about.”
+
+Tom’s arrogant eyes roamed the crowd.
+
+“We don’t go around very much,” he said; “in fact, I was just thinking
+I don’t know a soul here.”
+
+“Perhaps you know that lady.” Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely
+human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white-plum tree. Tom
+and Daisy stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies
+the recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies.
+
+“She’s lovely,” said Daisy.
+
+“The man bending over her is her director.”
+
+He took them ceremoniously from group to group:
+
+“Mrs. Buchanan … and Mr. Buchanan—” After an instant’s hesitation he
+added: “the polo player.”
+
+“Oh no,” objected Tom quickly, “not me.”
+
+But evidently the sound of it pleased Gatsby for Tom remained “the
+polo player” for the rest of the evening.
+
+“I’ve never met so many celebrities,” Daisy exclaimed. “I liked that
+man—what was his name?—with the sort of blue nose.”
+
+Gatsby identified him, adding that he was a small producer.
+
+“Well, I liked him anyhow.”
+
+“I’d a little rather not be the polo player,” said Tom pleasantly,
+“I’d rather look at all these famous people in—in oblivion.”
+
+Daisy and Gatsby danced. I remember being surprised by his graceful,
+conservative foxtrot—I had never seen him dance before. Then they
+sauntered over to my house and sat on the steps for half an hour,
+while at her request I remained watchfully in the garden. “In case
+there’s a fire or a flood,” she explained, “or any act of God.”
+
+Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper
+together. “Do you mind if I eat with some people over here?” he
+said. “A fellow’s getting off some funny stuff.”
+
+“Go ahead,” answered Daisy genially, “and if you want to take down any
+addresses here’s my little gold pencil.” … She looked around after a
+moment and told me the girl was “common but pretty,” and I knew that
+except for the half-hour she’d been alone with Gatsby she wasn’t
+having a good time.
+
+We were at a particularly tipsy table. That was my fault—Gatsby had
+been called to the phone, and I’d enjoyed these same people only two
+weeks before. But what had amused me then turned septic on the air
+now.
+
+“How do you feel, Miss Baedeker?”
+
+The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my
+shoulder. At this inquiry she sat up and opened her eyes.
+
+“Wha’?”
+
+A massive and lethargic woman, who had been urging Daisy to play golf
+with her at the local club tomorrow, spoke in Miss Baedeker’s defence:
+
+“Oh, she’s all right now. When she’s had five or six cocktails she
+always starts screaming like that. I tell her she ought to leave it
+alone.”
+
+“I do leave it alone,” affirmed the accused hollowly.
+
+“We heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here: ‘There’s somebody
+that needs your help, Doc.’ ”
+
+“She’s much obliged, I’m sure,” said another friend, without
+gratitude, “but you got her dress all wet when you stuck her head in
+the pool.”
+
+“Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool,” mumbled Miss
+Baedeker. “They almost drowned me once over in New Jersey.”
+
+“Then you ought to leave it alone,” countered Doctor Civet.
+
+“Speak for yourself!” cried Miss Baedeker violently. “Your hand
+shakes. I wouldn’t let you operate on me!”
+
+It was like that. Almost the last thing I remember was standing with
+Daisy and watching the moving-picture director and his Star. They were
+still under the white-plum tree and their faces were touching except
+for a pale, thin ray of moonlight between. It occurred to me that he
+had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this
+proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate
+degree and kiss at her cheek.
+
+“I like her,” said Daisy, “I think she’s lovely.”
+
+But the rest offended her—and inarguably because it wasn’t a gesture
+but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented
+“place” that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing
+village—appalled by its raw vigour that chafed under the old
+euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants
+along a shortcut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in
+the very simplicity she failed to understand.
+
+I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car.
+It was dark here in front; only the bright door sent ten square feet
+of light volleying out into the soft black morning. Sometimes a shadow
+moved against a dressing-room blind above, gave way to another shadow,
+an indefinite procession of shadows, who rouged and powdered in an
+invisible glass.
+
+“Who is this Gatsby anyhow?” demanded Tom suddenly. “Some big
+bootlegger?”
+
+“Where’d you hear that?” I inquired.
+
+“I didn’t hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are
+just big bootleggers, you know.”
+
+“Not Gatsby,” I said shortly.
+
+He was silent for a moment. The pebbles of the drive crunched under
+his feet.
+
+“Well, he certainly must have strained himself to get this menagerie
+together.”
+
+A breeze stirred the grey haze of Daisy’s fur collar.
+
+“At least they are more interesting than the people we know,” she said
+with an effort.
+
+“You didn’t look so interested.”
+
+“Well, I was.”
+
+Tom laughed and turned to me.
+
+“Did you notice Daisy’s face when that girl asked her to put her under
+a cold shower?”
+
+Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper,
+bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and
+would never have again. When the melody rose her voice broke up
+sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each change
+tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air.
+
+“Lots of people come who haven’t been invited,” she said
+suddenly. “That girl hadn’t been invited. They simply force their way
+in and he’s too polite to object.”
+
+“I’d like to know who he is and what he does,” insisted Tom. “And I
+think I’ll make a point of finding out.”
+
+“I can tell you right now,” she answered. “He owned some drugstores, a
+lot of drugstores. He built them up himself.”
+
+The dilatory limousine came rolling up the drive.
+
+“Good night, Nick,” said Daisy.
+
+Her glance left me and sought the lighted top of the steps, where
+“Three O’Clock in the Morning,” a neat, sad little waltz of that year,
+was drifting out the open door. After all, in the very casualness of
+Gatsby’s party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from
+her world. What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling
+her back inside? What would happen now in the dim, incalculable hours?
+Perhaps some unbelievable guest would arrive, a person infinitely rare
+and to be marvelled at, some authentically radiant young girl who with
+one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would
+blot out those five years of unwavering devotion.
+
+I stayed late that night. Gatsby asked me to wait until he was free,
+and I lingered in the garden until the inevitable swimming party had
+run up, chilled and exalted, from the black beach, until the lights
+were extinguished in the guestrooms overhead. When he came down the
+steps at last the tanned skin was drawn unusually tight on his face,
+and his eyes were bright and tired.
+
+“She didn’t like it,” he said immediately.
+
+“Of course she did.”
+
+“She didn’t like it,” he insisted. “She didn’t have a good time.”
+
+He was silent, and I guessed at his unutterable depression.
+
+“I feel far away from her,” he said. “It’s hard to make her
+understand.”
+
+“You mean about the dance?”
+
+“The dance?” He dismissed all the dances he had given with a snap of
+his fingers. “Old sport, the dance is unimportant.”
+
+He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and
+say: “I never loved you.” After she had obliterated four years with
+that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be
+taken. One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back
+to Louisville and be married from her house—just as if it were five
+years ago.
+
+“And she doesn’t understand,” he said. “She used to be able to
+understand. We’d sit for hours—”
+
+He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit
+rinds and discarded favours and crushed flowers.
+
+“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the
+past.”
+
+“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you
+can!”
+
+He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the
+shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
+
+“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said,
+nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.”
+
+He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to
+recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into
+loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then,
+but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it
+all slowly, he could find out what that thing was …
+
+… One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the
+street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where
+there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They
+stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night
+with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes
+of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the
+darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the
+corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really
+formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could
+climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the
+pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.
+
+His heart beat faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He
+knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable
+visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like
+the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the
+tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At
+his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the
+incarnation was complete.
+
+Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was
+reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words,
+that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase
+tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s,
+as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled
+air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was
+uncommunicable forever.
+
+
+                                 VII
+
+It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights
+in his house failed to go on one Saturday night—and, as obscurely as
+it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over. Only gradually did I
+become aware that the automobiles which turned expectantly into his
+drive stayed for just a minute and then drove sulkily away. Wondering
+if he were sick I went over to find out—an unfamiliar butler with a
+villainous face squinted at me suspiciously from the door.
+
+“Is Mr. Gatsby sick?”
+
+“Nope.” After a pause he added “sir” in a dilatory, grudging way.
+
+“I hadn’t seen him around, and I was rather worried. Tell him Mr.
+Carraway came over.”
+
+“Who?” he demanded rudely.
+
+“Carraway.”
+
+“Carraway. All right, I’ll tell him.”
+
+Abruptly he slammed the door.
+
+My Finn informed me that Gatsby had dismissed every servant in his
+house a week ago and replaced them with half a dozen others, who never
+went into West Egg village to be bribed by the tradesmen, but ordered
+moderate supplies over the telephone. The grocery boy reported that
+the kitchen looked like a pigsty, and the general opinion in the
+village was that the new people weren’t servants at all.
+
+Next day Gatsby called me on the phone.
+
+“Going away?” I inquired.
+
+“No, old sport.”
+
+“I hear you fired all your servants.”
+
+“I wanted somebody who wouldn’t gossip. Daisy comes over quite
+often—in the afternoons.”
+
+So the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the
+disapproval in her eyes.
+
+“They’re some people Wolfshiem wanted to do something for. They’re all
+brothers and sisters. They used to run a small hotel.”
+
+“I see.”
+
+He was calling up at Daisy’s request—would I come to lunch at her
+house tomorrow? Miss Baker would be there. Half an hour later Daisy
+herself telephoned and seemed relieved to find that I was
+coming. Something was up. And yet I couldn’t believe that they would
+choose this occasion for a scene—especially for the rather harrowing
+scene that Gatsby had outlined in the garden.
+
+The next day was broiling, almost the last, certainly the warmest, of
+the summer. As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight, only
+the hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the simmering
+hush at noon. The straw seats of the car hovered on the edge of
+combustion; the woman next to me perspired delicately for a while into
+her white shirtwaist, and then, as her newspaper dampened under her
+fingers, lapsed despairingly into deep heat with a desolate cry. Her
+pocketbook slapped to the floor.
+
+“Oh, my!” she gasped.
+
+I picked it up with a weary bend and handed it back to her, holding it
+at arm’s length and by the extreme tip of the corners to indicate that
+I had no designs upon it—but everyone near by, including the woman,
+suspected me just the same.
+
+“Hot!” said the conductor to familiar faces. “Some weather! … Hot! …
+Hot! … Hot! … Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it … ?”
+
+My commutation ticket came back to me with a dark stain from his hand.
+That anyone should care in this heat whose flushed lips he kissed,
+whose head made damp the pyjama pocket over his heart!
+
+… Through the hall of the Buchanans’ house blew a faint wind, carrying
+the sound of the telephone bell out to Gatsby and me as we waited at
+the door.
+
+“The master’s body?” roared the butler into the mouthpiece. “I’m
+sorry, madame, but we can’t furnish it—it’s far too hot to touch this
+noon!”
+
+What he really said was: “Yes … Yes … I’ll see.”
+
+He set down the receiver and came toward us, glistening slightly, to
+take our stiff straw hats.
+
+“Madame expects you in the salon!” he cried, needlessly indicating the
+direction. In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the
+common store of life.
+
+The room, shadowed well with awnings, was dark and cool. Daisy and
+Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols weighing down
+their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans.
+
+“We can’t move,” they said together.
+
+Jordan’s fingers, powdered white over their tan, rested for a moment
+in mine.
+
+“And Mr. Thomas Buchanan, the athlete?” I inquired.
+
+Simultaneously I heard his voice, gruff, muffled, husky, at the hall
+telephone.
+
+Gatsby stood in the centre of the crimson carpet and gazed around with
+fascinated eyes. Daisy watched him and laughed, her sweet, exciting
+laugh; a tiny gust of powder rose from her bosom into the air.
+
+“The rumour is,” whispered Jordan, “that that’s Tom’s girl on the
+telephone.”
+
+We were silent. The voice in the hall rose high with annoyance: “Very
+well, then, I won’t sell you the car at all … I’m under no obligations
+to you at all … and as for your bothering me about it at lunch time, I
+won’t stand that at all!”
+
+“Holding down the receiver,” said Daisy cynically.
+
+“No, he’s not,” I assured her. “It’s a bona-fide deal. I happen to
+know about it.”
+
+Tom flung open the door, blocked out its space for a moment with his
+thick body, and hurried into the room.
+
+“Mr. Gatsby!” He put out his broad, flat hand with well-concealed
+dislike. “I’m glad to see you, sir … Nick …”
+
+“Make us a cold drink,” cried Daisy.
+
+As he left the room again she got up and went over to Gatsby and
+pulled his face down, kissing him on the mouth.
+
+“You know I love you,” she murmured.
+
+“You forget there’s a lady present,” said Jordan.
+
+Daisy looked around doubtfully.
+
+“You kiss Nick too.”
+
+“What a low, vulgar girl!”
+
+“I don’t care!” cried Daisy, and began to clog on the brick fireplace.
+Then she remembered the heat and sat down guiltily on the couch just
+as a freshly laundered nurse leading a little girl came into the room.
+
+“Bles-sed pre-cious,” she crooned, holding out her arms. “Come to your
+own mother that loves you.”
+
+The child, relinquished by the nurse, rushed across the room and
+rooted shyly into her mother’s dress.
+
+“The bles-sed pre-cious! Did mother get powder on your old yellowy
+hair? Stand up now, and say—How-de-do.”
+
+Gatsby and I in turn leaned down and took the small reluctant hand.
+Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don’t think he
+had ever really believed in its existence before.
+
+“I got dressed before luncheon,” said the child, turning eagerly to
+Daisy.
+
+“That’s because your mother wanted to show you off.” Her face bent
+into the single wrinkle of the small white neck. “You dream, you. You
+absolute little dream.”
+
+“Yes,” admitted the child calmly. “Aunt Jordan’s got on a white dress
+too.”
+
+“How do you like mother’s friends?” Daisy turned her around so that
+she faced Gatsby. “Do you think they’re pretty?”
+
+“Where’s Daddy?”
+
+“She doesn’t look like her father,” explained Daisy. “She looks like
+me. She’s got my hair and shape of the face.”
+
+Daisy sat back upon the couch. The nurse took a step forward and held
+out her hand.
+
+“Come, Pammy.”
+
+“Goodbye, sweetheart!”
+
+With a reluctant backward glance the well-disciplined child held to
+her nurse’s hand and was pulled out the door, just as Tom came back,
+preceding four gin rickeys that clicked full of ice.
+
+Gatsby took up his drink.
+
+“They certainly look cool,” he said, with visible tension.
+
+We drank in long, greedy swallows.
+
+“I read somewhere that the sun’s getting hotter every year,” said Tom
+genially. “It seems that pretty soon the earth’s going to fall into
+the sun—or wait a minute—it’s just the opposite—the sun’s getting
+colder every year.
+
+“Come outside,” he suggested to Gatsby, “I’d like you to have a look
+at the place.”
+
+I went with them out to the veranda. On the green Sound, stagnant in
+the heat, one small sail crawled slowly toward the fresher sea.
+Gatsby’s eyes followed it momentarily; he raised his hand and pointed
+across the bay.
+
+“I’m right across from you.”
+
+“So you are.”
+
+Our eyes lifted over the rose-beds and the hot lawn and the weedy
+refuse of the dog-days alongshore. Slowly the white wings of the boat
+moved against the blue cool limit of the sky. Ahead lay the scalloped
+ocean and the abounding blessed isles.
+
+“There’s sport for you,” said Tom, nodding. “I’d like to be out there
+with him for about an hour.”
+
+We had luncheon in the dining-room, darkened too against the heat, and
+drank down nervous gaiety with the cold ale.
+
+“What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the
+day after that, and the next thirty years?”
+
+“Don’t be morbid,” Jordan said. “Life starts all over again when it
+gets crisp in the fall.”
+
+“But it’s so hot,” insisted Daisy, on the verge of tears, “and
+everything’s so confused. Let’s all go to town!”
+
+Her voice struggled on through the heat, beating against it, moulding
+its senselessness into forms.
+
+“I’ve heard of making a garage out of a stable,” Tom was saying to
+Gatsby, “but I’m the first man who ever made a stable out of a
+garage.”
+
+“Who wants to go to town?” demanded Daisy insistently. Gatsby’s eyes
+floated toward her. “Ah,” she cried, “you look so cool.”
+
+Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in
+space. With an effort she glanced down at the table.
+
+“You always look so cool,” she repeated.
+
+She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw. He was
+astounded. His mouth opened a little, and he looked at Gatsby, and
+then back at Daisy as if he had just recognized her as someone he knew
+a long time ago.
+
+“You resemble the advertisement of the man,” she went on innocently.
+“You know the advertisement of the man—”
+
+“All right,” broke in Tom quickly, “I’m perfectly willing to go to
+town. Come on—we’re all going to town.”
+
+He got up, his eyes still flashing between Gatsby and his wife. No one
+moved.
+
+“Come on!” His temper cracked a little. “What’s the matter, anyhow?
+If we’re going to town, let’s start.”
+
+His hand, trembling with his effort at self-control, bore to his lips
+the last of his glass of ale. Daisy’s voice got us to our feet and out
+on to the blazing gravel drive.
+
+“Are we just going to go?” she objected. “Like this? Aren’t we going
+to let anyone smoke a cigarette first?”
+
+“Everybody smoked all through lunch.”
+
+“Oh, let’s have fun,” she begged him. “It’s too hot to fuss.”
+
+He didn’t answer.
+
+“Have it your own way,” she said. “Come on, Jordan.”
+
+They went upstairs to get ready while we three men stood there
+shuffling the hot pebbles with our feet. A silver curve of the moon
+hovered already in the western sky. Gatsby started to speak, changed
+his mind, but not before Tom wheeled and faced him expectantly.
+
+“Have you got your stables here?” asked Gatsby with an effort.
+
+“About a quarter of a mile down the road.”
+
+“Oh.”
+
+A pause.
+
+“I don’t see the idea of going to town,” broke out Tom savagely.
+“Women get these notions in their heads—”
+
+“Shall we take anything to drink?” called Daisy from an upper window.
+
+“I’ll get some whisky,” answered Tom. He went inside.
+
+Gatsby turned to me rigidly:
+
+“I can’t say anything in his house, old sport.”
+
+“She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of—” I
+hesitated.
+
+“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.
+
+That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that
+was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of
+it, the cymbals’ song of it … High in a white palace the king’s
+daughter, the golden girl …
+
+Tom came out of the house wrapping a quart bottle in a towel, followed
+by Daisy and Jordan wearing small tight hats of metallic cloth and
+carrying light capes over their arms.
+
+“Shall we all go in my car?” suggested Gatsby. He felt the hot, green
+leather of the seat. “I ought to have left it in the shade.”
+
+“Is it standard shift?” demanded Tom.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, you take my coupé and let me drive your car to town.”
+
+The suggestion was distasteful to Gatsby.
+
+“I don’t think there’s much gas,” he objected.
+
+“Plenty of gas,” said Tom boisterously. He looked at the gauge. “And
+if it runs out I can stop at a drugstore. You can buy anything at a
+drugstore nowadays.”
+
+A pause followed this apparently pointless remark. Daisy looked at Tom
+frowning, and an indefinable expression, at once definitely unfamiliar
+and vaguely recognizable, as if I had only heard it described in
+words, passed over Gatsby’s face.
+
+“Come on, Daisy,” said Tom, pressing her with his hand toward Gatsby’s
+car. “I’ll take you in this circus wagon.”
+
+He opened the door, but she moved out from the circle of his arm.
+
+“You take Nick and Jordan. We’ll follow you in the coupé.”
+
+She walked close to Gatsby, touching his coat with her hand. Jordan
+and Tom and I got into the front seat of Gatsby’s car, Tom pushed the
+unfamiliar gears tentatively, and we shot off into the oppressive
+heat, leaving them out of sight behind.
+
+“Did you see that?” demanded Tom.
+
+“See what?”
+
+He looked at me keenly, realizing that Jordan and I must have known
+all along.
+
+“You think I’m pretty dumb, don’t you?” he suggested. “Perhaps I am,
+but I have a—almost a second sight, sometimes, that tells me what to
+do. Maybe you don’t believe that, but science—”
+
+He paused. The immediate contingency overtook him, pulled him back
+from the edge of theoretical abyss.
+
+“I’ve made a small investigation of this fellow,” he continued. “I
+could have gone deeper if I’d known—”
+
+“Do you mean you’ve been to a medium?” inquired Jordan humorously.
+
+“What?” Confused, he stared at us as we laughed. “A medium?”
+
+“About Gatsby.”
+
+“About Gatsby! No, I haven’t. I said I’d been making a small
+investigation of his past.”
+
+“And you found he was an Oxford man,” said Jordan helpfully.
+
+“An Oxford man!” He was incredulous. “Like hell he is! He wears a pink
+suit.”
+
+“Nevertheless he’s an Oxford man.”
+
+“Oxford, New Mexico,” snorted Tom contemptuously, “or something like
+that.”
+
+“Listen, Tom. If you’re such a snob, why did you invite him to lunch?”
+demanded Jordan crossly.
+
+“Daisy invited him; she knew him before we were married—God knows
+where!”
+
+We were all irritable now with the fading ale, and aware of it we
+drove for a while in silence. Then as Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s faded
+eyes came into sight down the road, I remembered Gatsby’s caution
+about gasoline.
+
+“We’ve got enough to get us to town,” said Tom.
+
+“But there’s a garage right here,” objected Jordan. “I don’t want to
+get stalled in this baking heat.”
+
+Tom threw on both brakes impatiently, and we slid to an abrupt dusty
+stop under Wilson’s sign. After a moment the proprietor emerged from
+the interior of his establishment and gazed hollow-eyed at the car.
+
+“Let’s have some gas!” cried Tom roughly. “What do you think we
+stopped for—to admire the view?”
+
+“I’m sick,” said Wilson without moving. “Been sick all day.”
+
+“What’s the matter?”
+
+“I’m all run down.”
+
+“Well, shall I help myself?” Tom demanded. “You sounded well enough on
+the phone.”
+
+With an effort Wilson left the shade and support of the doorway and,
+breathing hard, unscrewed the cap of the tank. In the sunlight his
+face was green.
+
+“I didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch,” he said. “But I need money
+pretty bad, and I was wondering what you were going to do with your
+old car.”
+
+“How do you like this one?” inquired Tom. “I bought it last week.”
+
+“It’s a nice yellow one,” said Wilson, as he strained at the handle.
+
+“Like to buy it?”
+
+“Big chance,” Wilson smiled faintly. “No, but I could make some money
+on the other.”
+
+“What do you want money for, all of a sudden?”
+
+“I’ve been here too long. I want to get away. My wife and I want to go
+West.”
+
+“Your wife does,” exclaimed Tom, startled.
+
+“She’s been talking about it for ten years.” He rested for a moment
+against the pump, shading his eyes. “And now she’s going whether she
+wants to or not. I’m going to get her away.”
+
+The coupé flashed by us with a flurry of dust and the flash of a
+waving hand.
+
+“What do I owe you?” demanded Tom harshly.
+
+“I just got wised up to something funny the last two days,” remarked
+Wilson. “That’s why I want to get away. That’s why I been bothering
+you about the car.”
+
+“What do I owe you?”
+
+“Dollar twenty.”
+
+The relentless beating heat was beginning to confuse me and I had a
+bad moment there before I realized that so far his suspicions hadn’t
+alighted on Tom. He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life
+apart from him in another world, and the shock had made him physically
+sick. I stared at him and then at Tom, who had made a parallel
+discovery less than an hour before—and it occurred to me that there
+was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as
+the difference between the sick and the well. Wilson was so sick that
+he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty—as if he had just got some poor
+girl with child.
+
+“I’ll let you have that car,” said Tom. “I’ll send it over tomorrow
+afternoon.”
+
+That locality was always vaguely disquieting, even in the broad glare
+of afternoon, and now I turned my head as though I had been warned of
+something behind. Over the ash-heaps the giant eyes of Doctor T. J.
+Eckleburg kept their vigil, but I perceived, after a moment, that
+other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity from less than
+twenty feet away.
+
+In one of the windows over the garage the curtains had been moved
+aside a little, and Myrtle Wilson was peering down at the car. So
+engrossed was she that she had no consciousness of being observed, and
+one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a
+slowly developing picture. Her expression was curiously familiar—it
+was an expression I had often seen on women’s faces, but on Myrtle
+Wilson’s face it seemed purposeless and inexplicable until I realized
+that her eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on
+Jordan Baker, whom she took to be his wife.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we
+drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his
+mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping
+precipitately from his control. Instinct made him step on the
+accelerator with the double purpose of overtaking Daisy and leaving
+Wilson behind, and we sped along toward Astoria at fifty miles an
+hour, until, among the spidery girders of the elevated, we came in
+sight of the easygoing blue coupé.
+
+“Those big movies around Fiftieth Street are cool,” suggested
+Jordan. “I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone’s away.
+There’s something very sensuous about it—overripe, as if all sorts of
+funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.”
+
+The word “sensuous” had the effect of further disquieting Tom, but
+before he could invent a protest the coupé came to a stop, and Daisy
+signalled us to draw up alongside.
+
+“Where are we going?” she cried.
+
+“How about the movies?”
+
+“It’s so hot,” she complained. “You go. We’ll ride around and meet you
+after.” With an effort her wit rose faintly. “We’ll meet you on some
+corner. I’ll be the man smoking two cigarettes.”
+
+“We can’t argue about it here,” Tom said impatiently, as a truck gave
+out a cursing whistle behind us. “You follow me to the south side of
+Central Park, in front of the Plaza.”
+
+Several times he turned his head and looked back for their car, and if
+the traffic delayed them he slowed up until they came into sight. I
+think he was afraid they would dart down a side-street and out of his
+life forever.
+
+But they didn’t. And we all took the less explicable step of engaging
+the parlour of a suite in the Plaza Hotel.
+
+The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into
+that room eludes me, though I have a sharp physical memory that, in
+the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around
+my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back.
+The notion originated with Daisy’s suggestion that we hire five
+bathrooms and take cold baths, and then assumed more tangible form as
+“a place to have a mint julep.” Each of us said over and over that it
+was a “crazy idea”—we all talked at once to a baffled clerk and
+thought, or pretended to think, that we were being very funny …
+
+The room was large and stifling, and, though it was already four
+o’clock, opening the windows admitted only a gust of hot shrubbery
+from the Park. Daisy went to the mirror and stood with her back to us,
+fixing her hair.
+
+“It’s a swell suite,” whispered Jordan respectfully, and everyone
+laughed.
+
+“Open another window,” commanded Daisy, without turning around.
+
+“There aren’t any more.”
+
+“Well, we’d better telephone for an axe—”
+
+“The thing to do is to forget about the heat,” said Tom impatiently.
+“You make it ten times worse by crabbing about it.”
+
+He unrolled the bottle of whisky from the towel and put it on the
+table.
+
+“Why not let her alone, old sport?” remarked Gatsby. “You’re the one
+that wanted to come to town.”
+
+There was a moment of silence. The telephone book slipped from its
+nail and splashed to the floor, whereupon Jordan whispered, “Excuse
+me”—but this time no one laughed.
+
+“I’ll pick it up,” I offered.
+
+“I’ve got it.” Gatsby examined the parted string, muttered “Hum!” in
+an interested way, and tossed the book on a chair.
+
+“That’s a great expression of yours, isn’t it?” said Tom sharply.
+
+“What is?”
+
+“All this ‘old sport’ business. Where’d you pick that up?”
+
+“Now see here, Tom,” said Daisy, turning around from the mirror, “if
+you’re going to make personal remarks I won’t stay here a minute.
+Call up and order some ice for the mint julep.”
+
+As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into sound
+and we were listening to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn’s
+Wedding March from the ballroom below.
+
+“Imagine marrying anybody in this heat!” cried Jordan dismally.
+
+“Still—I was married in the middle of June,” Daisy remembered.
+“Louisville in June! Somebody fainted. Who was it fainted, Tom?”
+
+“Biloxi,” he answered shortly.
+
+“A man named Biloxi. ‘Blocks’ Biloxi, and he made boxes—that’s a
+fact—and he was from Biloxi, Tennessee.”
+
+“They carried him into my house,” appended Jordan, “because we lived
+just two doors from the church. And he stayed three weeks, until Daddy
+told him he had to get out. The day after he left Daddy died.”  After
+a moment she added as if she might have sounded irreverent, “There
+wasn’t any connection.”
+
+“I used to know a Bill Biloxi from Memphis,” I remarked.
+
+“That was his cousin. I knew his whole family history before he
+left. He gave me an aluminium putter that I use today.”
+
+The music had died down as the ceremony began and now a long cheer
+floated in at the window, followed by intermittent cries of
+“Yea—ea—ea!” and finally by a burst of jazz as the dancing began.
+
+“We’re getting old,” said Daisy. “If we were young we’d rise and
+dance.”
+
+“Remember Biloxi,” Jordan warned her. “Where’d you know him, Tom?”
+
+“Biloxi?” He concentrated with an effort. “I didn’t know him. He was a
+friend of Daisy’s.”
+
+“He was not,” she denied. “I’d never seen him before. He came down in
+the private car.”
+
+“Well, he said he knew you. He said he was raised in Louisville. Asa
+Bird brought him around at the last minute and asked if we had room
+for him.”
+
+Jordan smiled.
+
+“He was probably bumming his way home. He told me he was president of
+your class at Yale.”
+
+Tom and I looked at each other blankly.
+
+“Biloxi?”
+
+“First place, we didn’t have any president—”
+
+Gatsby’s foot beat a short, restless tattoo and Tom eyed him suddenly.
+
+“By the way, Mr. Gatsby, I understand you’re an Oxford man.”
+
+“Not exactly.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I understand you went to Oxford.”
+
+“Yes—I went there.”
+
+A pause. Then Tom’s voice, incredulous and insulting:
+
+“You must have gone there about the time Biloxi went to New Haven.”
+
+Another pause. A waiter knocked and came in with crushed mint and ice
+but the silence was unbroken by his “thank you” and the soft closing
+of the door. This tremendous detail was to be cleared up at last.
+
+“I told you I went there,” said Gatsby.
+
+“I heard you, but I’d like to know when.”
+
+“It was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months. That’s why I
+can’t really call myself an Oxford man.”
+
+Tom glanced around to see if we mirrored his unbelief. But we were all
+looking at Gatsby.
+
+“It was an opportunity they gave to some of the officers after the
+armistice,” he continued. “We could go to any of the universities in
+England or France.”
+
+I wanted to get up and slap him on the back. I had one of those
+renewals of complete faith in him that I’d experienced before.
+
+Daisy rose, smiling faintly, and went to the table.
+
+“Open the whisky, Tom,” she ordered, “and I’ll make you a mint julep.
+Then you won’t seem so stupid to yourself … Look at the mint!”
+
+“Wait a minute,” snapped Tom, “I want to ask Mr. Gatsby one more
+question.”
+
+“Go on,” Gatsby said politely.
+
+“What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house anyhow?”
+
+They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content.
+
+“He isn’t causing a row,” Daisy looked desperately from one to the
+other. “You’re causing a row. Please have a little self-control.”
+
+“Self-control!” repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest
+thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your
+wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out … Nowadays people
+begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next
+they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between
+black and white.”
+
+Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone
+on the last barrier of civilization.
+
+“We’re all white here,” murmured Jordan.
+
+“I know I’m not very popular. I don’t give big parties. I suppose
+you’ve got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any
+friends—in the modern world.”
+
+Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh whenever he
+opened his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was so
+complete.
+
+“I’ve got something to tell you, old sport—” began Gatsby. But Daisy
+guessed at his intention.
+
+“Please don’t!” she interrupted helplessly. “Please let’s all go
+home. Why don’t we all go home?”
+
+“That’s a good idea,” I got up. “Come on, Tom. Nobody wants a drink.”
+
+“I want to know what Mr. Gatsby has to tell me.”
+
+“Your wife doesn’t love you,” said Gatsby. “She’s never loved you.
+She loves me.”
+
+“You must be crazy!” exclaimed Tom automatically.
+
+Gatsby sprang to his feet, vivid with excitement.
+
+“She never loved you, do you hear?” he cried. “She only married you
+because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a
+terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone except me!”
+
+At this point Jordan and I tried to go, but Tom and Gatsby insisted
+with competitive firmness that we remain—as though neither of them had
+anything to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake vicariously
+of their emotions.
+
+“Sit down, Daisy,” Tom’s voice groped unsuccessfully for the paternal
+note. “What’s been going on? I want to hear all about it.”
+
+“I told you what’s been going on,” said Gatsby. “Going on for five
+years—and you didn’t know.”
+
+Tom turned to Daisy sharply.
+
+“You’ve been seeing this fellow for five years?”
+
+“Not seeing,” said Gatsby. “No, we couldn’t meet. But both of us loved
+each other all that time, old sport, and you didn’t know. I used to
+laugh sometimes”—but there was no laughter in his eyes—“to think that
+you didn’t know.”
+
+“Oh—that’s all.” Tom tapped his thick fingers together like a
+clergyman and leaned back in his chair.
+
+“You’re crazy!” he exploded. “I can’t speak about what happened five
+years ago, because I didn’t know Daisy then—and I’ll be damned if I
+see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries
+to the back door. But all the rest of that’s a God damned lie. Daisy
+loved me when she married me and she loves me now.”
+
+“No,” said Gatsby, shaking his head.
+
+“She does, though. The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish
+ideas in her head and doesn’t know what she’s doing.” He nodded
+sagely. “And what’s more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off
+on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in
+my heart I love her all the time.”
+
+“You’re revolting,” said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice,
+dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: “Do
+you know why we left Chicago? I’m surprised that they didn’t treat you
+to the story of that little spree.”
+
+Gatsby walked over and stood beside her.
+
+“Daisy, that’s all over now,” he said earnestly. “It doesn’t matter
+any more. Just tell him the truth—that you never loved him—and it’s
+all wiped out forever.”
+
+She looked at him blindly. “Why—how could I love him—possibly?”
+
+“You never loved him.”
+
+She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal,
+as though she realized at last what she was doing—and as though she
+had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done
+now. It was too late.
+
+“I never loved him,” she said, with perceptible reluctance.
+
+“Not at Kapiolani?” demanded Tom suddenly.
+
+“No.”
+
+From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were
+drifting up on hot waves of air.
+
+“Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your
+shoes dry?” There was a husky tenderness in his tone … “Daisy?”
+
+“Please don’t.” Her voice was cold, but the rancour was gone from it.
+She looked at Gatsby. “There, Jay,” she said—but her hand as she tried
+to light a cigarette was trembling. Suddenly she threw the cigarette
+and the burning match on the carpet.
+
+“Oh, you want too much!” she cried to Gatsby. “I love you now—isn’t
+that enough? I can’t help what’s past.” She began to sob
+helplessly. “I did love him once—but I loved you too.”
+
+Gatsby’s eyes opened and closed.
+
+“You loved me too?” he repeated.
+
+“Even that’s a lie,” said Tom savagely. “She didn’t know you were
+alive. Why—there’s things between Daisy and me that you’ll never know,
+things that neither of us can ever forget.”
+
+The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
+
+“I want to speak to Daisy alone,” he insisted. “She’s all excited
+now—”
+
+“Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom,” she admitted in a pitiful
+voice. “It wouldn’t be true.”
+
+“Of course it wouldn’t,” agreed Tom.
+
+She turned to her husband.
+
+“As if it mattered to you,” she said.
+
+“Of course it matters. I’m going to take better care of you from now
+on.”
+
+“You don’t understand,” said Gatsby, with a touch of panic. “You’re
+not going to take care of her any more.”
+
+“I’m not?” Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could afford to
+control himself now. “Why’s that?”
+
+“Daisy’s leaving you.”
+
+“Nonsense.”
+
+“I am, though,” she said with a visible effort.
+
+“She’s not leaving me!” Tom’s words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby.
+“Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he
+put on her finger.”
+
+“I won’t stand this!” cried Daisy. “Oh, please let’s get out.”
+
+“Who are you, anyhow?” broke out Tom. “You’re one of that bunch that
+hangs around with Meyer Wolfshiem—that much I happen to know. I’ve
+made a little investigation into your affairs—and I’ll carry it
+further tomorrow.”
+
+“You can suit yourself about that, old sport,” said Gatsby steadily.
+
+“I found out what your ‘drugstores’ were.” He turned to us and spoke
+rapidly. “He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street
+drugstores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the
+counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a
+bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong.”
+
+“What about it?” said Gatsby politely. “I guess your friend Walter
+Chase wasn’t too proud to come in on it.”
+
+“And you left him in the lurch, didn’t you? You let him go to jail for
+a month over in New Jersey. God! You ought to hear Walter on the
+subject of you.”
+
+“He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some money, old
+sport.”
+
+“Don’t you call me ‘old sport’!” cried Tom. Gatsby said
+nothing. “Walter could have you up on the betting laws too, but
+Wolfshiem scared him into shutting his mouth.”
+
+That unfamiliar yet recognizable look was back again in Gatsby’s face.
+
+“That drugstore business was just small change,” continued Tom slowly,
+“but you’ve got something on now that Walter’s afraid to tell me
+about.”
+
+I glanced at Daisy, who was staring terrified between Gatsby and her
+husband, and at Jordan, who had begun to balance an invisible but
+absorbing object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to
+Gatsby—and was startled at his expression. He looked—and this is said
+in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden—as if he had
+“killed a man.” For a moment the set of his face could be described in
+just that fantastic way.
+
+It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying
+everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been
+made. But with every word she was drawing further and further into
+herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the
+afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible,
+struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across
+the room.
+
+The voice begged again to go.
+
+“Please, Tom! I can’t stand this any more.”
+
+Her frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, whatever courage
+she had had, were definitely gone.
+
+“You two start on home, Daisy,” said Tom. “In Mr. Gatsby’s car.”
+
+She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous
+scorn.
+
+“Go on. He won’t annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous
+little flirtation is over.”
+
+They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental,
+isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity.
+
+After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened bottle of
+whisky in the towel.
+
+“Want any of this stuff? Jordan? … Nick?”
+
+I didn’t answer.
+
+“Nick?” He asked again.
+
+“What?”
+
+“Want any?”
+
+“No … I just remembered that today’s my birthday.”
+
+I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a
+new decade.
+
+It was seven o’clock when we got into the coupé with him and started
+for Long Island. Tom talked incessantly, exulting and laughing, but
+his voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamour on
+the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated overhead. Human sympathy
+has its limits, and we were content to let all their tragic arguments
+fade with the city lights behind. Thirty—the promise of a decade of
+loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning
+briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside
+me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten
+dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face
+fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the formidable stroke of
+thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.
+
+So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the coffee joint beside the
+ash-heaps was the principal witness at the inquest. He had slept
+through the heat until after five, when he strolled over to the
+garage, and found George Wilson sick in his office—really sick, pale
+as his own pale hair and shaking all over. Michaelis advised him to go
+to bed, but Wilson refused, saying that he’d miss a lot of business if
+he did. While his neighbour was trying to persuade him a violent
+racket broke out overhead.
+
+“I’ve got my wife locked in up there,” explained Wilson calmly.
+“She’s going to stay there till the day after tomorrow, and then we’re
+going to move away.”
+
+Michaelis was astonished; they had been neighbours for four years, and
+Wilson had never seemed faintly capable of such a statement.
+Generally he was one of these worn-out men: when he wasn’t working, he
+sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars
+that passed along the road. When anyone spoke to him he invariably
+laughed in an agreeable, colourless way. He was his wife’s man and not
+his own.
+
+So naturally Michaelis tried to find out what had happened, but Wilson
+wouldn’t say a word—instead he began to throw curious, suspicious
+glances at his visitor and ask him what he’d been doing at certain
+times on certain days. Just as the latter was getting uneasy, some
+workmen came past the door bound for his restaurant, and Michaelis
+took the opportunity to get away, intending to come back later. But he
+didn’t. He supposed he forgot to, that’s all. When he came outside
+again, a little after seven, he was reminded of the conversation
+because he heard Mrs. Wilson’s voice, loud and scolding, downstairs in
+the garage.
+
+“Beat me!” he heard her cry. “Throw me down and beat me, you dirty
+little coward!”
+
+A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and
+shouting—before he could move from his door the business was over.
+
+The “death car” as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out
+of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then
+disappeared around the next bend. Mavro Michaelis wasn’t even sure of
+its colour—he told the first policeman that it was light green. The
+other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards
+beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life
+violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark
+blood with the dust.
+
+Michaelis and this man reached her first, but when they had torn open
+her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left
+breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen
+for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped a little at
+the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the
+tremendous vitality she had stored so long.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+We saw the three or four automobiles and the crowd when we were still
+some distance away.
+
+“Wreck!” said Tom. “That’s good. Wilson’ll have a little business at
+last.”
+
+He slowed down, but still without any intention of stopping, until, as
+we came nearer, the hushed, intent faces of the people at the garage
+door made him automatically put on the brakes.
+
+“We’ll take a look,” he said doubtfully, “just a look.”
+
+I became aware now of a hollow, wailing sound which issued incessantly
+from the garage, a sound which as we got out of the coupé and walked
+toward the door resolved itself into the words “Oh, my God!” uttered
+over and over in a gasping moan.
+
+“There’s some bad trouble here,” said Tom excitedly.
+
+He reached up on tiptoes and peered over a circle of heads into the
+garage, which was lit only by a yellow light in a swinging metal
+basket overhead. Then he made a harsh sound in his throat, and with a
+violent thrusting movement of his powerful arms pushed his way
+through.
+
+The circle closed up again with a running murmur of expostulation; it
+was a minute before I could see anything at all. Then new arrivals
+deranged the line, and Jordan and I were pushed suddenly inside.
+
+Myrtle Wilson’s body, wrapped in a blanket, and then in another
+blanket, as though she suffered from a chill in the hot night, lay on
+a worktable by the wall, and Tom, with his back to us, was bending
+over it, motionless. Next to him stood a motorcycle policeman taking
+down names with much sweat and correction in a little book. At first I
+couldn’t find the source of the high, groaning words that echoed
+clamorously through the bare garage—then I saw Wilson standing on the
+raised threshold of his office, swaying back and forth and holding to
+the doorposts with both hands. Some man was talking to him in a low
+voice and attempting, from time to time, to lay a hand on his
+shoulder, but Wilson neither heard nor saw. His eyes would drop slowly
+from the swinging light to the laden table by the wall, and then jerk
+back to the light again, and he gave out incessantly his high,
+horrible call:
+
+“Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od!”
+
+Presently Tom lifted his head with a jerk and, after staring around
+the garage with glazed eyes, addressed a mumbled incoherent remark to
+the policeman.
+
+“M-a-v—” the policeman was saying, “—o—”
+
+“No, r—” corrected the man, “M-a-v-r-o—”
+
+“Listen to me!” muttered Tom fiercely.
+
+“r—” said the policeman, “o—”
+
+“g—”
+
+“g—” He looked up as Tom’s broad hand fell sharply on his shoulder.
+“What you want, fella?”
+
+“What happened?—that’s what I want to know.”
+
+“Auto hit her. Ins’antly killed.”
+
+“Instantly killed,” repeated Tom, staring.
+
+“She ran out ina road. Son-of-a-bitch didn’t even stopus car.”
+
+“There was two cars,” said Michaelis, “one comin’, one goin’, see?”
+
+“Going where?” asked the policeman keenly.
+
+“One goin’ each way. Well, she”—his hand rose toward the blankets but
+stopped halfway and fell to his side—“she ran out there an’ the one
+comin’ from N’York knock right into her, goin’ thirty or forty miles
+an hour.”
+
+“What’s the name of this place here?” demanded the officer.
+
+“Hasn’t got any name.”
+
+A pale well-dressed negro stepped near.
+
+“It was a yellow car,” he said, “big yellow car. New.”
+
+“See the accident?” asked the policeman.
+
+“No, but the car passed me down the road, going faster’n forty. Going
+fifty, sixty.”
+
+“Come here and let’s have your name. Look out now. I want to get his
+name.”
+
+Some words of this conversation must have reached Wilson, swaying in
+the office door, for suddenly a new theme found voice among his
+grasping cries:
+
+“You don’t have to tell me what kind of car it was! I know what kind
+of car it was!”
+
+Watching Tom, I saw the wad of muscle back of his shoulder tighten
+under his coat. He walked quickly over to Wilson and, standing in
+front of him, seized him firmly by the upper arms.
+
+“You’ve got to pull yourself together,” he said with soothing
+gruffness.
+
+Wilson’s eyes fell upon Tom; he started up on his tiptoes and then
+would have collapsed to his knees had not Tom held him upright.
+
+“Listen,” said Tom, shaking him a little. “I just got here a minute
+ago, from New York. I was bringing you that coupé we’ve been talking
+about. That yellow car I was driving this afternoon wasn’t mine—do you
+hear? I haven’t seen it all afternoon.”
+
+Only the negro and I were near enough to hear what he said, but the
+policeman caught something in the tone and looked over with truculent
+eyes.
+
+“What’s all that?” he demanded.
+
+“I’m a friend of his.” Tom turned his head but kept his hands firm on
+Wilson’s body. “He says he knows the car that did it … It was a yellow
+car.”
+
+Some dim impulse moved the policeman to look suspiciously at Tom.
+
+“And what colour’s your car?”
+
+“It’s a blue car, a coupé.”
+
+“We’ve come straight from New York,” I said.
+
+Someone who had been driving a little behind us confirmed this, and
+the policeman turned away.
+
+“Now, if you’ll let me have that name again correct—”
+
+Picking up Wilson like a doll, Tom carried him into the office, set
+him down in a chair, and came back.
+
+“If somebody’ll come here and sit with him,” he snapped
+authoritatively. He watched while the two men standing closest glanced
+at each other and went unwillingly into the room. Then Tom shut the
+door on them and came down the single step, his eyes avoiding the
+table. As he passed close to me he whispered: “Let’s get out.”
+
+Self-consciously, with his authoritative arms breaking the way, we
+pushed through the still gathering crowd, passing a hurried doctor,
+case in hand, who had been sent for in wild hope half an hour ago.
+
+Tom drove slowly until we were beyond the bend—then his foot came down
+hard, and the coupé raced along through the night. In a little while I
+heard a low husky sob, and saw that the tears were overflowing down
+his face.
+
+“The God damned coward!” he whimpered. “He didn’t even stop his car.”
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The Buchanans’ house floated suddenly toward us through the dark
+rustling trees. Tom stopped beside the porch and looked up at the
+second floor, where two windows bloomed with light among the vines.
+
+“Daisy’s home,” he said. As we got out of the car he glanced at me and
+frowned slightly.
+
+“I ought to have dropped you in West Egg, Nick. There’s nothing we can
+do tonight.”
+
+A change had come over him, and he spoke gravely, and with decision.
+As we walked across the moonlight gravel to the porch he disposed of
+the situation in a few brisk phrases.
+
+“I’ll telephone for a taxi to take you home, and while you’re waiting
+you and Jordan better go in the kitchen and have them get you some
+supper—if you want any.” He opened the door. “Come in.”
+
+“No, thanks. But I’d be glad if you’d order me the taxi. I’ll wait
+outside.”
+
+Jordan put her hand on my arm.
+
+“Won’t you come in, Nick?”
+
+“No, thanks.”
+
+I was feeling a little sick and I wanted to be alone. But Jordan
+lingered for a moment more.
+
+“It’s only half-past nine,” she said.
+
+I’d be damned if I’d go in; I’d had enough of all of them for one day,
+and suddenly that included Jordan too. She must have seen something of
+this in my expression, for she turned abruptly away and ran up the
+porch steps into the house. I sat down for a few minutes with my head
+in my hands, until I heard the phone taken up inside and the butler’s
+voice calling a taxi. Then I walked slowly down the drive away from
+the house, intending to wait by the gate.
+
+I hadn’t gone twenty yards when I heard my name and Gatsby stepped
+from between two bushes into the path. I must have felt pretty weird
+by that time, because I could think of nothing except the luminosity
+of his pink suit under the moon.
+
+“What are you doing?” I inquired.
+
+“Just standing here, old sport.”
+
+Somehow, that seemed a despicable occupation. For all I knew he was
+going to rob the house in a moment; I wouldn’t have been surprised to
+see sinister faces, the faces of “Wolfshiem’s people,” behind him in
+the dark shrubbery.
+
+“Did you see any trouble on the road?” he asked after a minute.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He hesitated.
+
+“Was she killed?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I thought so; I told Daisy I thought so. It’s better that the shock
+should all come at once. She stood it pretty well.”
+
+He spoke as if Daisy’s reaction was the only thing that mattered.
+
+“I got to West Egg by a side road,” he went on, “and left the car in
+my garage. I don’t think anybody saw us, but of course I can’t be
+sure.”
+
+I disliked him so much by this time that I didn’t find it necessary to
+tell him he was wrong.
+
+“Who was the woman?” he inquired.
+
+“Her name was Wilson. Her husband owns the garage. How the devil did
+it happen?”
+
+“Well, I tried to swing the wheel—” He broke off, and suddenly I
+guessed at the truth.
+
+“Was Daisy driving?”
+
+“Yes,” he said after a moment, “but of course I’ll say I was. You see,
+when we left New York she was very nervous and she thought it would
+steady her to drive—and this woman rushed out at us just as we were
+passing a car coming the other way. It all happened in a minute, but
+it seemed to me that she wanted to speak to us, thought we were
+somebody she knew. Well, first Daisy turned away from the woman toward
+the other car, and then she lost her nerve and turned back. The second
+my hand reached the wheel I felt the shock—it must have killed her
+instantly.”
+
+“It ripped her open—”
+
+“Don’t tell me, old sport.” He winced. “Anyhow—Daisy stepped on it. I
+tried to make her stop, but she couldn’t, so I pulled on the emergency
+brake. Then she fell over into my lap and I drove on.
+
+“She’ll be all right tomorrow,” he said presently. “I’m just going to
+wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that unpleasantness
+this afternoon. She’s locked herself into her room, and if he tries
+any brutality she’s going to turn the light out and on again.”
+
+“He won’t touch her,” I said. “He’s not thinking about her.”
+
+“I don’t trust him, old sport.”
+
+“How long are you going to wait?”
+
+“All night, if necessary. Anyhow, till they all go to bed.”
+
+A new point of view occurred to me. Suppose Tom found out that Daisy
+had been driving. He might think he saw a connection in it—he might
+think anything. I looked at the house; there were two or three bright
+windows downstairs and the pink glow from Daisy’s room on the ground
+floor.
+
+“You wait here,” I said. “I’ll see if there’s any sign of a
+commotion.”
+
+I walked back along the border of the lawn, traversed the gravel
+softly, and tiptoed up the veranda steps. The drawing-room curtains
+were open, and I saw that the room was empty. Crossing the porch where
+we had dined that June night three months before, I came to a small
+rectangle of light which I guessed was the pantry window. The blind
+was drawn, but I found a rift at the sill.
+
+Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table,
+with a plate of cold fried chicken between them, and two bottles of
+ale. He was talking intently across the table at her, and in his
+earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a
+while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement.
+
+They weren’t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the
+ale—and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air
+of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said
+that they were conspiring together.
+
+As I tiptoed from the porch I heard my taxi feeling its way along the
+dark road toward the house. Gatsby was waiting where I had left him in
+the drive.
+
+“Is it all quiet up there?” he asked anxiously.
+
+“Yes, it’s all quiet.” I hesitated. “You’d better come home and get
+some sleep.”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good night, old sport.”
+
+He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his
+scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of
+the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the
+moonlight—watching over nothing.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+I couldn’t sleep all night; a foghorn was groaning incessantly on the
+Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage,
+frightening dreams. Toward dawn I heard a taxi go up Gatsby’s drive,
+and immediately I jumped out of bed and began to dress—I felt that I
+had something to tell him, something to warn him about, and morning
+would be too late.
+
+Crossing his lawn, I saw that his front door was still open and he was
+leaning against a table in the hall, heavy with dejection or sleep.
+
+“Nothing happened,” he said wanly. “I waited, and about four o’clock
+she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned
+out the light.”
+
+His house had never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night when
+we hunted through the great rooms for cigarettes. We pushed aside
+curtains that were like pavilions, and felt over innumerable feet of
+dark wall for electric light switches—once I tumbled with a sort of
+splash upon the keys of a ghostly piano. There was an inexplicable
+amount of dust everywhere, and the rooms were musty, as though they
+hadn’t been aired for many days. I found the humidor on an unfamiliar
+table, with two stale, dry cigarettes inside. Throwing open the French
+windows of the drawing-room, we sat smoking out into the darkness.
+
+“You ought to go away,” I said. “It’s pretty certain they’ll trace
+your car.”
+
+“Go away now, old sport?”
+
+“Go to Atlantic City for a week, or up to Montreal.”
+
+He wouldn’t consider it. He couldn’t possibly leave Daisy until he
+knew what she was going to do. He was clutching at some last hope and
+I couldn’t bear to shake him free.
+
+It was this night that he told me the strange story of his youth with
+Dan Cody—told it to me because “Jay Gatsby” had broken up like glass
+against Tom’s hard malice, and the long secret extravaganza was played
+out. I think that he would have acknowledged anything now, without
+reserve, but he wanted to talk about Daisy.
+
+She was the first “nice” girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed
+capacities he had come in contact with such people, but always with
+indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly
+desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from
+Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him—he had never been in such a
+beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless
+intensity, was that Daisy lived there—it was as casual a thing to her
+as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it,
+a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other
+bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its
+corridors, and of romances that were not musty and laid away already
+in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year’s
+shining motorcars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely
+withered. It excited him, too, that many men had already loved
+Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all
+about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still
+vibrant emotions.
+
+But he knew that he was in Daisy’s house by a colossal
+accident. However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was
+at present a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the
+invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he
+made the most of his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and
+unscrupulously—eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took
+her because he had no real right to touch her hand.
+
+He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under
+false pretences. I don’t mean that he had traded on his phantom
+millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he
+let her believe that he was a person from much the same strata as
+herself—that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of
+fact, he had no such facilities—he had no comfortable family standing
+behind him, and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government
+to be blown anywhere about the world.
+
+But he didn’t despise himself and it didn’t turn out as he had
+imagined. He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go—but
+now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a
+grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realize
+just how extraordinary a “nice” girl could be. She vanished into her
+rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing. He felt
+married to her, that was all.
+
+When they met again, two days later, it was Gatsby who was breathless,
+who was, somehow, betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought
+luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as
+she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. She
+had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming
+than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and
+mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many
+clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the
+hot struggles of the poor.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+“I can’t describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her,
+old sport. I even hoped for a while that she’d throw me over, but she
+didn’t, because she was in love with me too. She thought I knew a lot
+because I knew different things from her … Well, there I was, way off
+my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden
+I didn’t care. What was the use of doing great things if I could have
+a better time telling her what I was going to do?”
+
+On the last afternoon before he went abroad, he sat with Daisy in his
+arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day, with fire in the
+room and her cheeks flushed. Now and then she moved and he changed his
+arm a little, and once he kissed her dark shining hair. The afternoon
+had made them tranquil for a while, as if to give them a deep memory
+for the long parting the next day promised. They had never been closer
+in their month of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with
+another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat’s shoulder
+or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were
+asleep.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+He did extraordinarily well in the war. He was a captain before he
+went to the front, and following the Argonne battles he got his
+majority and the command of the divisional machine-guns. After the
+armistice he tried frantically to get home, but some complication or
+misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. He was worried now—there
+was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy’s letters. She didn’t see
+why he couldn’t come. She was feeling the pressure of the world
+outside, and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her
+and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all.
+
+For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids
+and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of
+the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new
+tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the
+“Beale Street Blues” while a hundred pairs of golden and silver
+slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the grey tea hour there were
+always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever,
+while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the
+sad horns around the floor.
+
+Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the
+season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with
+half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and
+chiffon of an evening-dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor
+beside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a
+decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately—and the decision
+must be made by some force—of love, of money, of unquestionable
+practicality—that was close at hand.
+
+That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom
+Buchanan. There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his
+position, and Daisy was flattered. Doubtless there was a certain
+struggle and a certain relief. The letter reached Gatsby while he was
+still at Oxford.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of
+the windows downstairs, filling the house with grey-turning,
+gold-turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew
+and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a
+slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool,
+lovely day.
+
+“I don’t think she ever loved him.” Gatsby turned around from a window
+and looked at me challengingly. “You must remember, old sport, she was
+very excited this afternoon. He told her those things in a way that
+frightened her—that made it look as if I was some kind of cheap
+sharper. And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying.”
+
+He sat down gloomily.
+
+“Of course she might have loved him just for a minute, when they were
+first married—and loved me more even then, do you see?”
+
+Suddenly he came out with a curious remark.
+
+“In any case,” he said, “it was just personal.”
+
+What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his
+conception of the affair that couldn’t be measured?
+
+He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their
+wedding trip, and made a miserable but irresistible journey to
+Louisville on the last of his army pay. He stayed there a week,
+walking the streets where their footsteps had clicked together through
+the November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which
+they had driven in her white car. Just as Daisy’s house had always
+seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses, so his idea
+of the city itself, even though she was gone from it, was pervaded
+with a melancholy beauty.
+
+He left feeling that if he had searched harder, he might have found
+her—that he was leaving her behind. The day-coach—he was penniless
+now—was hot. He went out to the open vestibule and sat down on a
+folding-chair, and the station slid away and the backs of unfamiliar
+buildings moved by. Then out into the spring fields, where a yellow
+trolley raced them for a minute with people in it who might once have
+seen the pale magic of her face along the casual street.
+
+The track curved and now it was going away from the sun, which, as it
+sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing
+city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand
+desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of
+the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too
+fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part
+of it, the freshest and the best, forever.
+
+It was nine o’clock when we finished breakfast and went out on the
+porch. The night had made a sharp difference in the weather and there
+was an autumn flavour in the air. The gardener, the last one of
+Gatsby’s former servants, came to the foot of the steps.
+
+“I’m going to drain the pool today, Mr. Gatsby. Leaves’ll start
+falling pretty soon, and then there’s always trouble with the pipes.”
+
+“Don’t do it today,” Gatsby answered. He turned to me apologetically.
+“You know, old sport, I’ve never used that pool all summer?”
+
+I looked at my watch and stood up.
+
+“Twelve minutes to my train.”
+
+I didn’t want to go to the city. I wasn’t worth a decent stroke of
+work, but it was more than that—I didn’t want to leave Gatsby. I
+missed that train, and then another, before I could get myself away.
+
+“I’ll call you up,” I said finally.
+
+“Do, old sport.”
+
+“I’ll call you about noon.”
+
+We walked slowly down the steps.
+
+“I suppose Daisy’ll call too.” He looked at me anxiously, as if he
+hoped I’d corroborate this.
+
+“I suppose so.”
+
+“Well, goodbye.”
+
+We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I
+remembered something and turned around.
+
+“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the
+whole damn bunch put together.”
+
+I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever
+gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he
+nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and
+understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact
+all the time. His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of
+colour against the white steps, and I thought of the night when I
+first came to his ancestral home, three months before. The lawn and
+drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his
+corruption—and he had stood on those steps, concealing his
+incorruptible dream, as he waved them goodbye.
+
+I thanked him for his hospitality. We were always thanking him for
+that—I and the others.
+
+“Goodbye,” I called. “I enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby.”
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Up in the city, I tried for a while to list the quotations on an
+interminable amount of stock, then I fell asleep in my swivel-chair.
+Just before noon the phone woke me, and I started up with sweat
+breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker; she often called me
+up at this hour because the uncertainty of her own movements between
+hotels and clubs and private houses made her hard to find in any other
+way. Usually her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool,
+as if a divot from a green golf-links had come sailing in at the
+office window, but this morning it seemed harsh and dry.
+
+“I’ve left Daisy’s house,” she said. “I’m at Hempstead, and I’m going
+down to Southampton this afternoon.”
+
+Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy’s house, but the act
+annoyed me, and her next remark made me rigid.
+
+“You weren’t so nice to me last night.”
+
+“How could it have mattered then?”
+
+Silence for a moment. Then:
+
+“However—I want to see you.”
+
+“I want to see you, too.”
+
+“Suppose I don’t go to Southampton, and come into town this
+afternoon?”
+
+“No—I don’t think this afternoon.”
+
+“Very well.”
+
+“It’s impossible this afternoon. Various—”
+
+We talked like that for a while, and then abruptly we weren’t talking
+any longer. I don’t know which of us hung up with a sharp click, but I
+know I didn’t care. I couldn’t have talked to her across a tea-table
+that day if I never talked to her again in this world.
+
+I called Gatsby’s house a few minutes later, but the line was busy. I
+tried four times; finally an exasperated central told me the wire was
+being kept open for long distance from Detroit. Taking out my
+timetable, I drew a small circle around the three-fifty train. Then I
+leaned back in my chair and tried to think. It was just noon.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+When I passed the ash-heaps on the train that morning I had crossed
+deliberately to the other side of the car. I supposed there’d be a
+curious crowd around there all day with little boys searching for dark
+spots in the dust, and some garrulous man telling over and over what
+had happened, until it became less and less real even to him and he
+could tell it no longer, and Myrtle Wilson’s tragic achievement was
+forgotten. Now I want to go back a little and tell what happened at
+the garage after we left there the night before.
+
+They had difficulty in locating the sister, Catherine. She must have
+broken her rule against drinking that night, for when she arrived she
+was stupid with liquor and unable to understand that the ambulance had
+already gone to Flushing. When they convinced her of this, she
+immediately fainted, as if that was the intolerable part of the
+affair. Someone, kind or curious, took her in his car and drove her in
+the wake of her sister’s body.
+
+Until long after midnight a changing crowd lapped up against the front
+of the garage, while George Wilson rocked himself back and forth on
+the couch inside. For a while the door of the office was open, and
+everyone who came into the garage glanced irresistibly through it.
+Finally someone said it was a shame, and closed the door. Michaelis
+and several other men were with him; first, four or five men, later
+two or three men. Still later Michaelis had to ask the last stranger
+to wait there fifteen minutes longer, while he went back to his own
+place and made a pot of coffee. After that, he stayed there alone with
+Wilson until dawn.
+
+About three o’clock the quality of Wilson’s incoherent muttering
+changed—he grew quieter and began to talk about the yellow car. He
+announced that he had a way of finding out whom the yellow car
+belonged to, and then he blurted out that a couple of months ago his
+wife had come from the city with her face bruised and her nose
+swollen.
+
+But when he heard himself say this, he flinched and began to cry “Oh,
+my God!” again in his groaning voice. Michaelis made a clumsy attempt
+to distract him.
+
+“How long have you been married, George? Come on there, try and sit
+still a minute, and answer my question. How long have you been
+married?”
+
+“Twelve years.”
+
+“Ever had any children? Come on, George, sit still—I asked you a
+question. Did you ever have any children?”
+
+The hard brown beetles kept thudding against the dull light, and
+whenever Michaelis heard a car go tearing along the road outside it
+sounded to him like the car that hadn’t stopped a few hours before.
+He didn’t like to go into the garage, because the work bench was
+stained where the body had been lying, so he moved uncomfortably
+around the office—he knew every object in it before morning—and from
+time to time sat down beside Wilson trying to keep him more quiet.
+
+“Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even if you
+haven’t been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church
+and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?”
+
+“Don’t belong to any.”
+
+“You ought to have a church, George, for times like this. You must
+have gone to church once. Didn’t you get married in a church? Listen,
+George, listen to me. Didn’t you get married in a church?”
+
+“That was a long time ago.”
+
+The effort of answering broke the rhythm of his rocking—for a moment
+he was silent. Then the same half-knowing, half-bewildered look came
+back into his faded eyes.
+
+“Look in the drawer there,” he said, pointing at the desk.
+
+“Which drawer?”
+
+“That drawer—that one.”
+
+Michaelis opened the drawer nearest his hand. There was nothing in it
+but a small, expensive dog-leash, made of leather and braided
+silver. It was apparently new.
+
+“This?” he inquired, holding it up.
+
+Wilson stared and nodded.
+
+“I found it yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell me about it, but I
+knew it was something funny.”
+
+“You mean your wife bought it?”
+
+“She had it wrapped in tissue paper on her bureau.”
+
+Michaelis didn’t see anything odd in that, and he gave Wilson a dozen
+reasons why his wife might have bought the dog-leash. But conceivably
+Wilson had heard some of these same explanations before, from Myrtle,
+because he began saying “Oh, my God!” again in a whisper—his comforter
+left several explanations in the air.
+
+“Then he killed her,” said Wilson. His mouth dropped open suddenly.
+
+“Who did?”
+
+“I have a way of finding out.”
+
+“You’re morbid, George,” said his friend. “This has been a strain to
+you and you don’t know what you’re saying. You’d better try and sit
+quiet till morning.”
+
+“He murdered her.”
+
+“It was an accident, George.”
+
+Wilson shook his head. His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened
+slightly with the ghost of a superior “Hm!”
+
+“I know,” he said definitely. “I’m one of these trusting fellas and I
+don’t think any harm to nobody, but when I get to know a thing I know
+it. It was the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he
+wouldn’t stop.”
+
+Michaelis had seen this too, but it hadn’t occurred to him that there
+was any special significance in it. He believed that Mrs. Wilson had
+been running away from her husband, rather than trying to stop any
+particular car.
+
+“How could she of been like that?”
+
+“She’s a deep one,” said Wilson, as if that answered the question.
+“Ah-h-h—”
+
+He began to rock again, and Michaelis stood twisting the leash in his
+hand.
+
+“Maybe you got some friend that I could telephone for, George?”
+
+This was a forlorn hope—he was almost sure that Wilson had no friend:
+there was not enough of him for his wife. He was glad a little later
+when he noticed a change in the room, a blue quickening by the window,
+and realized that dawn wasn’t far off. About five o’clock it was blue
+enough outside to snap off the light.
+
+Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ash-heaps, where small grey
+clouds took on fantastic shapes and scurried here and there in the
+faint dawn wind.
+
+“I spoke to her,” he muttered, after a long silence. “I told her she
+might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the
+window”—with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and
+leaned with his face pressed against it—“and I said ‘God knows what
+you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but
+you can’t fool God!’ ”
+
+Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at
+the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and
+enormous, from the dissolving night.
+
+“God sees everything,” repeated Wilson.
+
+“That’s an advertisement,” Michaelis assured him. Something made him
+turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson
+stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding
+into the twilight.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+By six o’clock Michaelis was worn out, and grateful for the sound of a
+car stopping outside. It was one of the watchers of the night before
+who had promised to come back, so he cooked breakfast for three, which
+he and the other man ate together. Wilson was quieter now, and
+Michaelis went home to sleep; when he awoke four hours later and
+hurried back to the garage, Wilson was gone.
+
+His movements—he was on foot all the time—were afterward traced to
+Port Roosevelt and then to Gad’s Hill, where he bought a sandwich that
+he didn’t eat, and a cup of coffee. He must have been tired and
+walking slowly, for he didn’t reach Gad’s Hill until noon. Thus far
+there was no difficulty in accounting for his time—there were boys who
+had seen a man “acting sort of crazy,” and motorists at whom he stared
+oddly from the side of the road. Then for three hours he disappeared
+from view. The police, on the strength of what he said to Michaelis,
+that he “had a way of finding out,” supposed that he spent that time
+going from garage to garage thereabout, inquiring for a yellow car. On
+the other hand, no garage man who had seen him ever came forward, and
+perhaps he had an easier, surer way of finding out what he wanted to
+know. By half-past two he was in West Egg, where he asked someone the
+way to Gatsby’s house. So by that time he knew Gatsby’s name.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+At two o’clock Gatsby put on his bathing-suit and left word with the
+butler that if anyone phoned word was to be brought to him at the
+pool. He stopped at the garage for a pneumatic mattress that had
+amused his guests during the summer, and the chauffeur helped him to
+pump it up. Then he gave instructions that the open car wasn’t to be
+taken out under any circumstances—and this was strange, because the
+front right fender needed repair.
+
+Gatsby shouldered the mattress and started for the pool. Once he
+stopped and shifted it a little, and the chauffeur asked him if he
+needed help, but he shook his head and in a moment disappeared among
+the yellowing trees.
+
+No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep
+and waited for it until four o’clock—until long after there was anyone
+to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t
+believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was
+true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a
+high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have
+looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered
+as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight
+was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without
+being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted
+fortuitously about … like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward
+him through the amorphous trees.
+
+The chauffeur—he was one of Wolfshiem’s protégés—heard the
+shots—afterwards he could only say that he hadn’t thought anything
+much about them. I drove from the station directly to Gatsby’s house
+and my rushing anxiously up the front steps was the first thing that
+alarmed anyone. But they knew then, I firmly believe. With scarcely a
+word said, four of us, the chauffeur, butler, gardener, and I hurried
+down to the pool.
+
+There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the
+fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other.
+With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden
+mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that
+scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental
+course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves
+revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red
+circle in the water.
+
+It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener
+saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was
+complete.
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and
+the next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and
+newspaper men in and out of Gatsby’s front door. A rope stretched
+across the main gate and a policeman by it kept out the curious, but
+little boys soon discovered that they could enter through my yard, and
+there were always a few of them clustered open-mouthed about the
+pool. Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the
+expression “madman” as he bent over Wilson’s body that afternoon, and
+the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper
+reports next morning.
+
+Most of those reports were a nightmare—grotesque, circumstantial,
+eager, and untrue. When Michaelis’s testimony at the inquest brought
+to light Wilson’s suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale
+would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade—but Catherine, who might
+have said anything, didn’t say a word. She showed a surprising amount
+of character about it too—looked at the coroner with determined eyes
+under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that her sister had never
+seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband,
+that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced
+herself of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very
+suggestion was more than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a
+man “deranged by grief” in order that the case might remain in its
+simplest form. And it rested there.
+
+But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found myself
+on Gatsby’s side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of the
+catastrophe to West Egg village, every surmise about him, and every
+practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and
+confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn’t move or breathe or
+speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because
+no one else was interested—interested, I mean, with that intense
+personal interest to which everyone has some vague right at the end.
+
+I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her
+instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away
+early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them.
+
+“Left no address?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Say when they’d be back?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Any idea where they are? How I could reach them?”
+
+“I don’t know. Can’t say.”
+
+I wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into the room where
+he lay and reassure him: “I’ll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don’t
+worry. Just trust me and I’ll get somebody for you—”
+
+Meyer Wolfshiem’s name wasn’t in the phone book. The butler gave me
+his office address on Broadway, and I called Information, but by the
+time I had the number it was long after five, and no one answered the
+phone.
+
+“Will you ring again?”
+
+“I’ve rung three times.”
+
+“It’s very important.”
+
+“Sorry. I’m afraid no one’s there.”
+
+I went back to the drawing-room and thought for an instant that they
+were chance visitors, all these official people who suddenly filled
+it. But, though they drew back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with
+shocked eyes, his protest continued in my brain:
+
+“Look here, old sport, you’ve got to get somebody for me. You’ve got
+to try hard. I can’t go through this alone.”
+
+Someone started to ask me questions, but I broke away and going
+upstairs looked hastily through the unlocked parts of his desk—he’d
+never told me definitely that his parents were dead. But there was
+nothing—only the picture of Dan Cody, a token of forgotten violence,
+staring down from the wall.
+
+Next morning I sent the butler to New York with a letter to Wolfshiem,
+which asked for information and urged him to come out on the next
+train. That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it. I was sure
+he’d start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure there’d be a
+wire from Daisy before noon—but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfshiem
+arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers and
+newspaper men. When the butler brought back Wolfshiem’s answer I began
+to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby
+and me against them all.
+
+ Dear Mr. Carraway. This has been one of the most terrible shocks of
+ my life to me I hardly can believe it that it is true at all. Such a
+ mad act as that man did should make us all think. I cannot come down
+ now as I am tied up in some very important business and cannot get
+ mixed up in this thing now. If there is anything I can do a little
+ later let me know in a letter by Edgar. I hardly know where I am when
+ I hear about a thing like this and am completely knocked down and
+ out.
+
+                               Yours truly
+
+                             Meyer Wolfshiem
+
+and then hasty addenda beneath:
+
+ Let me know about the funeral etc do not know his family at all.
+
+When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said Chicago was
+calling I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the connection came
+through as a man’s voice, very thin and far away.
+
+“This is Slagle speaking …”
+
+“Yes?” The name was unfamiliar.
+
+“Hell of a note, isn’t it? Get my wire?”
+
+“There haven’t been any wires.”
+
+“Young Parke’s in trouble,” he said rapidly. “They picked him up when
+he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New
+York giving ’em the numbers just five minutes before. What d’you know
+about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns—”
+
+“Hello!” I interrupted breathlessly. “Look here—this isn’t Mr.
+Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby’s dead.”
+
+There was a long silence on the other end of the wire, followed by an
+exclamation … then a quick squawk as the connection was broken.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+I think it was on the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz
+arrived from a town in Minnesota. It said only that the sender was
+leaving immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came.
+
+It was Gatsby’s father, a solemn old man, very helpless and dismayed,
+bundled up in a long cheap ulster against the warm September day. His
+eyes leaked continuously with excitement, and when I took the bag and
+umbrella from his hands he began to pull so incessantly at his sparse
+grey beard that I had difficulty in getting off his coat. He was on
+the point of collapse, so I took him into the music-room and made him
+sit down while I sent for something to eat. But he wouldn’t eat, and
+the glass of milk spilled from his trembling hand.
+
+“I saw it in the Chicago newspaper,” he said. “It was all in the
+Chicago newspaper. I started right away.”
+
+“I didn’t know how to reach you.”
+
+His eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about the room.
+
+“It was a madman,” he said. “He must have been mad.”
+
+“Wouldn’t you like some coffee?” I urged him.
+
+“I don’t want anything. I’m all right now, Mr.—”
+
+“Carraway.”
+
+“Well, I’m all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?”
+
+I took him into the drawing-room, where his son lay, and left him
+there. Some little boys had come up on the steps and were looking into
+the hall; when I told them who had arrived, they went reluctantly
+away.
+
+After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth
+ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and
+unpunctual tears. He had reached an age where death no longer has the
+quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked around him now for the
+first time and saw the height and splendour of the hall and the great
+rooms opening out from it into other rooms, his grief began to be
+mixed with an awed pride. I helped him to a bedroom upstairs; while he
+took off his coat and vest I told him that all arrangements had been
+deferred until he came.
+
+“I didn’t know what you’d want, Mr. Gatsby—”
+
+“Gatz is my name.”
+
+“—Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body West.”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“Jimmy always liked it better down East. He rose up to his position in
+the East. Were you a friend of my boy’s, Mr.—?”
+
+“We were close friends.”
+
+“He had a big future before him, you know. He was only a young man,
+but he had a lot of brain power here.”
+
+He touched his head impressively, and I nodded.
+
+“If he’d of lived, he’d of been a great man. A man like James J.
+Hill. He’d of helped build up the country.”
+
+“That’s true,” I said, uncomfortably.
+
+He fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying to take it from the
+bed, and lay down stiffly—was instantly asleep.
+
+That night an obviously frightened person called up, and demanded to
+know who I was before he would give his name.
+
+“This is Mr. Carraway,” I said.
+
+“Oh!” He sounded relieved. “This is Klipspringer.”
+
+I was relieved too, for that seemed to promise another friend at
+Gatsby’s grave. I didn’t want it to be in the papers and draw a
+sightseeing crowd, so I’d been calling up a few people myself. They
+were hard to find.
+
+“The funeral’s tomorrow,” I said. “Three o’clock, here at the house.
+I wish you’d tell anybody who’d be interested.”
+
+“Oh, I will,” he broke out hastily. “Of course I’m not likely to see
+anybody, but if I do.”
+
+His tone made me suspicious.
+
+“Of course you’ll be there yourself.”
+
+“Well, I’ll certainly try. What I called up about is—”
+
+“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “How about saying you’ll come?”
+
+“Well, the fact is—the truth of the matter is that I’m staying with
+some people up here in Greenwich, and they rather expect me to be with
+them tomorrow. In fact, there’s a sort of picnic or something. Of
+course I’ll do my best to get away.”
+
+I ejaculated an unrestrained “Huh!” and he must have heard me, for he
+went on nervously:
+
+“What I called up about was a pair of shoes I left there. I wonder if
+it’d be too much trouble to have the butler send them on. You see,
+they’re tennis shoes, and I’m sort of helpless without them. My
+address is care of B. F.—”
+
+I didn’t hear the rest of the name, because I hung up the receiver.
+
+After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby—one gentleman to whom I
+telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that was
+my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at
+Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby’s liquor, and I should have known
+better than to call him.
+
+The morning of the funeral I went up to New York to see Meyer
+Wolfshiem; I couldn’t seem to reach him any other way. The door that I
+pushed open, on the advice of an elevator boy, was marked “The
+Swastika Holding Company,” and at first there didn’t seem to be anyone
+inside. But when I’d shouted “hello” several times in vain, an
+argument broke out behind a partition, and presently a lovely Jewess
+appeared at an interior door and scrutinized me with black hostile
+eyes.
+
+“Nobody’s in,” she said. “Mr. Wolfshiem’s gone to Chicago.”
+
+The first part of this was obviously untrue, for someone had begun to
+whistle “The Rosary,” tunelessly, inside.
+
+“Please say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him.”
+
+“I can’t get him back from Chicago, can I?”
+
+At this moment a voice, unmistakably Wolfshiem’s, called “Stella!”
+from the other side of the door.
+
+“Leave your name on the desk,” she said quickly. “I’ll give it to him
+when he gets back.”
+
+“But I know he’s there.”
+
+She took a step toward me and began to slide her hands indignantly up
+and down her hips.
+
+“You young men think you can force your way in here any time,” she
+scolded. “We’re getting sickantired of it. When I say he’s in Chicago,
+he’s in Chicago.”
+
+I mentioned Gatsby.
+
+“Oh-h!” She looked at me over again. “Will you just—What was your
+name?”
+
+She vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the
+doorway, holding out both hands. He drew me into his office, remarking
+in a reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered
+me a cigar.
+
+“My memory goes back to when first I met him,” he said. “A young major
+just out of the army and covered over with medals he got in the war.
+He was so hard up he had to keep on wearing his uniform because he
+couldn’t buy some regular clothes. First time I saw him was when he
+came into Winebrenner’s poolroom at Forty-third Street and asked for a
+job. He hadn’t eat anything for a couple of days. ‘Come on have some
+lunch with me,’ I said. He ate more than four dollars’ worth of food
+in half an hour.”
+
+“Did you start him in business?” I inquired.
+
+“Start him! I made him.”
+
+“Oh.”
+
+“I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right
+away he was a fine-appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told
+me he was at Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join
+the American Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did
+some work for a client of mine up to Albany. We were so thick like
+that in everything”—he held up two bulbous fingers—“always together.”
+
+I wondered if this partnership had included the World’s Series
+transaction in 1919.
+
+“Now he’s dead,” I said after a moment. “You were his closest friend,
+so I know you’ll want to come to his funeral this afternoon.”
+
+“I’d like to come.”
+
+“Well, come then.”
+
+The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head
+his eyes filled with tears.
+
+“I can’t do it—I can’t get mixed up in it,” he said.
+
+“There’s nothing to get mixed up in. It’s all over now.”
+
+“When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any
+way. I keep out. When I was a young man it was different—if a friend
+of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may
+think that’s sentimental, but I mean it—to the bitter end.”
+
+I saw that for some reason of his own he was determined not to come,
+so I stood up.
+
+“Are you a college man?” he inquired suddenly.
+
+For a moment I thought he was going to suggest a “gonnegtion,” but he
+only nodded and shook my hand.
+
+“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and
+not after he is dead,” he suggested. “After that my own rule is to let
+everything alone.”
+
+When I left his office the sky had turned dark and I got back to West
+Egg in a drizzle. After changing my clothes I went next door and found
+Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in the hall. His pride in his
+son and in his son’s possessions was continually increasing and now he
+had something to show me.
+
+“Jimmy sent me this picture.” He took out his wallet with trembling
+fingers. “Look there.”
+
+It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty
+with many hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly. “Look
+there!” and then sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it so
+often that I think it was more real to him now than the house itself.
+
+“Jimmy sent it to me. I think it’s a very pretty picture. It shows up
+well.”
+
+“Very well. Had you seen him lately?”
+
+“He come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live in
+now. Of course we was broke up when he run off from home, but I see
+now there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of
+him. And ever since he made a success he was very generous with me.”
+
+He seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held it for another
+minute, lingeringly, before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and
+pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called Hopalong
+Cassidy.
+
+“Look here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows
+you.”
+
+He opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see. On
+the last flyleaf was printed the word schedule, and the date September
+12, 1906. And underneath:
+
+    Rise from bed                                  6:00      a.m.
+    Dumbell exercise and wall-scaling              6:15-6:30 ”
+    Study electricity, etc.                        7:15-8:15 ”
+    Work                                           8:30-4:30 p.m.
+    Baseball and sports                            4:30-5:00 ”
+    Practise elocution, poise and how to attain it 5:00-6:00 ”
+    Study needed inventions                        7:00-9:00 ”
+
+               General Resolves
+
+  * No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]
+
+  * No more smokeing or chewing.
+
+  * Bath every other day
+
+  * Read one improving book or magazine per week
+
+  * Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week
+
+  * Be better to parents
+
+“I came across this book by accident,” said the old man. “It just
+shows you, don’t it?”
+
+“It just shows you.”
+
+“Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this
+or something. Do you notice what he’s got about improving his mind? He
+was always great for that. He told me I et like a hog once, and I beat
+him for it.”
+
+He was reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud and then
+looking eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the
+list for my own use.
+
+A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing, and
+I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did
+Gatsby’s father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and
+stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously, and he
+spoke of the rain in a worried, uncertain way. The minister glanced
+several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait
+for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+About five o’clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery
+and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate—first a motor hearse,
+horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and me in the
+limousine, and a little later four or five servants and the postman
+from West Egg, in Gatsby’s station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we
+started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then
+the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I
+looked around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found
+marvelling over Gatsby’s books in the library one night three months
+before.
+
+I’d never seen him since then. I don’t know how he knew about the
+funeral, or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses, and
+he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled
+from Gatsby’s grave.
+
+I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already
+too far away, and I could only remember, without resentment, that
+Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur
+“Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on,” and then the owl-eyed
+man said “Amen to that,” in a brave voice.
+
+We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke
+to me by the gate.
+
+“I couldn’t get to the house,” he remarked.
+
+“Neither could anybody else.”
+
+“Go on!” He started. “Why, my God! they used to go there by the
+hundreds.”
+
+He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in.
+
+“The poor son-of-a-bitch,” he said.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school
+and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than
+Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a
+December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into
+their own holiday gaieties, to bid them a hasty goodbye. I remember
+the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-That’s and the
+chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught
+sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: “Are you
+going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?” and the long
+green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky
+yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking
+cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.
+
+When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow,
+began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and
+the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild
+brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we
+walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware
+of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we
+melted indistinguishably into it again.
+
+That’s my Middle West—not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede
+towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street
+lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly
+wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a
+little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent
+from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are
+still called through decades by a family’s name. I see now that this
+has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and
+Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some
+deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.
+
+Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware
+of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the
+Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the
+children and the very old—even then it had always for me a quality of
+distortion. West Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic
+dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at
+once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging
+sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress
+suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a
+drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over
+the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a
+house—the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one
+cares.
+
+After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted
+beyond my eyes’ power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle
+leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the
+line I decided to come back home.
+
+There was one thing to be done before I left, an awkward, unpleasant
+thing that perhaps had better have been let alone. But I wanted to
+leave things in order and not just trust that obliging and indifferent
+sea to sweep my refuse away. I saw Jordan Baker and talked over and
+around what had happened to us together, and what had happened
+afterward to me, and she lay perfectly still, listening, in a big
+chair.
+
+She was dressed to play golf, and I remember thinking she looked like
+a good illustration, her chin raised a little jauntily, her hair the
+colour of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the
+fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished she told me without
+comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that, though
+there were several she could have married at a nod of her head, but I
+pretended to be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn’t
+making a mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up
+to say goodbye.
+
+“Nevertheless you did throw me over,” said Jordan suddenly. “You threw
+me over on the telephone. I don’t give a damn about you now, but it
+was a new experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for a while.”
+
+We shook hands.
+
+“Oh, and do you remember”—she added—“a conversation we had once about
+driving a car?”
+
+“Why—not exactly.”
+
+“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver?
+Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me
+to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest,
+straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.”
+
+“I’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and
+call it honour.”
+
+She didn’t answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously
+sorry, I turned away.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+One afternoon late in October I saw Tom Buchanan. He was walking ahead
+of me along Fifth Avenue in his alert, aggressive way, his hands out a
+little from his body as if to fight off interference, his head moving
+sharply here and there, adapting itself to his restless eyes. Just as
+I slowed up to avoid overtaking him he stopped and began frowning into
+the windows of a jewellery store. Suddenly he saw me and walked back,
+holding out his hand.
+
+“What’s the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands with me?”
+
+“Yes. You know what I think of you.”
+
+“You’re crazy, Nick,” he said quickly. “Crazy as hell. I don’t know
+what’s the matter with you.”
+
+“Tom,” I inquired, “what did you say to Wilson that afternoon?”
+
+He stared at me without a word, and I knew I had guessed right about
+those missing hours. I started to turn away, but he took a step after
+me and grabbed my arm.
+
+“I told him the truth,” he said. “He came to the door while we were
+getting ready to leave, and when I sent down word that we weren’t in
+he tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if
+I hadn’t told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his
+pocket every minute he was in the house—” He broke off defiantly.
+“What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw
+dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy’s, but he was a tough
+one. He ran over Myrtle like you’d run over a dog and never even
+stopped his car.”
+
+There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it
+wasn’t true.
+
+“And if you think I didn’t have my share of suffering—look here, when
+I went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits
+sitting there on the sideboard, I sat down and cried like a baby. By
+God it was awful—”
+
+I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done
+was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and
+confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up
+things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their
+vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let
+other people clean up the mess they had made …
+
+I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as
+though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewellery
+store to buy a pearl necklace—or perhaps only a pair of cuff
+buttons—rid of my provincial squeamishness forever.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Gatsby’s house was still empty when I left—the grass on his lawn had
+grown as long as mine. One of the taxi drivers in the village never
+took a fare past the entrance gate without stopping for a minute and
+pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove Daisy and Gatsby over to
+East Egg the night of the accident, and perhaps he had made a story
+about it all his own. I didn’t want to hear it and I avoided him when
+I got off the train.
+
+I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming,
+dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still
+hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden,
+and the cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a
+material car there, and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I
+didn’t investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away
+at the ends of the earth and didn’t know that the party was over.
+
+On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer,
+I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once
+more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a
+piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I erased it,
+drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the
+beach and sprawled out on the sand.
+
+Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any
+lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the
+Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to
+melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that
+flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new
+world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s
+house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all
+human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his
+breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic
+contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the
+last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for
+wonder.
+
+And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of
+Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of
+Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream
+must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He
+did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that
+vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic
+rolled on under the night.
+
+Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by
+year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no
+matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further … And
+one fine morning—
+
+So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into
+the past.
diff --git a/search-engine/books/The Picture of Dorian Gray.txt b/search-engine/books/The Picture of Dorian Gray.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/search-engine/books/The Picture of Dorian Gray.txt
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+Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray
+Author: Oscar Wilde
+
+The Picture of Dorian Gray
+
+by Oscar Wilde
+
+
+Contents
+
+ THE PREFACE
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ CHAPTER X.
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+
+
+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 subject-matter 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 I.
+
+
+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 pink-flowering thorn.
+
+From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was
+lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry
+Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured
+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
+tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,
+producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of
+those pallid, jade-faced 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
+full-length 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, opium-tainted 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 coal-black hair, and this young
+Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. 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 live—undisturbed, 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 are—my art,
+whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good looks—we 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 meet—we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go
+down to the Duke’s—we tell each other the most absurd stories with the
+most serious faces. My wife is very good at it—much 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 pink-petalled daisy from
+the grass and examined it. “I am quite sure I shall understand it,” he
+replied, gazing intently at the little golden, white-feathered 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
+lilac-blooms, 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 dragon-fly 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 stock-broker, 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 half-way 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.
+Then—but 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 trade-name of the firm. That is all.”
+
+“I don’t believe that, Harry, and I don’t believe you do either.
+However, whatever was my motive—and it may have been pride, for I used
+to be very proud—I 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
+nineteenth-century 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 _précis_ of all her
+guests. I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-faced 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 boy—poor dear mother and I absolutely
+inseparable. Quite forget what he does—afraid he—doesn’t do
+anything—oh, yes, plays the piano—or 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
+patent-leather 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 Englishman—always a rash thing to do—he
+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 oil-painting 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 way—I 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 lad—for he seems to
+me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty—his merely
+visible presence—ah! 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, Harry—too
+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 over-educate
+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
+well-informed man—that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the
+thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a
+_bric-à-brac_ 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 self-conscious 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 cloud-shadows 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 friends—those
+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
+lodging-houses. 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 good-looking. 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 II.
+
+
+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 to-day, Dorian.”
+
+“Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don’t want a life-sized portrait of
+myself,” answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool 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 together—three 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. Gray—far too
+charming.” And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan and opened
+his cigarette-case.
+
+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 to-day. 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. Good-bye, 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
+immoral—immoral 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
+self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that 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
+religion—these 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 dream—I
+believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we
+would forget all the maladies of mediævalism, 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 self-denial
+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 rose-red youth and your
+rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid,
+thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams 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
+him—words 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 fiery-coloured 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 half-parted 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 to-day. 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 lilac-blossoms, 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,
+olive-coloured 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 spring-time, 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 hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. 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 last—such a little time. The common hill-flowers
+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, open-eyed 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 green-and-white
+butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree 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 arm-chair 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 left-hand 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
+to-day. 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 that—for that—I 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 day—mock 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 tear-stained eyes, looked at him as he walked over to the deal
+painting-table 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
+palette-knife, 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
+tea-tray 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 globe-shaped 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 to-night,” 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 dress-clothes,” 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 colour-element 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 to-night, 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 tea-table 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. Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see me soon.
+Come to-morrow.”
+
+“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.
+Good-bye, 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 III.
+
+
+At half-past 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 rough-mannered 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
+shooting-coat, 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 button-hole 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 Devereux. 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
+son-in-law in public—paid 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 good-looking chap.”
+
+“He is very good-looking,” 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 pork-packers, I suppose?”
+
+“I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor’s sake. I am told that
+pork-packing 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. “Good-bye, 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
+_protégé_.”
+
+“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
+that—perhaps 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 sonnet-sequence? 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 him—had 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 dining-room.
+
+“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 good-nature 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 well-known 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 hymn-book.
+Fortunately for him she had on the other side Lord Faudel, a most
+intelligent middle-aged 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
+dry-goods store,” said Sir Thomas Burdon, looking supercilious.
+
+“My uncle has already suggested pork-packing, Sir Thomas.”
+
+“Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?” 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 cast-off 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 over-expenditure 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
+wine-stained 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 grape-juice 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. Good-bye, 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 good-bye 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 arm-chairs. 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 to-day,” 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 IV.
+
+
+One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a luxurious
+arm-chair, 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 olive-stained oak, its cream-coloured frieze and ceiling
+of raised plasterwork, and its brickdust felt carpet strewn with silk,
+long-fringed 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
+parrot-tulips were ranged on the mantelshelf, and through the small
+leaded panes of the window streamed the apricot-coloured 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 book-cases. 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 forget-me-not 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 tortoise-shell paper-knife.
+
+Dorian smiled and shook his head: “I am afraid I don’t think so, Lady
+Henry. I never talk during music—at 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 spare 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 was—and 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, crescent-shaped 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. Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Good-bye, 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 straw-coloured 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
+_début_.”
+
+“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 half-past eight I passed by an absurd little
+theatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills. 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 stage-box. 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’t—I 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 intellect—simply 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 drop-scene 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 third-rate wedding-cake. 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
+dress-circle. Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, 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 play-bill. 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 grandpères 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 drop-scene
+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
+beer-barrel. Mercutio was almost as bad. He was played by the
+low-comedian, 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 country-booth. But
+Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly seventeen years of age, with a
+little, flowerlike face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of
+dark-brown 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 voice—I 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 garden-scene 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 tea-parties 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 you—the wilful sunbeams of life—don’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 boy—thanks—what 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 Dorian—a 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 me—at 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
+dressing-wrapper 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 to-night, Dorian, can’t you?”
+
+He shook his head. “To-night she is Imogen,” he answered, “and
+to-morrow 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 hiding-place 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 years—at 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 art-instinct, 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. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She plays Juliet
+to-morrow.”
+
+“All right. The Bristol at eight o’clock; and I will get Basil.”
+
+“Not eight, Harry, please. Half-past six. We must be there before the
+curtain rises. You must see her in the first act, where she meets
+Romeo.”
+
+“Half-past six! What an hour! It will be like having a meat-tea, 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 second-rate 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, gold-topped 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 to-morrow. Good-bye.”
+
+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 subject-matter 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 life—that 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 intellect—to
+observe where they met, and where they separated, at what point they
+were in unison, and at what point they were at discord—there was a
+delight in that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too
+high a price for any sensation.
+
+He was conscious—and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his
+brown agate eyes—that 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 self-conscious. 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 soul—how 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 fiery-coloured life and
+wondered how it was all going to end.
+
+When he arrived home, about half-past 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 V.
+
+
+“Mother, Mother, I am so happy!” whispered the girl, burying her face
+in the lap of the faded, tired-looking woman who, with back turned to
+the shrill intrusive light, was sitting in the one arm-chair that their
+dingy sitting-room contained. “I am so happy!” she repeated, “and you
+must be happy, too!”
+
+Mrs. Vane winced and put her thin, bismuth-whitened 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 parrot-phrase flung in answer.
+The waving of crooked, false-jewelled 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.
+
+Thin-lipped 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 yet—why, I
+cannot tell—though 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
+to-day 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
+stage-player, 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
+thick-set 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 good-natured 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 society—so 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 good-bye 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 sea-faring 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 window-pane
+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.
+Good-bye, Mother; I will have my dinner at five o’clock. Everything is
+packed, except my shirts, so you need not trouble.”
+
+“Good-bye, 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, wind-blown sunlight and strolled
+down the dreary Euston Road. The passersby glanced in wonder at the
+sullen heavy youth who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes, was in the
+company of such a graceful, refined-looking 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, red-shirted 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, hump-backed 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 good-bye to the captain, and go off at once to the gold-fields.
+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 gold-fields at all.
+They were horrid places, where men got intoxicated, and shot each other
+in bar-rooms, and used bad language. He was to be a nice sheep-farmer,
+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 heart-sick
+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 race-instinct 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 stage-door, had set loose a train of
+horrible thoughts. He remembered it as if it had been the lash of a
+hunting-crop across his face. His brows knit together into a wedge-like
+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
+him—when 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 to-night. 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; to-night 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; spring-time 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 tulip-beds across
+the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. A white dust—tremulous
+cloud of orris-root it seemed—hung 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 four-in-hand 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 bad-tempered 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
+street-cabs, 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. Good-bye. 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 lodging-house 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 VI.
+
+
+“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 good—she is beautiful,” murmured Lord Henry,
+sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. “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 to-night, 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 satin-lined 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 moss-coloured velvet jerkin with
+cinnamon sleeves, slim, brown, cross-gartered 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 acting—well, you shall see her to-night. 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
+rose-coloured 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 to-day?” 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 middle-class 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 purple-lipped 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, fine-pointed fingers.
+“Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One’s own
+life—that 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
+self-denial. 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, mediæval art is
+charming, but mediæval 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 _fine-champagne_, and
+some cigarettes. No, don’t mind the cigarettes—I 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
+fire-breathing 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 VII.
+
+
+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
+opera-glass.
+
+“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 age—that 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 to-night—
+
+
+was declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been
+taught to recite by some second-rate 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 to-night:
+It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
+Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
+Ere one can say, “It lightens.” Sweet, good-night!
+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
+self-contained. 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
+dress-circle, 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 to-night, 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
+long-drawn 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 to-night. 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 came—oh, my beautiful
+love!—and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality
+really is. To-night, 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. To-night, 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 to-night, 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, Dorian—take 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 third-rate 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 try—indeed, 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 to-night? 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, black-shadowed archways and evil-looking
+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 door-steps,
+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 white-smocked 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,
+jade-green piles of vegetables. Under the portico, with its grey,
+sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls,
+waiting for the auction to be over. Others crowded round the swinging
+doors of the coffee-house in the piazza. The heavy cart-horses slipped
+and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings.
+Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks. Iris-necked
+and pink-footed, 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, close-shuttered 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 nacre-coloured air.
+
+In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge’s barge, that
+hung from the ceiling of the great, oak-panelled 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 new-born 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 button-hole 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 cream-coloured 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 more—would 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 dew-drenched
+garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+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 olive-satin 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 Louis-Quinze toilet-set that he had not yet had the
+courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely old-fashioned
+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 money-lenders
+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
+dressing-gown of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the
+onyx-paved 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
+blue-dragon bowl that, filled with sulphur-yellow 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 Louis-Quatorze 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 ever-present sign of the ruin men
+brought upon their souls.
+
+Three o’clock struck, and four, and the half-hour 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 self-reproach. 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, Harry—perfectly 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 more—at 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 letter—don’t be frightened—was 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 _début_ 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 half-past 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 dressing-room. 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 to-night 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 love-letter I have ever written in my
+life. Strange, that my first passionate love-letter 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 night—was 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 gold-latten 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
+abject—which, 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
+resolutions—that 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 me—there have not been very
+many, but there have been some—have 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. Well—would 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 thirty-five 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
+romance—that 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 dressing-room 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?”
+
+“Twenty-seven, 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. “Good-bye. I shall see you before
+nine-thirty, 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 him—life, and
+his own infinite curiosity about life. Eternal youth, infinite passion,
+pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins—he 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 IX.
+
+
+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
+heart-broken 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
+pale-yellow wine from a delicate, gold-beaded 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, sun-lashed 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, Dorian—or 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 mean—middle-class 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 her—she 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 half-past 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 altered—I 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 vellum-covered
+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, lacquer-work,
+carved ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury, pomp—there 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 life—but 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 to-day. 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 to-day?”
+
+“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. Something—he did not know what—had 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
+Sèze, 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 boar-spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms 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 be—unconscious, 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
+good-looking 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 colour—that 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 good-bye, 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 good-bye. 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 X.
+
+
+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 house-keeper that he
+wanted to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker 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 old-fashioned 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 years—not 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 seventeenth-century
+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 him—for 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 purple-and-gold 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 rose-red lips—they 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
+writing-table 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
+eight-fifteen 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 frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in
+with a somewhat rough-looking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a
+florid, red-whiskered 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 art—but to-day 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 frame-maker,
+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 years—not, indeed,
+since he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then
+as a study when he grew somewhat older. It was a large,
+well-proportioned 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 book-case filled
+with his dog-eared 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, blue-veined
+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 frame-maker, 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 tea-tray. 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 picture—had no doubt missed it already,
+while he had been laying the tea-things. 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
+eight-fifteen. He opened _The St. James’s_ languidly, and looked
+through it. A red pencil-mark 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 post-mortem 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, pearl-coloured 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 arm-chair 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 world-spirit 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 mediæval 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 copper-green 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 morning-room, 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 dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+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 large-paper 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 knew—never, indeed, had any cause to know—that 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 place—that 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
+ill-famed 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 half-serious, 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 self-torture and self-denial, 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 half-cut 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, lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at
+times, one would fain think, is indeed the “_panis cælestis_,” 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 sweet-smelling roots and scented, pollen-laden 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 vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of
+olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts in which mad
+gipsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave, yellow-shawled
+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 charm—great 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 _yotl_-bells
+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 olive-green chrysoberyl that
+turns red by lamplight, the cymophane with its wirelike line of silver,
+the pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes,
+carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous, four-rayed stars, flame-red
+cinnamon-stones, 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 rose-coloured pearls in the mouths of the
+dead. A sea-monster 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 story—nor was it ever found again,
+though the Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight 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 twenty-one 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 ear-rings of emeralds set in
+gold filigrane. Edward II gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold
+armour studded with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with
+turquoise-stones, and a skull-cap _parsemé_ with pearls. Henry II. wore
+jewelled gloves reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with
+twelve rubies and fifty-two great orients. The ducal hat of Charles the
+Rash, the last Duke of Burgundy of his race, was hung with pear-shaped
+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 up—he 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 crocus-coloured 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, gilt-reined steeds? He longed to see the curious
+table-napkins 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, hunters—all, 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 twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the
+king’s arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings
+were similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked
+in gold.” Catherine de Medicis had a mourning-bed 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 gold-thread 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 _fleurs-de-lis_, 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 green-toned 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 self-inflicted pain. He
+possessed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask,
+figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in
+six-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the
+pine-apple device wrought in seed-pearls. 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 heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves,
+from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which
+were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. The morse
+bore a seraph’s head in gold-thread 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 amber-coloured 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 _fleurs-de-lis_; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen;
+and many corporals, chalice-veils, 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
+purple-and-gold 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
+picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other 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 walled-in 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
+smoking-room 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 twenty-fifth 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. Society—civilized 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 half-cold _entrées_, 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 picture-gallery
+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 gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelled
+surcoat, and gilt-edged ruff and wristbands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard,
+with his silver-and-black 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, heavy-lidded 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, thin-lipped 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, wine-dashed lips—he 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
+flute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, had
+caroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables and supped in
+an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted 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 _tædium vitæ_, 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 silver-shod 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 wine—the 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 XII.
+
+
+It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth
+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
+latch-key.
+
+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
+twelve-fifteen, 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 spirit-case stood, with
+some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass 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 gold-tipped 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.
+_Anglomanie_ is very fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly
+of the French, doesn’t it? But—do 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
+brandy-and-soda? Or would you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take
+hock-and-seltzer 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 to-night. 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. Somebody—I won’t mention his name, but you know
+him—came 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 pure-minded 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 dinner-tables, 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 by-word.”
+
+“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
+country-house 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 absurd—that 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 deep-toned 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, to-night!” 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 to-night, 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 fire-place, 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 to-morrow. But don’t ask me to
+read anything to-night. 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 XIII.
+
+
+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
+book-case—that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a
+table. As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned 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 left-hand 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, mist-stained 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 tear-dimmed
+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, stiff-fingered 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
+gas-lamps 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 year—every 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’s-eye 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, half-dressed and looking very
+drowsy.
+
+“I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis,” he said, stepping in;
+“but I had forgotten my latch-key. 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
+to-morrow. 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 to-morrow.”
+
+“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, 152,
+Hertford Street, Mayfair.” Yes; that was the man he wanted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+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,
+blood-stained 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 half-hour 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
+scarf-pin 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 152, 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 book-case 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 title-page
+of the book. It was Gautier’s “Émaux et Camées”, Charpentier’s
+Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding was of
+citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work 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 lavée_,” 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 perles ruisselant,
+La Vénus de l’Adriatique
+    Sort de l’eau son corps rose et blanc.
+
+Les dômes, sur l’azur des ondes
+    Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
+S’enflent comme des gorges rondes
+    Que soulève un soupir d’amour.
+
+L’esquif aborde et me dépose,
+    Jetant son amarre au pilier,
+Devant une façade rose,
+    Sur le marbre d’un escalier.
+
+
+How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed to be floating
+down the green water-ways 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 turquoise-blue that follow one as
+one pushes out to the Lido. The sudden flashes of colour reminded him
+of the gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the
+tall honeycombed Campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace, through
+the dim, dust-stained arcades. Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he
+kept saying over and over to himself:
+
+“Devant une façade 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 _café_ 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, lotus-covered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red
+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 kiss-stained marble, tell
+of that curious statue that Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the
+“_monstre charmant_” that couches in the porphyry-room 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
+together—music 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, too—was 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,
+slow-breathing 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
+coal-black 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 you—mad 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 dead-houses, and the
+horrors that you do there don’t affect you. If in some hideous
+dissecting-room 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, Dorian—they 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 me—no
+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 gas-fire 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 chimney-piece. 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 do—what 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.”
+
+“Yes—Harden. 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 half-past 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 was!—more 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
+half-closed 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 gold-and-purple 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, good-bye. 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 XV.
+
+
+That evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a large
+button-hole of Parma violets, Dorian Gray was ushered into Lady
+Narborough’s drawing-room 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
+short-sighted, 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
+middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies,
+but are thoroughly disliked by their friends; Lady Ruxton, an
+overdressed woman of forty-seven, 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
+Venetian-red 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 red-cheeked,
+white-whiskered 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
+mauve-draped 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 _chaud-froid_ was being
+handed round, “what is the matter with you to-night? 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 week—not, 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 _décolletée_
+she was then.”
+
+“She is still _décolletée_,” he answered, taking an olive in his long
+fingers; “and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an
+_édition 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 zêle_.”
+
+“_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 siêcle_,” 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 to-night 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 _doctrinaire_—word 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 race—sound English common
+sense he jovially termed it—was 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 over-educated. 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
+half-past two, if you wish to know the exact time. I had left my
+latch-key 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 drawing-room. No sherry, thank you, Mr. Chapman.
+Something has happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it is. You are not
+yourself to-night.”
+
+“Don’t mind me, Harry. I am irritable, and out of temper. I shall come
+round and see you to-morrow, 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 to-morrow at tea-time.
+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 nerve 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 three-quarters 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 musk-scented 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 gold-dust 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 XVI.
+
+
+A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly
+in the dripping mist. The public-houses 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
+gas-lamps 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 grey-flannel 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, bottle-shaped kilns with their orange,
+fanlike tongues of fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in
+the darkness some wandering sea-gull 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
+rough-paven 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 chimney-stacks 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
+outward-bound 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 top-windows 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 third-rate dancing-saloon. Shrill flaring
+gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown 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 ochre-coloured 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 mad-cat 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
+half-caste, 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 to-night,” 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 ill-famed 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, thick-set 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 to-night by chance. Make your peace with God, for to-night
+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 peace—no more. I go on board to-night 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 wind-blown 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 XVII.
+
+
+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 jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. It was tea-time,
+and the mellow light of the huge, lace-covered 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 silk-draped
+wicker chair, looking at them. On a peach-coloured 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 smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of the women.
+The house-party 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 button-hole. 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 to-morrow.”
+
+“I prefer the mistakes of to-day,” 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
+half-past 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 garden-party? You don’t, but it is nice
+of you to pretend that you do. Well, she made it 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 to-night.”
+
+“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 drawing-room 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 XVIII.
+
+
+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 mist-stained 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 foot-marks been found on the flower-beds, 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, pine-scented 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 terror-stricken
+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 shooting-party. 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, reed-grown lake.
+
+At the corner of the pine-wood 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 black-tipped 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 head-keeper 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 alder-clump, 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 copper-breasted pheasant came beating through the
+boughs overhead.
+
+After a few moments—that were to him, in his perturbed state, like
+endless hours of pain—he 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 to-day. 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 to-night. 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 tailor-made 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 _début_ 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
+pre-figure 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 night-express to town, and to have the brougham
+at the door by eight-thirty. He was determined not to sleep another
+night at Selby Royal. It was an ill-omened 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 head-keeper 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, sir—not much, and a six-shooter. There was no name of any
+kind. A decent-looking man, sir, but rough-like. 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 gate-post 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 farm-servants to
+come to him.
+
+“Take that thing off the face. I wish to see it,” he said, clutching at
+the door-post for support.
+
+When the farm-servant 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 XIX.
+
+
+“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 rose-water. “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, shell-shaped 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 apple-blossoms 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 mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies 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 self-sacrifice 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 divorce-case 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 music-room, 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 dull-green 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, grey-plumaged
+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
+play—Hamlet, I think—how 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 arm-chair.
+
+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 half-closed eyes. “By the
+way, Dorian,” he said after a pause, “‘what does it profit a man if he
+gain the whole world and lose—how 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 shabby-looking people
+listening to some vulgar street-preacher. 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 lips—it 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 to-night. 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 1820, 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 to-night. 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 built-up 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, honey-coloured 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 you—young 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
+to-night, 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 to-night. 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 to-morrow. 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 XX.
+
+
+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
+had!—just 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 rose-white 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 white-limbed 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, tear-dimmed 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 young-looking 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 loathsome—more loathsome, if
+possible, than before—and 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 dripped—blood 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 below-stairs. 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 murder—was 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
+soul-life, 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 half-clad 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 easily—their 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.
+
+THE END
diff --git a/search-engine/books/The War of the Worlds.txt b/search-engine/books/The War of the Worlds.txt
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+Title: The War of the Worlds
+Author: H. G. Wells
+
+The War of the Worlds
+
+by H. G. Wells
+
+
+
+
+   ‘But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited?
+    . . . Are we or they Lords of the World? . . . And
+    how are all things made for man?’
+                    KEPLER (quoted in _The Anatomy of Melancholy_)
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+ BOOK ONE.—THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS
+
+ I. THE EVE OF THE WAR.
+ II. THE FALLING STAR.
+ III. ON HORSELL COMMON.
+ IV. THE CYLINDER OPENS.
+ V. THE HEAT-RAY.
+ VI. THE HEAT-RAY IN THE CHOBHAM ROAD.
+ VII. HOW I REACHED HOME.
+ VIII. FRIDAY NIGHT.
+ IX. THE FIGHTING BEGINS.
+ X. IN THE STORM.
+ XI. AT THE WINDOW.
+ XII. WHAT I SAW OF THE DESTRUCTION OF WEYBRIDGE AND SHEPPERTON.
+ XIII. HOW I FELL IN WITH THE CURATE.
+ XIV. IN LONDON.
+ XV. WHAT HAD HAPPENED IN SURREY.
+ XVI. THE EXODUS FROM LONDON.
+ XVII. THE “THUNDER CHILD”.
+
+ BOOK TWO.—THE EARTH UNDER THE MARTIANS
+
+ I. UNDER FOOT.
+ II. WHAT WE SAW FROM THE RUINED HOUSE.
+ III. THE DAYS OF IMPRISONMENT.
+ IV. THE DEATH OF THE CURATE.
+ V. THE STILLNESS.
+ VI. THE WORK OF FIFTEEN DAYS.
+ VII. THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL.
+ VIII. DEAD LONDON.
+ IX. WRECKAGE.
+ X. THE EPILOGUE.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS
+
+
+
+
+I.
+THE EVE OF THE WAR.
+
+
+No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century
+that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences
+greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied
+themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and
+studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might
+scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of
+water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe
+about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire
+over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do
+the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources
+of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life
+upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of
+the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men
+fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to
+themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the
+gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the
+beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic,
+regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their
+plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great
+disillusionment.
+
+The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the
+sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it
+receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It
+must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world;
+and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface
+must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of
+the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the
+temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all
+that is necessary for the support of animated existence.
+
+Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to
+the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that
+intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all,
+beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since
+Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the
+superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that
+it is not only more distant from time’s beginning but nearer its end.
+
+The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already
+gone far indeed with our neighbour. Its physical condition is still
+largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region
+the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter.
+Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until
+they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change
+huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically
+inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which to
+us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the
+inhabitants of Mars. The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened
+their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And
+looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we
+have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only
+35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own
+warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy
+atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting
+cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow,
+navy-crowded seas.
+
+And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at
+least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The
+intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant
+struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief
+of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this
+world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they
+regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their
+only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation,
+creeps upon them.
+
+And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless
+and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon
+animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior
+races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely
+swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European
+immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy
+as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?
+
+The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing
+subtlety—their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of
+ours—and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh
+perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen
+the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men like
+Schiaparelli watched the red planet—it is odd, by-the-bye, that for
+countless centuries Mars has been the star of war—but failed to
+interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so
+well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready.
+
+During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated
+part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by Perrotin of
+Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first in
+the issue of _Nature_ dated August 2. I am inclined to think that this
+blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk
+into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us. Peculiar
+markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak
+during the next two oppositions.
+
+The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached
+opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange
+palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of
+incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of
+the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted,
+indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an
+enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become
+invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal
+puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, “as
+flaming gases rushed out of a gun.”
+
+A singularly appropriate phrase it proved. Yet the next day there was
+nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the _Daily
+Telegraph_, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest
+dangers that ever threatened the human race. I might not have heard of
+the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at
+Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of
+his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a
+scrutiny of the red planet.
+
+In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that vigil
+very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the shadowed lantern
+throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking
+of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof—an
+oblong profundity with the stardust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved
+about, invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a
+circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming in the field.
+It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and still, faintly
+marked with transverse stripes, and slightly flattened from the perfect
+round. But so little it was, so silvery warm—a pin’s head of light! It
+was as if it quivered, but really this was the telescope vibrating with
+the activity of the clockwork that kept the planet in view.
+
+As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to
+advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty
+millions of miles it was from us—more than forty millions of miles of
+void. Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of
+the material universe swims.
+
+Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light,
+three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the
+unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness looks
+on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far profounder.
+And invisible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly
+and steadily towards me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer
+every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were
+sending us, the Thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity
+and death to the earth. I never dreamed of it then as I watched; no one
+on earth dreamed of that unerring missile.
+
+That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant
+planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection
+of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and at that I
+told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and I was thirsty,
+and I went stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the
+darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while Ogilvy
+exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out towards us.
+
+That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth
+from Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the first
+one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness, with
+patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes. I wished I had a
+light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I
+had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy watched till
+one, and then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and walked over to his
+house. Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw and Chertsey and all
+their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace.
+
+He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars, and
+scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were
+signalling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a heavy
+shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in
+progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic
+evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets.
+
+“The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one,” he
+said.
+
+Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after
+about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a
+flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on earth
+has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the
+Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through
+a powerful telescope on earth as little grey, fluctuating patches,
+spread through the clearness of the planet’s atmosphere and obscured
+its more familiar features.
+
+Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and popular
+notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the volcanoes
+upon Mars. The seriocomic periodical _Punch_, I remember, made a happy
+use of it in the political cartoon. And, all unsuspected, those
+missiles the Martians had fired at us drew earthward, rushing now at a
+pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space, hour by
+hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. It seems to me now almost
+incredibly wonderful that, with that swift fate hanging over us, men
+could go about their petty concerns as they did. I remember how
+jubilant Markham was at securing a new photograph of the planet for the
+illustrated paper he edited in those days. People in these latter times
+scarcely realise the abundance and enterprise of our nineteenth-century
+papers. For my own part, I was much occupied in learning to ride the
+bicycle, and busy upon a series of papers discussing the probable
+developments of moral ideas as civilisation progressed.
+
+One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000
+miles away) I went for a walk with my wife. It was starlight and I
+explained the Signs of the Zodiac to her, and pointed out Mars, a
+bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which so many
+telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night. Coming home, a party of
+excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing and playing
+music. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the
+people went to bed. From the railway station in the distance came the
+sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into
+melody by the distance. My wife pointed out to me the brightness of the
+red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the
+sky. It seemed so safe and tranquil.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+THE FALLING STAR.
+
+
+Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the
+morning, rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high in the
+atmosphere. Hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an ordinary
+falling star. Albin described it as leaving a greenish streak behind it
+that glowed for some seconds. Denning, our greatest authority on
+meteorites, stated that the height of its first appearance was about
+ninety or one hundred miles. It seemed to him that it fell to earth
+about one hundred miles east of him.
+
+I was at home at that hour and writing in my study; and although my
+French windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (for I loved
+in those days to look up at the night sky), I saw nothing of it. Yet
+this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer space
+must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I only
+looked up as it passed. Some of those who saw its flight say it
+travelled with a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing of that. Many
+people in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex must have seen the fall of
+it, and, at most, have thought that another meteorite had descended. No
+one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.
+
+But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen the shooting
+star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common
+between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking, rose early with the idea of
+finding it. Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from the
+sand-pits. An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the
+projectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every
+direction over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half away.
+The heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke rose against
+the dawn.
+
+The Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the
+scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its
+descent. The uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder,
+caked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured
+incrustation. It had a diameter of about thirty yards. He approached
+the mass, surprised at the size and more so at the shape, since most
+meteorites are rounded more or less completely. It was, however, still
+so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near approach.
+A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the unequal cooling
+of its surface; for at that time it had not occurred to him that it
+might be hollow.
+
+He remained standing at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made for
+itself, staring at its strange appearance, astonished chiefly at its
+unusual shape and colour, and dimly perceiving even then some evidence
+of design in its arrival. The early morning was wonderfully still, and
+the sun, just clearing the pine trees towards Weybridge, was already
+warm. He did not remember hearing any birds that morning, there was
+certainly no breeze stirring, and the only sounds were the faint
+movements from within the cindery cylinder. He was all alone on the
+common.
+
+Then suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the grey clinker,
+the ashy incrustation that covered the meteorite, was falling off the
+circular edge of the end. It was dropping off in flakes and raining
+down upon the sand. A large piece suddenly came off and fell with a
+sharp noise that brought his heart into his mouth.
+
+For a minute he scarcely realised what this meant, and, although the
+heat was excessive, he clambered down into the pit close to the bulk to
+see the Thing more clearly. He fancied even then that the cooling of
+the body might account for this, but what disturbed that idea was the
+fact that the ash was falling only from the end of the cylinder.
+
+And then he perceived that, very slowly, the circular top of the
+cylinder was rotating on its body. It was such a gradual movement that
+he discovered it only through noticing that a black mark that had been
+near him five minutes ago was now at the other side of the
+circumference. Even then he scarcely understood what this indicated,
+until he heard a muffled grating sound and saw the black mark jerk
+forward an inch or so. Then the thing came upon him in a flash. The
+cylinder was artificial—hollow—with an end that screwed out! Something
+within the cylinder was unscrewing the top!
+
+“Good heavens!” said Ogilvy. “There’s a man in it—men in it! Half
+roasted to death! Trying to escape!”
+
+At once, with a quick mental leap, he linked the Thing with the flash
+upon Mars.
+
+The thought of the confined creature was so dreadful to him that he
+forgot the heat and went forward to the cylinder to help turn. But
+luckily the dull radiation arrested him before he could burn his hands
+on the still-glowing metal. At that he stood irresolute for a moment,
+then turned, scrambled out of the pit, and set off running wildly into
+Woking. The time then must have been somewhere about six o’clock. He
+met a waggoner and tried to make him understand, but the tale he told
+and his appearance were so wild—his hat had fallen off in the pit—that
+the man simply drove on. He was equally unsuccessful with the potman
+who was just unlocking the doors of the public-house by Horsell Bridge.
+The fellow thought he was a lunatic at large and made an unsuccessful
+attempt to shut him into the taproom. That sobered him a little; and
+when he saw Henderson, the London journalist, in his garden, he called
+over the palings and made himself understood.
+
+“Henderson,” he called, “you saw that shooting star last night?”
+
+“Well?” said Henderson.
+
+“It’s out on Horsell Common now.”
+
+“Good Lord!” said Henderson. “Fallen meteorite! That’s good.”
+
+“But it’s something more than a meteorite. It’s a cylinder—an
+artificial cylinder, man! And there’s something inside.”
+
+Henderson stood up with his spade in his hand.
+
+“What’s that?” he said. He was deaf in one ear.
+
+Ogilvy told him all that he had seen. Henderson was a minute or so
+taking it in. Then he dropped his spade, snatched up his jacket, and
+came out into the road. The two men hurried back at once to the common,
+and found the cylinder still lying in the same position. But now the
+sounds inside had ceased, and a thin circle of bright metal showed
+between the top and the body of the cylinder. Air was either entering
+or escaping at the rim with a thin, sizzling sound.
+
+They listened, rapped on the scaly burnt metal with a stick, and,
+meeting with no response, they both concluded the man or men inside
+must be insensible or dead.
+
+Of course the two were quite unable to do anything. They shouted
+consolation and promises, and went off back to the town again to get
+help. One can imagine them, covered with sand, excited and disordered,
+running up the little street in the bright sunlight just as the shop
+folks were taking down their shutters and people were opening their
+bedroom windows. Henderson went into the railway station at once, in
+order to telegraph the news to London. The newspaper articles had
+prepared men’s minds for the reception of the idea.
+
+By eight o’clock a number of boys and unemployed men had already
+started for the common to see the “dead men from Mars.” That was the
+form the story took. I heard of it first from my newspaper boy about a
+quarter to nine when I went out to get my _Daily Chronicle_. I was
+naturally startled, and lost no time in going out and across the
+Ottershaw bridge to the sand-pits.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+ON HORSELL COMMON.
+
+
+I found a little crowd of perhaps twenty people surrounding the huge
+hole in which the cylinder lay. I have already described the appearance
+of that colossal bulk, embedded in the ground. The turf and gravel
+about it seemed charred as if by a sudden explosion. No doubt its
+impact had caused a flash of fire. Henderson and Ogilvy were not there.
+I think they perceived that nothing was to be done for the present, and
+had gone away to breakfast at Henderson’s house.
+
+There were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the Pit, with their
+feet dangling, and amusing themselves—until I stopped them—by throwing
+stones at the giant mass. After I had spoken to them about it, they
+began playing at “touch” in and out of the group of bystanders.
+
+Among these were a couple of cyclists, a jobbing gardener I employed
+sometimes, a girl carrying a baby, Gregg the butcher and his little
+boy, and two or three loafers and golf caddies who were accustomed to
+hang about the railway station. There was very little talking. Few of
+the common people in England had anything but the vaguest astronomical
+ideas in those days. Most of them were staring quietly at the big table
+like end of the cylinder, which was still as Ogilvy and Henderson had
+left it. I fancy the popular expectation of a heap of charred corpses
+was disappointed at this inanimate bulk. Some went away while I was
+there, and other people came. I clambered into the pit and fancied I
+heard a faint movement under my feet. The top had certainly ceased to
+rotate.
+
+It was only when I got thus close to it that the strangeness of this
+object was at all evident to me. At the first glance it was really no
+more exciting than an overturned carriage or a tree blown across the
+road. Not so much so, indeed. It looked like a rusty gas float. It
+required a certain amount of scientific education to perceive that the
+grey scale of the Thing was no common oxide, that the yellowish-white
+metal that gleamed in the crack between the lid and the cylinder had an
+unfamiliar hue. “Extra-terrestrial” had no meaning for most of the
+onlookers.
+
+At that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the Thing had come
+from the planet Mars, but I judged it improbable that it contained any
+living creature. I thought the unscrewing might be automatic. In spite
+of Ogilvy, I still believed that there were men in Mars. My mind ran
+fancifully on the possibilities of its containing manuscript, on the
+difficulties in translation that might arise, whether we should find
+coins and models in it, and so forth. Yet it was a little too large for
+assurance on this idea. I felt an impatience to see it opened. About
+eleven, as nothing seemed happening, I walked back, full of such
+thought, to my home in Maybury. But I found it difficult to get to work
+upon my abstract investigations.
+
+In the afternoon the appearance of the common had altered very much.
+The early editions of the evening papers had startled London with
+enormous headlines:
+
+“A MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM MARS.”
+
+
+“REMARKABLE STORY FROM WOKING,”
+
+
+and so forth. In addition, Ogilvy’s wire to the Astronomical Exchange
+had roused every observatory in the three kingdoms.
+
+There were half a dozen flys or more from the Woking station standing
+in the road by the sand-pits, a basket-chaise from Chobham, and a
+rather lordly carriage. Besides that, there was quite a heap of
+bicycles. In addition, a large number of people must have walked, in
+spite of the heat of the day, from Woking and Chertsey, so that there
+was altogether quite a considerable crowd—one or two gaily dressed
+ladies among the others.
+
+It was glaringly hot, not a cloud in the sky nor a breath of wind, and
+the only shadow was that of the few scattered pine trees. The burning
+heather had been extinguished, but the level ground towards Ottershaw
+was blackened as far as one could see, and still giving off vertical
+streamers of smoke. An enterprising sweet-stuff dealer in the Chobham
+Road had sent up his son with a barrow-load of green apples and ginger
+beer.
+
+Going to the edge of the pit, I found it occupied by a group of about
+half a dozen men—Henderson, Ogilvy, and a tall, fair-haired man that I
+afterwards learned was Stent, the Astronomer Royal, with several
+workmen wielding spades and pickaxes. Stent was giving directions in a
+clear, high-pitched voice. He was standing on the cylinder, which was
+now evidently much cooler; his face was crimson and streaming with
+perspiration, and something seemed to have irritated him.
+
+A large portion of the cylinder had been uncovered, though its lower
+end was still embedded. As soon as Ogilvy saw me among the staring
+crowd on the edge of the pit he called to me to come down, and asked me
+if I would mind going over to see Lord Hilton, the lord of the manor.
+
+The growing crowd, he said, was becoming a serious impediment to their
+excavations, especially the boys. They wanted a light railing put up,
+and help to keep the people back. He told me that a faint stirring was
+occasionally still audible within the case, but that the workmen had
+failed to unscrew the top, as it afforded no grip to them. The case
+appeared to be enormously thick, and it was possible that the faint
+sounds we heard represented a noisy tumult in the interior.
+
+I was very glad to do as he asked, and so become one of the privileged
+spectators within the contemplated enclosure. I failed to find Lord
+Hilton at his house, but I was told he was expected from London by the
+six o’clock train from Waterloo; and as it was then about a quarter
+past five, I went home, had some tea, and walked up to the station to
+waylay him.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+THE CYLINDER OPENS.
+
+
+When I returned to the common the sun was setting. Scattered groups
+were hurrying from the direction of Woking, and one or two persons were
+returning. The crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out black
+against the lemon yellow of the sky—a couple of hundred people,
+perhaps. There were raised voices, and some sort of struggle appeared
+to be going on about the pit. Strange imaginings passed through my
+mind. As I drew nearer I heard Stent’s voice:
+
+“Keep back! Keep back!”
+
+A boy came running towards me.
+
+“It’s a-movin’,” he said to me as he passed; “a-screwin’ and a-screwin’
+out. I don’t like it. I’m a-goin’ ’ome, I am.”
+
+I went on to the crowd. There were really, I should think, two or three
+hundred people elbowing and jostling one another, the one or two ladies
+there being by no means the least active.
+
+“He’s fallen in the pit!” cried some one.
+
+“Keep back!” said several.
+
+The crowd swayed a little, and I elbowed my way through. Every one
+seemed greatly excited. I heard a peculiar humming sound from the pit.
+
+“I say!” said Ogilvy; “help keep these idiots back. We don’t know
+what’s in the confounded thing, you know!”
+
+I saw a young man, a shop assistant in Woking I believe he was,
+standing on the cylinder and trying to scramble out of the hole again.
+The crowd had pushed him in.
+
+The end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within. Nearly two
+feet of shining screw projected. Somebody blundered against me, and I
+narrowly missed being pitched onto the top of the screw. I turned, and
+as I did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of the cylinder
+fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion. I stuck my elbow into
+the person behind me, and turned my head towards the Thing again. For a
+moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black. I had the sunset in
+my eyes.
+
+I think everyone expected to see a man emerge—possibly something a
+little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man. I know I
+did. But, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the
+shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two
+luminous disks—like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey
+snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the
+writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me—and then another.
+
+A sudden chill came over me. There was a loud shriek from a woman
+behind. I half turned, keeping my eyes fixed upon the cylinder still,
+from which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my
+way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to
+horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate
+exclamations on all sides. There was a general movement backwards. I
+saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit. I found myself
+alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit running off,
+Stent among them. I looked again at the cylinder, and ungovernable
+terror gripped me. I stood petrified and staring.
+
+A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising
+slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught
+the light, it glistened like wet leather.
+
+Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass
+that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one
+might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim
+of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature
+heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped
+the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.
+
+Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the
+strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its
+pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin
+beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth,
+the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs
+in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of
+movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth—above
+all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes—were at once
+vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was something
+fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of
+the tedious movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this first encounter,
+this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread.
+
+Suddenly the monster vanished. It had toppled over the brim of the
+cylinder and fallen into the pit, with a thud like the fall of a great
+mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar thick cry, and forthwith
+another of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the
+aperture.
+
+I turned and, running madly, made for the first group of trees, perhaps
+a hundred yards away; but I ran slantingly and stumbling, for I could
+not avert my face from these things.
+
+There, among some young pine trees and furze bushes, I stopped,
+panting, and waited further developments. The common round the
+sand-pits was dotted with people, standing like myself in a
+half-fascinated terror, staring at these creatures, or rather at the
+heaped gravel at the edge of the pit in which they lay. And then, with
+a renewed horror, I saw a round, black object bobbing up and down on
+the edge of the pit. It was the head of the shopman who had fallen in,
+but showing as a little black object against the hot western sun. Now
+he got his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed to slip back until
+only his head was visible. Suddenly he vanished, and I could have
+fancied a faint shriek had reached me. I had a momentary impulse to go
+back and help him that my fears overruled.
+
+Everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the
+heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made. Anyone coming
+along the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the
+sight—a dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more
+standing in a great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes, behind
+gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in short,
+excited shouts, and staring, staring hard at a few heaps of sand. The
+barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black against the
+burning sky, and in the sand-pits was a row of deserted vehicles with
+their horses feeding out of nosebags or pawing the ground.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+THE HEAT-RAY.
+
+
+After the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the cylinder
+in which they had come to the earth from their planet, a kind of
+fascination paralysed my actions. I remained standing knee-deep in the
+heather, staring at the mound that hid them. I was a battleground of
+fear and curiosity.
+
+I did not dare to go back towards the pit, but I felt a passionate
+longing to peer into it. I began walking, therefore, in a big curve,
+seeking some point of vantage and continually looking at the sand-heaps
+that hid these new-comers to our earth. Once a leash of thin black
+whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset and was
+immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up, joint by
+joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a wobbling
+motion. What could be going on there?
+
+Most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups—one a little
+crowd towards Woking, the other a knot of people in the direction of
+Chobham. Evidently they shared my mental conflict. There were few near
+me. One man I approached—he was, I perceived, a neighbour of mine,
+though I did not know his name—and accosted. But it was scarcely a time
+for articulate conversation.
+
+“What ugly _brutes_!” he said. “Good God! What ugly brutes!” He
+repeated this over and over again.
+
+“Did you see a man in the pit?” I said; but he made no answer to that.
+We became silent, and stood watching for a time side by side, deriving,
+I fancy, a certain comfort in one another’s company. Then I shifted my
+position to a little knoll that gave me the advantage of a yard or more
+of elevation and when I looked for him presently he was walking towards
+Woking.
+
+The sunset faded to twilight before anything further happened. The
+crowd far away on the left, towards Woking, seemed to grow, and I heard
+now a faint murmur from it. The little knot of people towards Chobham
+dispersed. There was scarcely an intimation of movement from the pit.
+
+It was this, as much as anything, that gave people courage, and I
+suppose the new arrivals from Woking also helped to restore confidence.
+At any rate, as the dusk came on a slow, intermittent movement upon the
+sand-pits began, a movement that seemed to gather force as the
+stillness of the evening about the cylinder remained unbroken. Vertical
+black figures in twos and threes would advance, stop, watch, and
+advance again, spreading out as they did so in a thin irregular
+crescent that promised to enclose the pit in its attenuated horns. I,
+too, on my side began to move towards the pit.
+
+Then I saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly into the sand-pits,
+and heard the clatter of hoofs and the gride of wheels. I saw a lad
+trundling off the barrow of apples. And then, within thirty yards of
+the pit, advancing from the direction of Horsell, I noted a little
+black knot of men, the foremost of whom was waving a white flag.
+
+This was the Deputation. There had been a hasty consultation, and since
+the Martians were evidently, in spite of their repulsive forms,
+intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to show them, by
+approaching them with signals, that we too were intelligent.
+
+Flutter, flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to the left.
+It was too far for me to recognise anyone there, but afterwards I
+learned that Ogilvy, Stent, and Henderson were with others in this
+attempt at communication. This little group had in its advance dragged
+inward, so to speak, the circumference of the now almost complete
+circle of people, and a number of dim black figures followed it at
+discreet distances.
+
+Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a quantity of luminous
+greenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct puffs, which drove
+up, one after the other, straight into the still air.
+
+This smoke (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word for it) was so
+bright that the deep blue sky overhead and the hazy stretches of brown
+common towards Chertsey, set with black pine trees, seemed to darken
+abruptly as these puffs arose, and to remain the darker after their
+dispersal. At the same time a faint hissing sound became audible.
+
+Beyond the pit stood the little wedge of people with the white flag at
+its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of small vertical
+black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose, their
+faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished. Then
+slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud, droning
+noise. Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a
+beam of light seemed to flicker out from it.
+
+Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to
+another, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some
+invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was
+as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire.
+
+Then, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering and
+falling, and their supporters turning to run.
+
+I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping from
+man to man in that little distant crowd. All I felt was that it was
+something very strange. An almost noiseless and blinding flash of
+light, and a man fell headlong and lay still; and as the unseen shaft
+of heat passed over them, pine trees burst into fire, and every dry
+furze bush became with one dull thud a mass of flames. And far away
+towards Knaphill I saw the flashes of trees and hedges and wooden
+buildings suddenly set alight.
+
+It was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death, this
+invisible, inevitable sword of heat. I perceived it coming towards me
+by the flashing bushes it touched, and was too astounded and stupefied
+to stir. I heard the crackle of fire in the sand-pits and the sudden
+squeal of a horse that was as suddenly stilled. Then it was as if an
+invisible yet intensely heated finger were drawn through the heather
+between me and the Martians, and all along a curving line beyond the
+sand-pits the dark ground smoked and crackled. Something fell with a
+crash far away to the left where the road from Woking station opens out
+on the common. Forth-with the hissing and humming ceased, and the
+black, dome-like object sank slowly out of sight into the pit.
+
+All this had happened with such swiftness that I had stood motionless,
+dumbfounded and dazzled by the flashes of light. Had that death swept
+through a full circle, it must inevitably have slain me in my surprise.
+But it passed and spared me, and left the night about me suddenly dark
+and unfamiliar.
+
+The undulating common seemed now dark almost to blackness, except where
+its roadways lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the early
+night. It was dark, and suddenly void of men. Overhead the stars were
+mustering, and in the west the sky was still a pale, bright, almost
+greenish blue. The tops of the pine trees and the roofs of Horsell came
+out sharp and black against the western afterglow. The Martians and
+their appliances were altogether invisible, save for that thin mast
+upon which their restless mirror wobbled. Patches of bush and isolated
+trees here and there smoked and glowed still, and the houses towards
+Woking station were sending up spires of flame into the stillness of
+the evening air.
+
+Nothing was changed save for that and a terrible astonishment. The
+little group of black specks with the flag of white had been swept out
+of existence, and the stillness of the evening, so it seemed to me, had
+scarcely been broken.
+
+It came to me that I was upon this dark common, helpless, unprotected,
+and alone. Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from without,
+came—fear.
+
+With an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through the heather.
+
+The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not only of
+the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about me. Such an
+extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping silently
+as a child might do. Once I had turned, I did not dare to look back.
+
+I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being played
+with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety, this
+mysterious death—as swift as the passage of light—would leap after me
+from the pit about the cylinder, and strike me down.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+THE HEAT-RAY IN THE CHOBHAM ROAD.
+
+
+It is still a matter of wonder how the Martians are able to slay men so
+swiftly and so silently. Many think that in some way they are able to
+generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute
+non-conductivity. This intense heat they project in a parallel beam
+against any object they choose, by means of a polished parabolic mirror
+of unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse
+projects a beam of light. But no one has absolutely proved these
+details. However it is done, it is certain that a beam of heat is the
+essence of the matter. Heat, and invisible, instead of visible, light.
+Whatever is combustible flashes into flame at its touch, lead runs like
+water, it softens iron, cracks and melts glass, and when it falls upon
+water, incontinently that explodes into steam.
+
+That night nearly forty people lay under the starlight about the pit,
+charred and distorted beyond recognition, and all night long the common
+from Horsell to Maybury was deserted and brightly ablaze.
+
+The news of the massacre probably reached Chobham, Woking, and
+Ottershaw about the same time. In Woking the shops had closed when the
+tragedy happened, and a number of people, shop people and so forth,
+attracted by the stories they had heard, were walking over the Horsell
+Bridge and along the road between the hedges that runs out at last upon
+the common. You may imagine the young people brushed up after the
+labours of the day, and making this novelty, as they would make any
+novelty, the excuse for walking together and enjoying a trivial
+flirtation. You may figure to yourself the hum of voices along the road
+in the gloaming. . . .
+
+As yet, of course, few people in Woking even knew that the cylinder had
+opened, though poor Henderson had sent a messenger on a bicycle to the
+post office with a special wire to an evening paper.
+
+As these folks came out by twos and threes upon the open, they found
+little knots of people talking excitedly and peering at the spinning
+mirror over the sand-pits, and the newcomers were, no doubt, soon
+infected by the excitement of the occasion.
+
+By half past eight, when the Deputation was destroyed, there may have
+been a crowd of three hundred people or more at this place, besides
+those who had left the road to approach the Martians nearer. There were
+three policemen too, one of whom was mounted, doing their best, under
+instructions from Stent, to keep the people back and deter them from
+approaching the cylinder. There was some booing from those more
+thoughtless and excitable souls to whom a crowd is always an occasion
+for noise and horse-play.
+
+Stent and Ogilvy, anticipating some possibilities of a collision, had
+telegraphed from Horsell to the barracks as soon as the Martians
+emerged, for the help of a company of soldiers to protect these strange
+creatures from violence. After that they returned to lead that
+ill-fated advance. The description of their death, as it was seen by
+the crowd, tallies very closely with my own impressions: the three
+puffs of green smoke, the deep humming note, and the flashes of flame.
+
+But that crowd of people had a far narrower escape than mine. Only the
+fact that a hummock of heathery sand intercepted the lower part of the
+Heat-Ray saved them. Had the elevation of the parabolic mirror been a
+few yards higher, none could have lived to tell the tale. They saw the
+flashes and the men falling and an invisible hand, as it were, lit the
+bushes as it hurried towards them through the twilight. Then, with a
+whistling note that rose above the droning of the pit, the beam swung
+close over their heads, lighting the tops of the beech trees that line
+the road, and splitting the bricks, smashing the windows, firing the
+window frames, and bringing down in crumbling ruin a portion of the
+gable of the house nearest the corner.
+
+In the sudden thud, hiss, and glare of the igniting trees, the
+panic-stricken crowd seems to have swayed hesitatingly for some
+moments. Sparks and burning twigs began to fall into the road, and
+single leaves like puffs of flame. Hats and dresses caught fire. Then
+came a crying from the common. There were shrieks and shouts, and
+suddenly a mounted policeman came galloping through the confusion with
+his hands clasped over his head, screaming.
+
+“They’re coming!” a woman shrieked, and incontinently everyone was
+turning and pushing at those behind, in order to clear their way to
+Woking again. They must have bolted as blindly as a flock of sheep.
+Where the road grows narrow and black between the high banks the crowd
+jammed, and a desperate struggle occurred. All that crowd did not
+escape; three persons at least, two women and a little boy, were
+crushed and trampled there, and left to die amid the terror and the
+darkness.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+HOW I REACHED HOME.
+
+
+For my own part, I remember nothing of my flight except the stress of
+blundering against trees and stumbling through the heather. All about
+me gathered the invisible terrors of the Martians; that pitiless sword
+of heat seemed whirling to and fro, flourishing overhead before it
+descended and smote me out of life. I came into the road between the
+crossroads and Horsell, and ran along this to the crossroads.
+
+At last I could go no further; I was exhausted with the violence of my
+emotion and of my flight, and I staggered and fell by the wayside. That
+was near the bridge that crosses the canal by the gasworks. I fell and
+lay still.
+
+I must have remained there some time.
+
+I sat up, strangely perplexed. For a moment, perhaps, I could not
+clearly understand how I came there. My terror had fallen from me like
+a garment. My hat had gone, and my collar had burst away from its
+fastener. A few minutes before, there had only been three real things
+before me—the immensity of the night and space and nature, my own
+feebleness and anguish, and the near approach of death. Now it was as
+if something turned over, and the point of view altered abruptly. There
+was no sensible transition from one state of mind to the other. I was
+immediately the self of every day again—a decent, ordinary citizen. The
+silent common, the impulse of my flight, the starting flames, were as
+if they had been in a dream. I asked myself had these latter things
+indeed happened? I could not credit it.
+
+I rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the bridge. My
+mind was blank wonder. My muscles and nerves seemed drained of their
+strength. I dare say I staggered drunkenly. A head rose over the arch,
+and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside him ran
+a little boy. He passed me, wishing me good night. I was minded to
+speak to him, but did not. I answered his greeting with a meaningless
+mumble and went on over the bridge.
+
+Over the Maybury arch a train, a billowing tumult of white, firelit
+smoke, and a long caterpillar of lighted windows, went flying
+south—clatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone. A dim group of
+people talked in the gate of one of the houses in the pretty little row
+of gables that was called Oriental Terrace. It was all so real and so
+familiar. And that behind me! It was frantic, fantastic! Such things, I
+told myself, could not be.
+
+Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my
+experience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of
+detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all
+from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out
+of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling was
+very strong upon me that night. Here was another side to my dream.
+
+But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the
+swift death flying yonder, not two miles away. There was a noise of
+business from the gasworks, and the electric lamps were all alight. I
+stopped at the group of people.
+
+“What news from the common?” said I.
+
+There were two men and a woman at the gate.
+
+“Eh?” said one of the men, turning.
+
+“What news from the common?” I said.
+
+“Ain’t yer just _been_ there?” asked the men.
+
+“People seem fair silly about the common,” said the woman over the
+gate. “What’s it all abart?”
+
+“Haven’t you heard of the men from Mars?” said I; “the creatures from
+Mars?”
+
+“Quite enough,” said the woman over the gate. “Thenks”; and all three
+of them laughed.
+
+I felt foolish and angry. I tried and found I could not tell them what
+I had seen. They laughed again at my broken sentences.
+
+“You’ll hear more yet,” I said, and went on to my home.
+
+I startled my wife at the doorway, so haggard was I. I went into the
+dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and so soon as I could collect
+myself sufficiently I told her the things I had seen. The dinner, which
+was a cold one, had already been served, and remained neglected on the
+table while I told my story.
+
+“There is one thing,” I said, to allay the fears I had aroused; “they
+are the most sluggish things I ever saw crawl. They may keep the pit
+and kill people who come near them, but they cannot get out of it. . .
+. But the horror of them!”
+
+“Don’t, dear!” said my wife, knitting her brows and putting her hand on
+mine.
+
+“Poor Ogilvy!” I said. “To think he may be lying dead there!”
+
+My wife at least did not find my experience incredible. When I saw how
+deadly white her face was, I ceased abruptly.
+
+“They may come here,” she said again and again.
+
+I pressed her to take wine, and tried to reassure her.
+
+“They can scarcely move,” I said.
+
+I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had told
+me of the impossibility of the Martians establishing themselves on the
+earth. In particular I laid stress on the gravitational difficulty. On
+the surface of the earth the force of gravity is three times what it is
+on the surface of Mars. A Martian, therefore, would weigh three times
+more than on Mars, albeit his muscular strength would be the same. His
+own body would be a cope of lead to him, therefore. That, indeed, was
+the general opinion. Both _The Times_ and the _Daily Telegraph_, for
+instance, insisted on it the next morning, and both overlooked, just as
+I did, two obvious modifying influences.
+
+The atmosphere of the earth, we now know, contains far more oxygen or
+far less argon (whichever way one likes to put it) than does Mars’. The
+invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the Martians
+indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their
+bodies. And, in the second place, we all overlooked the fact that such
+mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was quite able to
+dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch.
+
+But I did not consider these points at the time, and so my reasoning
+was dead against the chances of the invaders. With wine and food, the
+confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring my wife, I
+grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure.
+
+“They have done a foolish thing,” said I, fingering my wineglass. “They
+are dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror. Perhaps they
+expected to find no living things—certainly no intelligent living
+things.”
+
+“A shell in the pit,” said I, “if the worst comes to the worst, will
+kill them all.”
+
+The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive
+powers in a state of erethism. I remember that dinner table with
+extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife’s sweet anxious face
+peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white cloth with its
+silver and glass table furniture—for in those days even philosophical
+writers had many little luxuries—the crimson-purple wine in my glass,
+are photographically distinct. At the end of it I sat, tempering nuts
+with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy’s rashness, and denouncing the
+short-sighted timidity of the Martians.
+
+So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his
+nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in
+want of animal food. “We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear.”
+
+I did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner I was to eat
+for very many strange and terrible days.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+FRIDAY NIGHT.
+
+
+The most extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the strange and
+wonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing of
+the commonplace habits of our social order with the first beginnings of
+the series of events that was to topple that social order headlong. If
+on Friday night you had taken a pair of compasses and drawn a circle
+with a radius of five miles round the Woking sand-pits, I doubt if you
+would have had one human being outside it, unless it were some relation
+of Stent or of the three or four cyclists or London people lying dead
+on the common, whose emotions or habits were at all affected by the
+new-comers. Many people had heard of the cylinder, of course, and
+talked about it in their leisure, but it certainly did not make the
+sensation that an ultimatum to Germany would have done.
+
+In London that night poor Henderson’s telegram describing the gradual
+unscrewing of the shot was judged to be a canard, and his evening
+paper, after wiring for authentication from him and receiving no
+reply—the man was killed—decided not to print a special edition.
+
+Even within the five-mile circle the great majority of people were
+inert. I have already described the behaviour of the men and women to
+whom I spoke. All over the district people were dining and supping;
+working men were gardening after the labours of the day, children were
+being put to bed, young people were wandering through the lanes
+love-making, students sat over their books.
+
+Maybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and dominant
+topic in the public-houses, and here and there a messenger, or even an
+eye-witness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of excitement, a
+shouting, and a running to and fro; but for the most part the daily
+routine of working, eating, drinking, sleeping, went on as it had done
+for countless years—as though no planet Mars existed in the sky. Even
+at Woking station and Horsell and Chobham that was the case.
+
+In Woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and going
+on, others were shunting on the sidings, passengers were alighting and
+waiting, and everything was proceeding in the most ordinary way. A boy
+from the town, trenching on Smith’s monopoly, was selling papers with
+the afternoon’s news. The ringing impact of trucks, the sharp whistle
+of the engines from the junction, mingled with their shouts of “Men
+from Mars!” Excited men came into the station about nine o’clock with
+incredible tidings, and caused no more disturbance than drunkards might
+have done. People rattling Londonwards peered into the darkness outside
+the carriage windows, and saw only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark
+dance up from the direction of Horsell, a red glow and a thin veil of
+smoke driving across the stars, and thought that nothing more serious
+than a heath fire was happening. It was only round the edge of the
+common that any disturbance was perceptible. There were half a dozen
+villas burning on the Woking border. There were lights in all the
+houses on the common side of the three villages, and the people there
+kept awake till dawn.
+
+A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going but the
+crowd remaining, both on the Chobham and Horsell bridges. One or two
+adventurous souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness and
+crawled quite near the Martians; but they never returned, for now and
+again a light-ray, like the beam of a warship’s searchlight swept the
+common, and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow. Save for such, that big
+area of common was silent and desolate, and the charred bodies lay
+about on it all night under the stars, and all the next day. A noise of
+hammering from the pit was heard by many people.
+
+So you have the state of things on Friday night. In the centre,
+sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart,
+was this cylinder. But the poison was scarcely working yet. Around it
+was a patch of silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few
+dark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes here and there.
+Here and there was a burning bush or tree. Beyond was a fringe of
+excitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation had not crept
+as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of life still flowed as it
+had flowed for immemorial years. The fever of war that would presently
+clog vein and artery, deaden nerve and destroy brain, had still to
+develop.
+
+All night long the Martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless,
+indefatigable, at work upon the machines they were making ready, and
+ever and again a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled up to the starlit
+sky.
+
+About eleven a company of soldiers came through Horsell, and deployed
+along the edge of the common to form a cordon. Later a second company
+marched through Chobham to deploy on the north side of the common.
+Several officers from the Inkerman barracks had been on the common
+earlier in the day, and one, Major Eden, was reported to be missing.
+The colonel of the regiment came to the Chobham bridge and was busy
+questioning the crowd at midnight. The military authorities were
+certainly alive to the seriousness of the business. About eleven, the
+next morning’s papers were able to say, a squadron of hussars, two
+Maxims, and about four hundred men of the Cardigan regiment started
+from Aldershot.
+
+A few seconds after midnight the crowd in the Chertsey road, Woking,
+saw a star fall from heaven into the pine woods to the northwest. It
+had a greenish colour, and caused a silent brightness like summer
+lightning. This was the second cylinder.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+THE FIGHTING BEGINS.
+
+
+Saturday lives in my memory as a day of suspense. It was a day of
+lassitude too, hot and close, with, I am told, a rapidly fluctuating
+barometer. I had slept but little, though my wife had succeeded in
+sleeping, and I rose early. I went into my garden before breakfast and
+stood listening, but towards the common there was nothing stirring but
+a lark.
+
+The milkman came as usual. I heard the rattle of his chariot and I went
+round to the side gate to ask the latest news. He told me that during
+the night the Martians had been surrounded by troops, and that guns
+were expected. Then—a familiar, reassuring note—I heard a train running
+towards Woking.
+
+“They aren’t to be killed,” said the milkman, “if that can possibly be
+avoided.”
+
+I saw my neighbour gardening, chatted with him for a time, and then
+strolled in to breakfast. It was a most unexceptional morning. My
+neighbour was of opinion that the troops would be able to capture or to
+destroy the Martians during the day.
+
+“It’s a pity they make themselves so unapproachable,” he said. “It
+would be curious to know how they live on another planet; we might
+learn a thing or two.”
+
+He came up to the fence and extended a handful of strawberries, for his
+gardening was as generous as it was enthusiastic. At the same time he
+told me of the burning of the pine woods about the Byfleet Golf Links.
+
+“They say,” said he, “that there’s another of those blessed things
+fallen there—number two. But one’s enough, surely. This lot’ll cost the
+insurance people a pretty penny before everything’s settled.” He
+laughed with an air of the greatest good humour as he said this. The
+woods, he said, were still burning, and pointed out a haze of smoke to
+me. “They will be hot under foot for days, on account of the thick soil
+of pine needles and turf,” he said, and then grew serious over “poor
+Ogilvy.”
+
+After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the
+common. Under the railway bridge I found a group of soldiers—sappers, I
+think, men in small round caps, dirty red jackets unbuttoned, and
+showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots coming to the calf.
+They told me no one was allowed over the canal, and, looking along the
+road towards the bridge, I saw one of the Cardigan men standing
+sentinel there. I talked with these soldiers for a time; I told them of
+my sight of the Martians on the previous evening. None of them had seen
+the Martians, and they had but the vaguest ideas of them, so that they
+plied me with questions. They said that they did not know who had
+authorised the movements of the troops; their idea was that a dispute
+had arisen at the Horse Guards. The ordinary sapper is a great deal
+better educated than the common soldier, and they discussed the
+peculiar conditions of the possible fight with some acuteness. I
+described the Heat-Ray to them, and they began to argue among
+themselves.
+
+“Crawl up under cover and rush ’em, say I,” said one.
+
+“Get aht!” said another. “What’s cover against this ’ere ’eat? Sticks
+to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as near as the ground’ll let
+us, and then drive a trench.”
+
+“Blow yer trenches! You always want trenches; you ought to ha’ been
+born a rabbit Snippy.”
+
+“Ain’t they got any necks, then?” said a third, abruptly—a little,
+contemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe.
+
+I repeated my description.
+
+“Octopuses,” said he, “that’s what I calls ’em. Talk about fishers of
+men—fighters of fish it is this time!”
+
+“It ain’t no murder killing beasts like that,” said the first speaker.
+
+“Why not shell the darned things strite off and finish ’em?” said the
+little dark man. “You carn tell what they might do.”
+
+“Where’s your shells?” said the first speaker. “There ain’t no time. Do
+it in a rush, that’s my tip, and do it at once.”
+
+So they discussed it. After a while I left them, and went on to the
+railway station to get as many morning papers as I could.
+
+But I will not weary the reader with a description of that long morning
+and of the longer afternoon. I did not succeed in getting a glimpse of
+the common, for even Horsell and Chobham church towers were in the
+hands of the military authorities. The soldiers I addressed didn’t know
+anything; the officers were mysterious as well as busy. I found people
+in the town quite secure again in the presence of the military, and I
+heard for the first time from Marshall, the tobacconist, that his son
+was among the dead on the common. The soldiers had made the people on
+the outskirts of Horsell lock up and leave their houses.
+
+I got back to lunch about two, very tired for, as I have said, the day
+was extremely hot and dull; and in order to refresh myself I took a
+cold bath in the afternoon. About half past four I went up to the
+railway station to get an evening paper, for the morning papers had
+contained only a very inaccurate description of the killing of Stent,
+Henderson, Ogilvy, and the others. But there was little I didn’t know.
+The Martians did not show an inch of themselves. They seemed busy in
+their pit, and there was a sound of hammering and an almost continuous
+streamer of smoke. Apparently they were busy getting ready for a
+struggle. “Fresh attempts have been made to signal, but without
+success,” was the stereotyped formula of the papers. A sapper told me
+it was done by a man in a ditch with a flag on a long pole. The
+Martians took as much notice of such advances as we should of the
+lowing of a cow.
+
+I must confess the sight of all this armament, all this preparation,
+greatly excited me. My imagination became belligerent, and defeated the
+invaders in a dozen striking ways; something of my schoolboy dreams of
+battle and heroism came back. It hardly seemed a fair fight to me at
+that time. They seemed very helpless in that pit of theirs.
+
+About three o’clock there began the thud of a gun at measured intervals
+from Chertsey or Addlestone. I learned that the smouldering pine wood
+into which the second cylinder had fallen was being shelled, in the
+hope of destroying that object before it opened. It was only about
+five, however, that a field gun reached Chobham for use against the
+first body of Martians.
+
+About six in the evening, as I sat at tea with my wife in the
+summerhouse talking vigorously about the battle that was lowering upon
+us, I heard a muffled detonation from the common, and immediately after
+a gust of firing. Close on the heels of that came a violent rattling
+crash, quite close to us, that shook the ground; and, starting out upon
+the lawn, I saw the tops of the trees about the Oriental College burst
+into smoky red flame, and the tower of the little church beside it
+slide down into ruin. The pinnacle of the mosque had vanished, and the
+roof line of the college itself looked as if a hundred-ton gun had been
+at work upon it. One of our chimneys cracked as if a shot had hit it,
+flew, and a piece of it came clattering down the tiles and made a heap
+of broken red fragments upon the flower bed by my study window.
+
+I and my wife stood amazed. Then I realised that the crest of Maybury
+Hill must be within range of the Martians’ Heat-Ray now that the
+college was cleared out of the way.
+
+At that I gripped my wife’s arm, and without ceremony ran her out into
+the road. Then I fetched out the servant, telling her I would go
+upstairs myself for the box she was clamouring for.
+
+“We can’t possibly stay here,” I said; and as I spoke the firing
+reopened for a moment upon the common.
+
+“But where are we to go?” said my wife in terror.
+
+I thought perplexed. Then I remembered her cousins at Leatherhead.
+
+“Leatherhead!” I shouted above the sudden noise.
+
+She looked away from me downhill. The people were coming out of their
+houses, astonished.
+
+“How are we to get to Leatherhead?” she said.
+
+Down the hill I saw a bevy of hussars ride under the railway bridge;
+three galloped through the open gates of the Oriental College; two
+others dismounted, and began running from house to house. The sun,
+shining through the smoke that drove up from the tops of the trees,
+seemed blood red, and threw an unfamiliar lurid light upon everything.
+
+“Stop here,” said I; “you are safe here”; and I started off at once for
+the Spotted Dog, for I knew the landlord had a horse and dog cart. I
+ran, for I perceived that in a moment everyone upon this side of the
+hill would be moving. I found him in his bar, quite unaware of what was
+going on behind his house. A man stood with his back to me, talking to
+him.
+
+“I must have a pound,” said the landlord, “and I’ve no one to drive
+it.”
+
+“I’ll give you two,” said I, over the stranger’s shoulder.
+
+“What for?”
+
+“And I’ll bring it back by midnight,” I said.
+
+“Lord!” said the landlord; “what’s the hurry? I’m selling my bit of a
+pig. Two pounds, and you bring it back? What’s going on now?”
+
+I explained hastily that I had to leave my home, and so secured the dog
+cart. At the time it did not seem to me nearly so urgent that the
+landlord should leave his. I took care to have the cart there and then,
+drove it off down the road, and, leaving it in charge of my wife and
+servant, rushed into my house and packed a few valuables, such plate as
+we had, and so forth. The beech trees below the house were burning
+while I did this, and the palings up the road glowed red. While I was
+occupied in this way, one of the dismounted hussars came running up. He
+was going from house to house, warning people to leave. He was going on
+as I came out of my front door, lugging my treasures, done up in a
+tablecloth. I shouted after him:
+
+“What news?”
+
+He turned, stared, bawled something about “crawling out in a thing like
+a dish cover,” and ran on to the gate of the house at the crest. A
+sudden whirl of black smoke driving across the road hid him for a
+moment. I ran to my neighbour’s door and rapped to satisfy myself of
+what I already knew, that his wife had gone to London with him and had
+locked up their house. I went in again, according to my promise, to get
+my servant’s box, lugged it out, clapped it beside her on the tail of
+the dog cart, and then caught the reins and jumped up into the driver’s
+seat beside my wife. In another moment we were clear of the smoke and
+noise, and spanking down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill towards Old
+Woking.
+
+In front was a quiet sunny landscape, a wheat field ahead on either
+side of the road, and the Maybury Inn with its swinging sign. I saw the
+doctor’s cart ahead of me. At the bottom of the hill I turned my head
+to look at the hillside I was leaving. Thick streamers of black smoke
+shot with threads of red fire were driving up into the still air, and
+throwing dark shadows upon the green treetops eastward. The smoke
+already extended far away to the east and west—to the Byfleet pine
+woods eastward, and to Woking on the west. The road was dotted with
+people running towards us. And very faint now, but very distinct
+through the hot, quiet air, one heard the whirr of a machine-gun that
+was presently stilled, and an intermittent cracking of rifles.
+Apparently the Martians were setting fire to everything within range of
+their Heat-Ray.
+
+I am not an expert driver, and I had immediately to turn my attention
+to the horse. When I looked back again the second hill had hidden the
+black smoke. I slashed the horse with the whip, and gave him a loose
+rein until Woking and Send lay between us and that quivering tumult. I
+overtook and passed the doctor between Woking and Send.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+IN THE STORM.
+
+
+Leatherhead is about twelve miles from Maybury Hill. The scent of hay
+was in the air through the lush meadows beyond Pyrford, and the hedges
+on either side were sweet and gay with multitudes of dog-roses. The
+heavy firing that had broken out while we were driving down Maybury
+Hill ceased as abruptly as it began, leaving the evening very peaceful
+and still. We got to Leatherhead without misadventure about nine
+o’clock, and the horse had an hour’s rest while I took supper with my
+cousins and commended my wife to their care.
+
+My wife was curiously silent throughout the drive, and seemed oppressed
+with forebodings of evil. I talked to her reassuringly, pointing out
+that the Martians were tied to the pit by sheer heaviness, and at the
+utmost could but crawl a little out of it; but she answered only in
+monosyllables. Had it not been for my promise to the innkeeper, she
+would, I think, have urged me to stay in Leatherhead that night. Would
+that I had! Her face, I remember, was very white as we parted.
+
+For my own part, I had been feverishly excited all day. Something very
+like the war fever that occasionally runs through a civilised community
+had got into my blood, and in my heart I was not so very sorry that I
+had to return to Maybury that night. I was even afraid that that last
+fusillade I had heard might mean the extermination of our invaders from
+Mars. I can best express my state of mind by saying that I wanted to be
+in at the death.
+
+It was nearly eleven when I started to return. The night was
+unexpectedly dark; to me, walking out of the lighted passage of my
+cousins’ house, it seemed indeed black, and it was as hot and close as
+the day. Overhead the clouds were driving fast, albeit not a breath
+stirred the shrubs about us. My cousins’ man lit both lamps. Happily, I
+knew the road intimately. My wife stood in the light of the doorway,
+and watched me until I jumped up into the dog cart. Then abruptly she
+turned and went in, leaving my cousins side by side wishing me good
+hap.
+
+I was a little depressed at first with the contagion of my wife’s
+fears, but very soon my thoughts reverted to the Martians. At that time
+I was absolutely in the dark as to the course of the evening’s
+fighting. I did not know even the circumstances that had precipitated
+the conflict. As I came through Ockham (for that was the way I
+returned, and not through Send and Old Woking) I saw along the western
+horizon a blood-red glow, which as I drew nearer, crept slowly up the
+sky. The driving clouds of the gathering thunderstorm mingled there
+with masses of black and red smoke.
+
+Ripley Street was deserted, and except for a lighted window or so the
+village showed not a sign of life; but I narrowly escaped an accident
+at the corner of the road to Pyrford, where a knot of people stood with
+their backs to me. They said nothing to me as I passed. I do not know
+what they knew of the things happening beyond the hill, nor do I know
+if the silent houses I passed on my way were sleeping securely, or
+deserted and empty, or harassed and watching against the terror of the
+night.
+
+From Ripley until I came through Pyrford I was in the valley of the
+Wey, and the red glare was hidden from me. As I ascended the little
+hill beyond Pyrford Church the glare came into view again, and the
+trees about me shivered with the first intimation of the storm that was
+upon me. Then I heard midnight pealing out from Pyrford Church behind
+me, and then came the silhouette of Maybury Hill, with its tree-tops
+and roofs black and sharp against the red.
+
+Even as I beheld this a lurid green glare lit the road about me and
+showed the distant woods towards Addlestone. I felt a tug at the reins.
+I saw that the driving clouds had been pierced as it were by a thread
+of green fire, suddenly lighting their confusion and falling into the
+field to my left. It was the third falling star!
+
+Close on its apparition, and blindingly violet by contrast, danced out
+the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the thunder burst like
+a rocket overhead. The horse took the bit between his teeth and bolted.
+
+A moderate incline runs towards the foot of Maybury Hill, and down this
+we clattered. Once the lightning had begun, it went on in as rapid a
+succession of flashes as I have ever seen. The thunderclaps, treading
+one on the heels of another and with a strange crackling accompaniment,
+sounded more like the working of a gigantic electric machine than the
+usual detonating reverberations. The flickering light was blinding and
+confusing, and a thin hail smote gustily at my face as I drove down the
+slope.
+
+At first I regarded little but the road before me, and then abruptly my
+attention was arrested by something that was moving rapidly down the
+opposite slope of Maybury Hill. At first I took it for the wet roof of
+a house, but one flash following another showed it to be in swift
+rolling movement. It was an elusive vision—a moment of bewildering
+darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red masses of the
+Orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops of the pine trees,
+and this problematical object came out clear and sharp and bright.
+
+And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher
+than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them
+aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now
+across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the
+clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder.
+A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in
+the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the
+next flash, a hundred yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool
+tilted and bowled violently along the ground? That was the impression
+those instant flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a
+great body of machinery on a tripod stand.
+
+Then suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were parted, as
+brittle reeds are parted by a man thrusting through them; they were
+snapped off and driven headlong, and a second huge tripod appeared,
+rushing, as it seemed, headlong towards me. And I was galloping hard to
+meet it! At the sight of the second monster my nerve went altogether.
+Not stopping to look again, I wrenched the horse’s head hard round to
+the right and in another moment the dog cart had heeled over upon the
+horse; the shafts smashed noisily, and I was flung sideways and fell
+heavily into a shallow pool of water.
+
+I crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in the
+water, under a clump of furze. The horse lay motionless (his neck was
+broken, poor brute!) and by the lightning flashes I saw the black bulk
+of the overturned dog cart and the silhouette of the wheel still
+spinning slowly. In another moment the colossal mechanism went striding
+by me, and passed uphill towards Pyrford.
+
+Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere
+insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing
+metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which
+gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange
+body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen hood
+that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a
+head looking about. Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal
+like a gigantic fisherman’s basket, and puffs of green smoke squirted
+out from the joints of the limbs as the monster swept by me. And in an
+instant it was gone.
+
+So much I saw then, all vaguely for the flickering of the lightning, in
+blinding highlights and dense black shadows.
+
+As it passed it set up an exultant deafening howl that drowned the
+thunder—“Aloo! Aloo!”—and in another minute it was with its companion,
+half a mile away, stooping over something in the field. I have no doubt
+this Thing in the field was the third of the ten cylinders they had
+fired at us from Mars.
+
+For some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness watching, by the
+intermittent light, these monstrous beings of metal moving about in the
+distance over the hedge tops. A thin hail was now beginning, and as it
+came and went their figures grew misty and then flashed into clearness
+again. Now and then came a gap in the lightning, and the night
+swallowed them up.
+
+I was soaked with hail above and puddle water below. It was some time
+before my blank astonishment would let me struggle up the bank to a
+drier position, or think at all of my imminent peril.
+
+Not far from me was a little one-roomed squatter’s hut of wood,
+surrounded by a patch of potato garden. I struggled to my feet at last,
+and, crouching and making use of every chance of cover, I made a run
+for this. I hammered at the door, but I could not make the people hear
+(if there were any people inside), and after a time I desisted, and,
+availing myself of a ditch for the greater part of the way, succeeded
+in crawling, unobserved by these monstrous machines, into the pine
+woods towards Maybury.
+
+Under cover of this I pushed on, wet and shivering now, towards my own
+house. I walked among the trees trying to find the footpath. It was
+very dark indeed in the wood, for the lightning was now becoming
+infrequent, and the hail, which was pouring down in a torrent, fell in
+columns through the gaps in the heavy foliage.
+
+If I had fully realised the meaning of all the things I had seen I
+should have immediately worked my way round through Byfleet to Street
+Cobham, and so gone back to rejoin my wife at Leatherhead. But that
+night the strangeness of things about me, and my physical wretchedness,
+prevented me, for I was bruised, weary, wet to the skin, deafened and
+blinded by the storm.
+
+I had a vague idea of going on to my own house, and that was as much
+motive as I had. I staggered through the trees, fell into a ditch and
+bruised my knees against a plank, and finally splashed out into the
+lane that ran down from the College Arms. I say splashed, for the storm
+water was sweeping the sand down the hill in a muddy torrent. There in
+the darkness a man blundered into me and sent me reeling back.
+
+He gave a cry of terror, sprang sideways, and rushed on before I could
+gather my wits sufficiently to speak to him. So heavy was the stress of
+the storm just at this place that I had the hardest task to win my way
+up the hill. I went close up to the fence on the left and worked my way
+along its palings.
+
+Near the top I stumbled upon something soft, and, by a flash of
+lightning, saw between my feet a heap of black broadcloth and a pair of
+boots. Before I could distinguish clearly how the man lay, the flicker
+of light had passed. I stood over him waiting for the next flash. When
+it came, I saw that he was a sturdy man, cheaply but not shabbily
+dressed; his head was bent under his body, and he lay crumpled up close
+to the fence, as though he had been flung violently against it.
+
+Overcoming the repugnance natural to one who had never before touched a
+dead body, I stooped and turned him over to feel for his heart. He was
+quite dead. Apparently his neck had been broken. The lightning flashed
+for a third time, and his face leaped upon me. I sprang to my feet. It
+was the landlord of the Spotted Dog, whose conveyance I had taken.
+
+I stepped over him gingerly and pushed on up the hill. I made my way by
+the police station and the College Arms towards my own house. Nothing
+was burning on the hillside, though from the common there still came a
+red glare and a rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating up against the
+drenching hail. So far as I could see by the flashes, the houses about
+me were mostly uninjured. By the College Arms a dark heap lay in the
+road.
+
+Down the road towards Maybury Bridge there were voices and the sound of
+feet, but I had not the courage to shout or to go to them. I let myself
+in with my latchkey, closed, locked and bolted the door, staggered to
+the foot of the staircase, and sat down. My imagination was full of
+those striding metallic monsters, and of the dead body smashed against
+the fence.
+
+I crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the wall,
+shivering violently.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+AT THE WINDOW.
+
+
+I have already said that my storms of emotion have a trick of
+exhausting themselves. After a time I discovered that I was cold and
+wet, and with little pools of water about me on the stair carpet. I got
+up almost mechanically, went into the dining room and drank some
+whisky, and then I was moved to change my clothes.
+
+After I had done that I went upstairs to my study, but why I did so I
+do not know. The window of my study looks over the trees and the
+railway towards Horsell Common. In the hurry of our departure this
+window had been left open. The passage was dark, and, by contrast with
+the picture the window frame enclosed, the side of the room seemed
+impenetrably dark. I stopped short in the doorway.
+
+The thunderstorm had passed. The towers of the Oriental College and the
+pine trees about it had gone, and very far away, lit by a vivid red
+glare, the common about the sand-pits was visible. Across the light
+huge black shapes, grotesque and strange, moved busily to and fro.
+
+It seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction was on
+fire—a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flame, swaying and
+writhing with the gusts of the dying storm, and throwing a red
+reflection upon the cloud scud above. Every now and then a haze of
+smoke from some nearer conflagration drove across the window and hid
+the Martian shapes. I could not see what they were doing, nor the clear
+form of them, nor recognise the black objects they were busied upon.
+Neither could I see the nearer fire, though the reflections of it
+danced on the wall and ceiling of the study. A sharp, resinous tang of
+burning was in the air.
+
+I closed the door noiselessly and crept towards the window. As I did
+so, the view opened out until, on the one hand, it reached to the
+houses about Woking station, and on the other to the charred and
+blackened pine woods of Byfleet. There was a light down below the hill,
+on the railway, near the arch, and several of the houses along the
+Maybury road and the streets near the station were glowing ruins. The
+light upon the railway puzzled me at first; there were a black heap and
+a vivid glare, and to the right of that a row of yellow oblongs. Then I
+perceived this was a wrecked train, the fore part smashed and on fire,
+the hinder carriages still upon the rails.
+
+Between these three main centres of light—the houses, the train, and
+the burning county towards Chobham—stretched irregular patches of dark
+country, broken here and there by intervals of dimly glowing and
+smoking ground. It was the strangest spectacle, that black expanse set
+with fire. It reminded me, more than anything else, of the Potteries at
+night. At first I could distinguish no people at all, though I peered
+intently for them. Later I saw against the light of Woking station a
+number of black figures hurrying one after the other across the line.
+
+And this was the little world in which I had been living securely for
+years, this fiery chaos! What had happened in the last seven hours I
+still did not know; nor did I know, though I was beginning to guess,
+the relation between these mechanical colossi and the sluggish lumps I
+had seen disgorged from the cylinder. With a queer feeling of
+impersonal interest I turned my desk chair to the window, sat down, and
+stared at the blackened country, and particularly at the three gigantic
+black things that were going to and fro in the glare about the
+sand-pits.
+
+They seemed amazingly busy. I began to ask myself what they could be.
+Were they intelligent mechanisms? Such a thing I felt was impossible.
+Or did a Martian sit within each, ruling, directing, using, much as a
+man’s brain sits and rules in his body? I began to compare the things
+to human machines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an
+ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal.
+
+The storm had left the sky clear, and over the smoke of the burning
+land the little fading pinpoint of Mars was dropping into the west,
+when a soldier came into my garden. I heard a slight scraping at the
+fence, and rousing myself from the lethargy that had fallen upon me, I
+looked down and saw him dimly, clambering over the palings. At the
+sight of another human being my torpor passed, and I leaned out of the
+window eagerly.
+
+“Hist!” said I, in a whisper.
+
+He stopped astride of the fence in doubt. Then he came over and across
+the lawn to the corner of the house. He bent down and stepped softly.
+
+“Who’s there?” he said, also whispering, standing under the window and
+peering up.
+
+“Where are you going?” I asked.
+
+“God knows.”
+
+“Are you trying to hide?”
+
+“That’s it.”
+
+“Come into the house,” I said.
+
+I went down, unfastened the door, and let him in, and locked the door
+again. I could not see his face. He was hatless, and his coat was
+unbuttoned.
+
+“My God!” he said, as I drew him in.
+
+“What has happened?” I asked.
+
+“What hasn’t?” In the obscurity I could see he made a gesture of
+despair. “They wiped us out—simply wiped us out,” he repeated again and
+again.
+
+He followed me, almost mechanically, into the dining room.
+
+“Take some whisky,” I said, pouring out a stiff dose.
+
+He drank it. Then abruptly he sat down before the table, put his head
+on his arms, and began to sob and weep like a little boy, in a perfect
+passion of emotion, while I, with a curious forgetfulness of my own
+recent despair, stood beside him, wondering.
+
+It was a long time before he could steady his nerves to answer my
+questions, and then he answered perplexingly and brokenly. He was a
+driver in the artillery, and had only come into action about seven. At
+that time firing was going on across the common, and it was said the
+first party of Martians were crawling slowly towards their second
+cylinder under cover of a metal shield.
+
+Later this shield staggered up on tripod legs and became the first of
+the fighting-machines I had seen. The gun he drove had been unlimbered
+near Horsell, in order to command the sand-pits, and its arrival it was
+that had precipitated the action. As the limber gunners went to the
+rear, his horse trod in a rabbit hole and came down, throwing him into
+a depression of the ground. At the same moment the gun exploded behind
+him, the ammunition blew up, there was fire all about him, and he found
+himself lying under a heap of charred dead men and dead horses.
+
+“I lay still,” he said, “scared out of my wits, with the fore quarter
+of a horse atop of me. We’d been wiped out. And the smell—good God!
+Like burnt meat! I was hurt across the back by the fall of the horse,
+and there I had to lie until I felt better. Just like parade it had
+been a minute before—then stumble, bang, swish!”
+
+“Wiped out!” he said.
+
+He had hid under the dead horse for a long time, peeping out furtively
+across the common. The Cardigan men had tried a rush, in skirmishing
+order, at the pit, simply to be swept out of existence. Then the
+monster had risen to its feet and had begun to walk leisurely to and
+fro across the common among the few fugitives, with its headlike hood
+turning about exactly like the head of a cowled human being. A kind of
+arm carried a complicated metallic case, about which green flashes
+scintillated, and out of the funnel of this there smoked the Heat-Ray.
+
+In a few minutes there was, so far as the soldier could see, not a
+living thing left upon the common, and every bush and tree upon it that
+was not already a blackened skeleton was burning. The hussars had been
+on the road beyond the curvature of the ground, and he saw nothing of
+them. He heard the Maxims rattle for a time and then become still. The
+giant saved Woking station and its cluster of houses until the last;
+then in a moment the Heat-Ray was brought to bear, and the town became
+a heap of fiery ruins. Then the Thing shut off the Heat-Ray, and
+turning its back upon the artilleryman, began to waddle away towards
+the smouldering pine woods that sheltered the second cylinder. As it
+did so a second glittering Titan built itself up out of the pit.
+
+The second monster followed the first, and at that the artilleryman
+began to crawl very cautiously across the hot heather ash towards
+Horsell. He managed to get alive into the ditch by the side of the
+road, and so escaped to Woking. There his story became ejaculatory. The
+place was impassable. It seems there were a few people alive there,
+frantic for the most part and many burned and scalded. He was turned
+aside by the fire, and hid among some almost scorching heaps of broken
+wall as one of the Martian giants returned. He saw this one pursue a
+man, catch him up in one of its steely tentacles, and knock his head
+against the trunk of a pine tree. At last, after nightfall, the
+artilleryman made a rush for it and got over the railway embankment.
+
+Since then he had been skulking along towards Maybury, in the hope of
+getting out of danger Londonward. People were hiding in trenches and
+cellars, and many of the survivors had made off towards Woking village
+and Send. He had been consumed with thirst until he found one of the
+water mains near the railway arch smashed, and the water bubbling out
+like a spring upon the road.
+
+That was the story I got from him, bit by bit. He grew calmer telling
+me and trying to make me see the things he had seen. He had eaten no
+food since midday, he told me early in his narrative, and I found some
+mutton and bread in the pantry and brought it into the room. We lit no
+lamp for fear of attracting the Martians, and ever and again our hands
+would touch upon bread or meat. As he talked, things about us came
+darkly out of the darkness, and the trampled bushes and broken rose
+trees outside the window grew distinct. It would seem that a number of
+men or animals had rushed across the lawn. I began to see his face,
+blackened and haggard, as no doubt mine was also.
+
+When we had finished eating we went softly upstairs to my study, and I
+looked again out of the open window. In one night the valley had become
+a valley of ashes. The fires had dwindled now. Where flames had been
+there were now streamers of smoke; but the countless ruins of shattered
+and gutted houses and blasted and blackened trees that the night had
+hidden stood out now gaunt and terrible in the pitiless light of dawn.
+Yet here and there some object had had the luck to escape—a white
+railway signal here, the end of a greenhouse there, white and fresh
+amid the wreckage. Never before in the history of warfare had
+destruction been so indiscriminate and so universal. And shining with
+the growing light of the east, three of the metallic giants stood about
+the pit, their cowls rotating as though they were surveying the
+desolation they had made.
+
+It seemed to me that the pit had been enlarged, and ever and again
+puffs of vivid green vapour streamed up and out of it towards the
+brightening dawn—streamed up, whirled, broke, and vanished.
+
+Beyond were the pillars of fire about Chobham. They became pillars of
+bloodshot smoke at the first touch of day.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+WHAT I SAW OF THE DESTRUCTION OF WEYBRIDGE AND SHEPPERTON.
+
+
+As the dawn grew brighter we withdrew from the window from which we had
+watched the Martians, and went very quietly downstairs.
+
+The artilleryman agreed with me that the house was no place to stay in.
+He proposed, he said, to make his way Londonward, and thence rejoin his
+battery—No. 12, of the Horse Artillery. My plan was to return at once
+to Leatherhead; and so greatly had the strength of the Martians
+impressed me that I had determined to take my wife to Newhaven, and go
+with her out of the country forthwith. For I already perceived clearly
+that the country about London must inevitably be the scene of a
+disastrous struggle before such creatures as these could be destroyed.
+
+Between us and Leatherhead, however, lay the third cylinder, with its
+guarding giants. Had I been alone, I think I should have taken my
+chance and struck across country. But the artilleryman dissuaded me:
+“It’s no kindness to the right sort of wife,” he said, “to make her a
+widow”; and in the end I agreed to go with him, under cover of the
+woods, northward as far as Street Cobham before I parted with him.
+Thence I would make a big detour by Epsom to reach Leatherhead.
+
+I should have started at once, but my companion had been in active
+service and he knew better than that. He made me ransack the house for
+a flask, which he filled with whisky; and we lined every available
+pocket with packets of biscuits and slices of meat. Then we crept out
+of the house, and ran as quickly as we could down the ill-made road by
+which I had come overnight. The houses seemed deserted. In the road lay
+a group of three charred bodies close together, struck dead by the
+Heat-Ray; and here and there were things that people had dropped—a
+clock, a slipper, a silver spoon, and the like poor valuables. At the
+corner turning up towards the post office a little cart, filled with
+boxes and furniture, and horseless, heeled over on a broken wheel. A
+cash box had been hastily smashed open and thrown under the debris.
+
+Except the lodge at the Orphanage, which was still on fire, none of the
+houses had suffered very greatly here. The Heat-Ray had shaved the
+chimney tops and passed. Yet, save ourselves, there did not seem to be
+a living soul on Maybury Hill. The majority of the inhabitants had
+escaped, I suppose, by way of the Old Woking road—the road I had taken
+when I drove to Leatherhead—or they had hidden.
+
+We went down the lane, by the body of the man in black, sodden now from
+the overnight hail, and broke into the woods at the foot of the hill.
+We pushed through these towards the railway without meeting a soul. The
+woods across the line were but the scarred and blackened ruins of
+woods; for the most part the trees had fallen, but a certain proportion
+still stood, dismal grey stems, with dark brown foliage instead of
+green.
+
+On our side the fire had done no more than scorch the nearer trees; it
+had failed to secure its footing. In one place the woodmen had been at
+work on Saturday; trees, felled and freshly trimmed, lay in a clearing,
+with heaps of sawdust by the sawing-machine and its engine. Hard by was
+a temporary hut, deserted. There was not a breath of wind this morning,
+and everything was strangely still. Even the birds were hushed, and as
+we hurried along I and the artilleryman talked in whispers and looked
+now and again over our shoulders. Once or twice we stopped to listen.
+
+After a time we drew near the road, and as we did so we heard the
+clatter of hoofs and saw through the tree stems three cavalry soldiers
+riding slowly towards Woking. We hailed them, and they halted while we
+hurried towards them. It was a lieutenant and a couple of privates of
+the 8th Hussars, with a stand like a theodolite, which the artilleryman
+told me was a heliograph.
+
+“You are the first men I’ve seen coming this way this morning,” said
+the lieutenant. “What’s brewing?”
+
+His voice and face were eager. The men behind him stared curiously. The
+artilleryman jumped down the bank into the road and saluted.
+
+“Gun destroyed last night, sir. Have been hiding. Trying to rejoin
+battery, sir. You’ll come in sight of the Martians, I expect, about
+half a mile along this road.”
+
+“What the dickens are they like?” asked the lieutenant.
+
+“Giants in armour, sir. Hundred feet high. Three legs and a body like
+’luminium, with a mighty great head in a hood, sir.”
+
+“Get out!” said the lieutenant. “What confounded nonsense!”
+
+“You’ll see, sir. They carry a kind of box, sir, that shoots fire and
+strikes you dead.”
+
+“What d’ye mean—a gun?”
+
+“No, sir,” and the artilleryman began a vivid account of the Heat-Ray.
+Halfway through, the lieutenant interrupted him and looked up at me. I
+was still standing on the bank by the side of the road.
+
+“It’s perfectly true,” I said.
+
+“Well,” said the lieutenant, “I suppose it’s my business to see it too.
+Look here”—to the artilleryman—“we’re detailed here clearing people out
+of their houses. You’d better go along and report yourself to
+Brigadier-General Marvin, and tell him all you know. He’s at Weybridge.
+Know the way?”
+
+“I do,” I said; and he turned his horse southward again.
+
+“Half a mile, you say?” said he.
+
+“At most,” I answered, and pointed over the treetops southward. He
+thanked me and rode on, and we saw them no more.
+
+Farther along we came upon a group of three women and two children in
+the road, busy clearing out a labourer’s cottage. They had got hold of
+a little hand truck, and were piling it up with unclean-looking bundles
+and shabby furniture. They were all too assiduously engaged to talk to
+us as we passed.
+
+By Byfleet station we emerged from the pine trees, and found the
+country calm and peaceful under the morning sunlight. We were far
+beyond the range of the Heat-Ray there, and had it not been for the
+silent desertion of some of the houses, the stirring movement of
+packing in others, and the knot of soldiers standing on the bridge over
+the railway and staring down the line towards Woking, the day would
+have seemed very like any other Sunday.
+
+Several farm waggons and carts were moving creakily along the road to
+Addlestone, and suddenly through the gate of a field we saw, across a
+stretch of flat meadow, six twelve-pounders standing neatly at equal
+distances pointing towards Woking. The gunners stood by the guns
+waiting, and the ammunition waggons were at a business-like distance.
+The men stood almost as if under inspection.
+
+“That’s good!” said I. “They will get one fair shot, at any rate.”
+
+The artilleryman hesitated at the gate.
+
+“I shall go on,” he said.
+
+Farther on towards Weybridge, just over the bridge, there were a number
+of men in white fatigue jackets throwing up a long rampart, and more
+guns behind.
+
+“It’s bows and arrows against the lightning, anyhow,” said the
+artilleryman. “They ’aven’t seen that fire-beam yet.”
+
+The officers who were not actively engaged stood and stared over the
+treetops southwestward, and the men digging would stop every now and
+again to stare in the same direction.
+
+Byfleet was in a tumult; people packing, and a score of hussars, some
+of them dismounted, some on horseback, were hunting them about. Three
+or four black government waggons, with crosses in white circles, and an
+old omnibus, among other vehicles, were being loaded in the village
+street. There were scores of people, most of them sufficiently
+sabbatical to have assumed their best clothes. The soldiers were having
+the greatest difficulty in making them realise the gravity of their
+position. We saw one shrivelled old fellow with a huge box and a score
+or more of flower pots containing orchids, angrily expostulating with
+the corporal who would leave them behind. I stopped and gripped his
+arm.
+
+“Do you know what’s over there?” I said, pointing at the pine tops that
+hid the Martians.
+
+“Eh?” said he, turning. “I was explainin’ these is vallyble.”
+
+“Death!” I shouted. “Death is coming! Death!” and leaving him to digest
+that if he could, I hurried on after the artillery-man. At the corner I
+looked back. The soldier had left him, and he was still standing by his
+box, with the pots of orchids on the lid of it, and staring vaguely
+over the trees.
+
+No one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were
+established; the whole place was in such confusion as I had never seen
+in any town before. Carts, carriages everywhere, the most astonishing
+miscellany of conveyances and horseflesh. The respectable inhabitants
+of the place, men in golf and boating costumes, wives prettily dressed,
+were packing, river-side loafers energetically helping, children
+excited, and, for the most part, highly delighted at this astonishing
+variation of their Sunday experiences. In the midst of it all the
+worthy vicar was very pluckily holding an early celebration, and his
+bell was jangling out above the excitement.
+
+I and the artilleryman, seated on the step of the drinking fountain,
+made a very passable meal upon what we had brought with us. Patrols of
+soldiers—here no longer hussars, but grenadiers in white—were warning
+people to move now or to take refuge in their cellars as soon as the
+firing began. We saw as we crossed the railway bridge that a growing
+crowd of people had assembled in and about the railway station, and the
+swarming platform was piled with boxes and packages. The ordinary
+traffic had been stopped, I believe, in order to allow of the passage
+of troops and guns to Chertsey, and I have heard since that a savage
+struggle occurred for places in the special trains that were put on at
+a later hour.
+
+We remained at Weybridge until midday, and at that hour we found
+ourselves at the place near Shepperton Lock where the Wey and Thames
+join. Part of the time we spent helping two old women to pack a little
+cart. The Wey has a treble mouth, and at this point boats are to be
+hired, and there was a ferry across the river. On the Shepperton side
+was an inn with a lawn, and beyond that the tower of Shepperton
+Church—it has been replaced by a spire—rose above the trees.
+
+Here we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives. As yet the
+flight had not grown to a panic, but there were already far more people
+than all the boats going to and fro could enable to cross. People came
+panting along under heavy burdens; one husband and wife were even
+carrying a small outhouse door between them, with some of their
+household goods piled thereon. One man told us he meant to try to get
+away from Shepperton station.
+
+There was a lot of shouting, and one man was even jesting. The idea
+people seemed to have here was that the Martians were simply formidable
+human beings, who might attack and sack the town, to be certainly
+destroyed in the end. Every now and then people would glance nervously
+across the Wey, at the meadows towards Chertsey, but everything over
+there was still.
+
+Across the Thames, except just where the boats landed, everything was
+quiet, in vivid contrast with the Surrey side. The people who landed
+there from the boats went tramping off down the lane. The big ferryboat
+had just made a journey. Three or four soldiers stood on the lawn of
+the inn, staring and jesting at the fugitives, without offering to
+help. The inn was closed, as it was now within prohibited hours.
+
+“What’s that?” cried a boatman, and “Shut up, you fool!” said a man
+near me to a yelping dog. Then the sound came again, this time from the
+direction of Chertsey, a muffled thud—the sound of a gun.
+
+The fighting was beginning. Almost immediately unseen batteries across
+the river to our right, unseen because of the trees, took up the
+chorus, firing heavily one after the other. A woman screamed. Everyone
+stood arrested by the sudden stir of battle, near us and yet invisible
+to us. Nothing was to be seen save flat meadows, cows feeding
+unconcernedly for the most part, and silvery pollard willows motionless
+in the warm sunlight.
+
+“The sojers’ll stop ’em,” said a woman beside me, doubtfully. A
+haziness rose over the treetops.
+
+Then suddenly we saw a rush of smoke far away up the river, a puff of
+smoke that jerked up into the air and hung; and forthwith the ground
+heaved under foot and a heavy explosion shook the air, smashing two or
+three windows in the houses near, and leaving us astonished.
+
+“Here they are!” shouted a man in a blue jersey. “Yonder! D’yer see
+them? Yonder!”
+
+Quickly, one after the other, one, two, three, four of the armoured
+Martians appeared, far away over the little trees, across the flat
+meadows that stretched towards Chertsey, and striding hurriedly towards
+the river. Little cowled figures they seemed at first, going with a
+rolling motion and as fast as flying birds.
+
+Then, advancing obliquely towards us, came a fifth. Their armoured
+bodies glittered in the sun as they swept swiftly forward upon the
+guns, growing rapidly larger as they drew nearer. One on the extreme
+left, the remotest that is, flourished a huge case high in the air, and
+the ghostly, terrible Heat-Ray I had already seen on Friday night smote
+towards Chertsey, and struck the town.
+
+At sight of these strange, swift, and terrible creatures the crowd near
+the water’s edge seemed to me to be for a moment horror-struck. There
+was no screaming or shouting, but a silence. Then a hoarse murmur and a
+movement of feet—a splashing from the water. A man, too frightened to
+drop the portmanteau he carried on his shoulder, swung round and sent
+me staggering with a blow from the corner of his burden. A woman thrust
+at me with her hand and rushed past me. I turned with the rush of the
+people, but I was not too terrified for thought. The terrible Heat-Ray
+was in my mind. To get under water! That was it!
+
+“Get under water!” I shouted, unheeded.
+
+I faced about again, and rushed towards the approaching Martian, rushed
+right down the gravelly beach and headlong into the water. Others did
+the same. A boatload of people putting back came leaping out as I
+rushed past. The stones under my feet were muddy and slippery, and the
+river was so low that I ran perhaps twenty feet scarcely waist-deep.
+Then, as the Martian towered overhead scarcely a couple of hundred
+yards away, I flung myself forward under the surface. The splashes of
+the people in the boats leaping into the river sounded like
+thunderclaps in my ears. People were landing hastily on both sides of
+the river. But the Martian machine took no more notice for the moment
+of the people running this way and that than a man would of the
+confusion of ants in a nest against which his foot has kicked. When,
+half suffocated, I raised my head above water, the Martian’s hood
+pointed at the batteries that were still firing across the river, and
+as it advanced it swung loose what must have been the generator of the
+Heat-Ray.
+
+In another moment it was on the bank, and in a stride wading halfway
+across. The knees of its foremost legs bent at the farther bank, and in
+another moment it had raised itself to its full height again, close to
+the village of Shepperton. Forthwith the six guns which, unknown to
+anyone on the right bank, had been hidden behind the outskirts of that
+village, fired simultaneously. The sudden near concussion, the last
+close upon the first, made my heart jump. The monster was already
+raising the case generating the Heat-Ray as the first shell burst six
+yards above the hood.
+
+I gave a cry of astonishment. I saw and thought nothing of the other
+four Martian monsters; my attention was riveted upon the nearer
+incident. Simultaneously two other shells burst in the air near the
+body as the hood twisted round in time to receive, but not in time to
+dodge, the fourth shell.
+
+The shell burst clean in the face of the Thing. The hood bulged,
+flashed, was whirled off in a dozen tattered fragments of red flesh and
+glittering metal.
+
+“Hit!” shouted I, with something between a scream and a cheer.
+
+I heard answering shouts from the people in the water about me. I could
+have leaped out of the water with that momentary exultation.
+
+The decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant; but it did not
+fall over. It recovered its balance by a miracle, and, no longer
+heeding its steps and with the camera that fired the Heat-Ray now
+rigidly upheld, it reeled swiftly upon Shepperton. The living
+intelligence, the Martian within the hood, was slain and splashed to
+the four winds of heaven, and the Thing was now but a mere intricate
+device of metal whirling to destruction. It drove along in a straight
+line, incapable of guidance. It struck the tower of Shepperton Church,
+smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have done,
+swerved aside, blundered on and collapsed with tremendous force into
+the river out of my sight.
+
+A violent explosion shook the air, and a spout of water, steam, mud,
+and shattered metal shot far up into the sky. As the camera of the
+Heat-Ray hit the water, the latter had immediately flashed into steam.
+In another moment a huge wave, like a muddy tidal bore but almost
+scaldingly hot, came sweeping round the bend upstream. I saw people
+struggling shorewards, and heard their screaming and shouting faintly
+above the seething and roar of the Martian’s collapse.
+
+For a moment I heeded nothing of the heat, forgot the patent need of
+self-preservation. I splashed through the tumultuous water, pushing
+aside a man in black to do so, until I could see round the bend. Half a
+dozen deserted boats pitched aimlessly upon the confusion of the waves.
+The fallen Martian came into sight downstream, lying across the river,
+and for the most part submerged.
+
+Thick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage, and through the
+tumultuously whirling wisps I could see, intermittently and vaguely,
+the gigantic limbs churning the water and flinging a splash and spray
+of mud and froth into the air. The tentacles swayed and struck like
+living arms, and, save for the helpless purposelessness of these
+movements, it was as if some wounded thing were struggling for its life
+amid the waves. Enormous quantities of a ruddy-brown fluid were
+spurting up in noisy jets out of the machine.
+
+My attention was diverted from this death flurry by a furious yelling,
+like that of the thing called a siren in our manufacturing towns. A
+man, knee-deep near the towing path, shouted inaudibly to me and
+pointed. Looking back, I saw the other Martians advancing with gigantic
+strides down the riverbank from the direction of Chertsey. The
+Shepperton guns spoke this time unavailingly.
+
+At that I ducked at once under water, and, holding my breath until
+movement was an agony, blundered painfully ahead under the surface as
+long as I could. The water was in a tumult about me, and rapidly
+growing hotter.
+
+When for a moment I raised my head to take breath and throw the hair
+and water from my eyes, the steam was rising in a whirling white fog
+that at first hid the Martians altogether. The noise was deafening.
+Then I saw them dimly, colossal figures of grey, magnified by the mist.
+They had passed by me, and two were stooping over the frothing,
+tumultuous ruins of their comrade.
+
+The third and fourth stood beside him in the water, one perhaps two
+hundred yards from me, the other towards Laleham. The generators of the
+Heat-Rays waved high, and the hissing beams smote down this way and
+that.
+
+The air was full of sound, a deafening and confusing conflict of
+noises—the clangorous din of the Martians, the crash of falling houses,
+the thud of trees, fences, sheds flashing into flame, and the crackling
+and roaring of fire. Dense black smoke was leaping up to mingle with
+the steam from the river, and as the Heat-Ray went to and fro over
+Weybridge its impact was marked by flashes of incandescent white, that
+gave place at once to a smoky dance of lurid flames. The nearer houses
+still stood intact, awaiting their fate, shadowy, faint and pallid in
+the steam, with the fire behind them going to and fro.
+
+For a moment perhaps I stood there, breast-high in the almost boiling
+water, dumbfounded at my position, hopeless of escape. Through the reek
+I could see the people who had been with me in the river scrambling out
+of the water through the reeds, like little frogs hurrying through
+grass from the advance of a man, or running to and fro in utter dismay
+on the towing path.
+
+Then suddenly the white flashes of the Heat-Ray came leaping towards
+me. The houses caved in as they dissolved at its touch, and darted out
+flames; the trees changed to fire with a roar. The Ray flickered up and
+down the towing path, licking off the people who ran this way and that,
+and came down to the water’s edge not fifty yards from where I stood.
+It swept across the river to Shepperton, and the water in its track
+rose in a boiling weal crested with steam. I turned shoreward.
+
+In another moment the huge wave, well-nigh at the boiling-point had
+rushed upon me. I screamed aloud, and scalded, half blinded, agonised,
+I staggered through the leaping, hissing water towards the shore. Had
+my foot stumbled, it would have been the end. I fell helplessly, in
+full sight of the Martians, upon the broad, bare gravelly spit that
+runs down to mark the angle of the Wey and Thames. I expected nothing
+but death.
+
+I have a dim memory of the foot of a Martian coming down within a score
+of yards of my head, driving straight into the loose gravel, whirling
+it this way and that and lifting again; of a long suspense, and then of
+the four carrying the debris of their comrade between them, now clear
+and then presently faint through a veil of smoke, receding
+interminably, as it seemed to me, across a vast space of river and
+meadow. And then, very slowly, I realised that by a miracle I had
+escaped.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+HOW I FELL IN WITH THE CURATE.
+
+
+After getting this sudden lesson in the power of terrestrial weapons,
+the Martians retreated to their original position upon Horsell Common;
+and in their haste, and encumbered with the debris of their smashed
+companion, they no doubt overlooked many such a stray and negligible
+victim as myself. Had they left their comrade and pushed on forthwith,
+there was nothing at that time between them and London but batteries of
+twelve-pounder guns, and they would certainly have reached the capital
+in advance of the tidings of their approach; as sudden, dreadful, and
+destructive their advent would have been as the earthquake that
+destroyed Lisbon a century ago.
+
+But they were in no hurry. Cylinder followed cylinder on its
+interplanetary flight; every twenty-four hours brought them
+reinforcement. And meanwhile the military and naval authorities, now
+fully alive to the tremendous power of their antagonists, worked with
+furious energy. Every minute a fresh gun came into position until,
+before twilight, every copse, every row of suburban villas on the hilly
+slopes about Kingston and Richmond, masked an expectant black muzzle.
+And through the charred and desolated area—perhaps twenty square miles
+altogether—that encircled the Martian encampment on Horsell Common,
+through charred and ruined villages among the green trees, through the
+blackened and smoking arcades that had been but a day ago pine
+spinneys, crawled the devoted scouts with the heliographs that were
+presently to warn the gunners of the Martian approach. But the Martians
+now understood our command of artillery and the danger of human
+proximity, and not a man ventured within a mile of either cylinder,
+save at the price of his life.
+
+It would seem that these giants spent the earlier part of the afternoon
+in going to and fro, transferring everything from the second and third
+cylinders—the second in Addlestone Golf Links and the third at
+Pyrford—to their original pit on Horsell Common. Over that, above the
+blackened heather and ruined buildings that stretched far and wide,
+stood one as sentinel, while the rest abandoned their vast
+fighting-machines and descended into the pit. They were hard at work
+there far into the night, and the towering pillar of dense green smoke
+that rose therefrom could be seen from the hills about Merrow, and
+even, it is said, from Banstead and Epsom Downs.
+
+And while the Martians behind me were thus preparing for their next
+sally, and in front of me Humanity gathered for the battle, I made my
+way with infinite pains and labour from the fire and smoke of burning
+Weybridge towards London.
+
+I saw an abandoned boat, very small and remote, drifting down-stream;
+and throwing off the most of my sodden clothes, I went after it, gained
+it, and so escaped out of that destruction. There were no oars in the
+boat, but I contrived to paddle, as well as my parboiled hands would
+allow, down the river towards Halliford and Walton, going very
+tediously and continually looking behind me, as you may well
+understand. I followed the river, because I considered that the water
+gave me my best chance of escape should these giants return.
+
+The hot water from the Martian’s overthrow drifted downstream with me,
+so that for the best part of a mile I could see little of either bank.
+Once, however, I made out a string of black figures hurrying across the
+meadows from the direction of Weybridge. Halliford, it seemed, was
+deserted, and several of the houses facing the river were on fire. It
+was strange to see the place quite tranquil, quite desolate under the
+hot blue sky, with the smoke and little threads of flame going straight
+up into the heat of the afternoon. Never before had I seen houses
+burning without the accompaniment of an obstructive crowd. A little
+farther on the dry reeds up the bank were smoking and glowing, and a
+line of fire inland was marching steadily across a late field of hay.
+
+For a long time I drifted, so painful and weary was I after the
+violence I had been through, and so intense the heat upon the water.
+Then my fears got the better of me again, and I resumed my paddling.
+The sun scorched my bare back. At last, as the bridge at Walton was
+coming into sight round the bend, my fever and faintness overcame my
+fears, and I landed on the Middlesex bank and lay down, deadly sick,
+amid the long grass. I suppose the time was then about four or five
+o’clock. I got up presently, walked perhaps half a mile without meeting
+a soul, and then lay down again in the shadow of a hedge. I seem to
+remember talking, wanderingly, to myself during that last spurt. I was
+also very thirsty, and bitterly regretful I had drunk no more water. It
+is a curious thing that I felt angry with my wife; I cannot account for
+it, but my impotent desire to reach Leatherhead worried me excessively.
+
+I do not clearly remember the arrival of the curate, so that probably I
+dozed. I became aware of him as a seated figure in soot-smudged shirt
+sleeves, and with his upturned, clean-shaven face staring at a faint
+flickering that danced over the sky. The sky was what is called a
+mackerel sky—rows and rows of faint down-plumes of cloud, just tinted
+with the midsummer sunset.
+
+I sat up, and at the rustle of my motion he looked at me quickly.
+
+“Have you any water?” I asked abruptly.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“You have been asking for water for the last hour,” he said.
+
+For a moment we were silent, taking stock of each other. I dare say he
+found me a strange enough figure, naked, save for my water-soaked
+trousers and socks, scalded, and my face and shoulders blackened by the
+smoke. His face was a fair weakness, his chin retreated, and his hair
+lay in crisp, almost flaxen curls on his low forehead; his eyes were
+rather large, pale blue, and blankly staring. He spoke abruptly,
+looking vacantly away from me.
+
+“What does it mean?” he said. “What do these things mean?”
+
+I stared at him and made no answer.
+
+He extended a thin white hand and spoke in almost a complaining tone.
+
+“Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The morning
+service was over, I was walking through the roads to clear my brain for
+the afternoon, and then—fire, earthquake, death! As if it were Sodom
+and Gomorrah! All our work undone, all the work—— What are these
+Martians?”
+
+“What are we?” I answered, clearing my throat.
+
+He gripped his knees and turned to look at me again. For half a minute,
+perhaps, he stared silently.
+
+“I was walking through the roads to clear my brain,” he said. “And
+suddenly—fire, earthquake, death!”
+
+He relapsed into silence, with his chin now sunken almost to his knees.
+
+Presently he began waving his hand.
+
+“All the work—all the Sunday schools—What have we done—what has
+Weybridge done? Everything gone—everything destroyed. The church! We
+rebuilt it only three years ago. Gone! Swept out of existence! Why?”
+
+Another pause, and he broke out again like one demented.
+
+“The smoke of her burning goeth up for ever and ever!” he shouted.
+
+His eyes flamed, and he pointed a lean finger in the direction of
+Weybridge.
+
+By this time I was beginning to take his measure. The tremendous
+tragedy in which he had been involved—it was evident he was a fugitive
+from Weybridge—had driven him to the very verge of his reason.
+
+“Are we far from Sunbury?” I said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
+
+“What are we to do?” he asked. “Are these creatures everywhere? Has the
+earth been given over to them?”
+
+“Are we far from Sunbury?”
+
+“Only this morning I officiated at early celebration——”
+
+“Things have changed,” I said, quietly. “You must keep your head. There
+is still hope.”
+
+“Hope!”
+
+“Yes. Plentiful hope—for all this destruction!”
+
+I began to explain my view of our position. He listened at first, but
+as I went on the interest dawning in his eyes gave place to their
+former stare, and his regard wandered from me.
+
+“This must be the beginning of the end,” he said, interrupting me. “The
+end! The great and terrible day of the Lord! When men shall call upon
+the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them and hide them—hide them
+from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne!”
+
+I began to understand the position. I ceased my laboured reasoning,
+struggled to my feet, and, standing over him, laid my hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+“Be a man!” said I. “You are scared out of your wits! What good is
+religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and
+floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think God
+had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent.”
+
+For a time he sat in blank silence.
+
+“But how can we escape?” he asked, suddenly. “They are invulnerable,
+they are pitiless.”
+
+“Neither the one nor, perhaps, the other,” I answered. “And the
+mightier they are the more sane and wary should we be. One of them was
+killed yonder not three hours ago.”
+
+“Killed!” he said, staring about him. “How can God’s ministers be
+killed?”
+
+“I saw it happen.” I proceeded to tell him. “We have chanced to come in
+for the thick of it,” said I, “and that is all.”
+
+“What is that flicker in the sky?” he asked abruptly.
+
+I told him it was the heliograph signalling—that it was the sign of
+human help and effort in the sky.
+
+“We are in the midst of it,” I said, “quiet as it is. That flicker in
+the sky tells of the gathering storm. Yonder, I take it are the
+Martians, and Londonward, where those hills rise about Richmond and
+Kingston and the trees give cover, earthworks are being thrown up and
+guns are being placed. Presently the Martians will be coming this way
+again.”
+
+And even as I spoke he sprang to his feet and stopped me by a gesture.
+
+“Listen!” he said.
+
+From beyond the low hills across the water came the dull resonance of
+distant guns and a remote weird crying. Then everything was still. A
+cockchafer came droning over the hedge and past us. High in the west
+the crescent moon hung faint and pale above the smoke of Weybridge and
+Shepperton and the hot, still splendour of the sunset.
+
+“We had better follow this path,” I said, “northward.”
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+IN LONDON.
+
+
+My younger brother was in London when the Martians fell at Woking. He
+was a medical student working for an imminent examination, and he heard
+nothing of the arrival until Saturday morning. The morning papers on
+Saturday contained, in addition to lengthy special articles on the
+planet Mars, on life in the planets, and so forth, a brief and vaguely
+worded telegram, all the more striking for its brevity.
+
+The Martians, alarmed by the approach of a crowd, had killed a number
+of people with a quick-firing gun, so the story ran. The telegram
+concluded with the words: “Formidable as they seem to be, the Martians
+have not moved from the pit into which they have fallen, and, indeed,
+seem incapable of doing so. Probably this is due to the relative
+strength of the earth’s gravitational energy.” On that last text their
+leader-writer expanded very comfortingly.
+
+Of course all the students in the crammer’s biology class, to which my
+brother went that day, were intensely interested, but there were no
+signs of any unusual excitement in the streets. The afternoon papers
+puffed scraps of news under big headlines. They had nothing to tell
+beyond the movements of troops about the common, and the burning of the
+pine woods between Woking and Weybridge, until eight. Then the _St.
+James’s Gazette_, in an extra-special edition, announced the bare fact
+of the interruption of telegraphic communication. This was thought to
+be due to the falling of burning pine trees across the line. Nothing
+more of the fighting was known that night, the night of my drive to
+Leatherhead and back.
+
+My brother felt no anxiety about us, as he knew from the description in
+the papers that the cylinder was a good two miles from my house. He
+made up his mind to run down that night to me, in order, as he says, to
+see the Things before they were killed. He dispatched a telegram, which
+never reached me, about four o’clock, and spent the evening at a music
+hall.
+
+In London, also, on Saturday night there was a thunderstorm, and my
+brother reached Waterloo in a cab. On the platform from which the
+midnight train usually starts he learned, after some waiting, that an
+accident prevented trains from reaching Woking that night. The nature
+of the accident he could not ascertain; indeed, the railway authorities
+did not clearly know at that time. There was very little excitement in
+the station, as the officials, failing to realise that anything further
+than a breakdown between Byfleet and Woking junction had occurred, were
+running the theatre trains which usually passed through Woking round by
+Virginia Water or Guildford. They were busy making the necessary
+arrangements to alter the route of the Southampton and Portsmouth
+Sunday League excursions. A nocturnal newspaper reporter, mistaking my
+brother for the traffic manager, to whom he bears a slight resemblance,
+waylaid and tried to interview him. Few people, excepting the railway
+officials, connected the breakdown with the Martians.
+
+I have read, in another account of these events, that on Sunday morning
+“all London was electrified by the news from Woking.” As a matter of
+fact, there was nothing to justify that very extravagant phrase. Plenty
+of Londoners did not hear of the Martians until the panic of Monday
+morning. Those who did took some time to realise all that the hastily
+worded telegrams in the Sunday papers conveyed. The majority of people
+in London do not read Sunday papers.
+
+The habit of personal security, moreover, is so deeply fixed in the
+Londoner’s mind, and startling intelligence so much a matter of course
+in the papers, that they could read without any personal tremors:
+“About seven o’clock last night the Martians came out of the cylinder,
+and, moving about under an armour of metallic shields, have completely
+wrecked Woking station with the adjacent houses, and massacred an
+entire battalion of the Cardigan Regiment. No details are known. Maxims
+have been absolutely useless against their armour; the field guns have
+been disabled by them. Flying hussars have been galloping into
+Chertsey. The Martians appear to be moving slowly towards Chertsey or
+Windsor. Great anxiety prevails in West Surrey, and earthworks are
+being thrown up to check the advance Londonward.” That was how the
+_Sunday Sun_ put it, and a clever and remarkably prompt “handbook”
+article in the _Referee_ compared the affair to a menagerie suddenly
+let loose in a village.
+
+No one in London knew positively of the nature of the armoured
+Martians, and there was still a fixed idea that these monsters must be
+sluggish: “crawling,” “creeping painfully”—such expressions occurred in
+almost all the earlier reports. None of the telegrams could have been
+written by an eyewitness of their advance. The Sunday papers printed
+separate editions as further news came to hand, some even in default of
+it. But there was practically nothing more to tell people until late in
+the afternoon, when the authorities gave the press agencies the news in
+their possession. It was stated that the people of Walton and
+Weybridge, and all the district were pouring along the roads
+Londonward, and that was all.
+
+My brother went to church at the Foundling Hospital in the morning,
+still in ignorance of what had happened on the previous night. There he
+heard allusions made to the invasion, and a special prayer for peace.
+Coming out, he bought a _Referee_. He became alarmed at the news in
+this, and went again to Waterloo station to find out if communication
+were restored. The omnibuses, carriages, cyclists, and innumerable
+people walking in their best clothes seemed scarcely affected by the
+strange intelligence that the newsvendors were disseminating. People
+were interested, or, if alarmed, alarmed only on account of the local
+residents. At the station he heard for the first time that the Windsor
+and Chertsey lines were now interrupted. The porters told him that
+several remarkable telegrams had been received in the morning from
+Byfleet and Chertsey stations, but that these had abruptly ceased. My
+brother could get very little precise detail out of them.
+
+“There’s fighting going on about Weybridge” was the extent of their
+information.
+
+The train service was now very much disorganised. Quite a number of
+people who had been expecting friends from places on the South-Western
+network were standing about the station. One grey-headed old gentleman
+came and abused the South-Western Company bitterly to my brother. “It
+wants showing up,” he said.
+
+One or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney, and Kingston,
+containing people who had gone out for a day’s boating and found the
+locks closed and a feeling of panic in the air. A man in a blue and
+white blazer addressed my brother, full of strange tidings.
+
+“There’s hosts of people driving into Kingston in traps and carts and
+things, with boxes of valuables and all that,” he said. “They come from
+Molesey and Weybridge and Walton, and they say there’s been guns heard
+at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that mounted soldiers have told them to
+get off at once because the Martians are coming. We heard guns firing
+at Hampton Court station, but we thought it was thunder. What the
+dickens does it all mean? The Martians can’t get out of their pit, can
+they?”
+
+My brother could not tell him.
+
+Afterwards he found that the vague feeling of alarm had spread to the
+clients of the underground railway, and that the Sunday excursionists
+began to return from all over the South-Western “lung”—Barnes,
+Wimbledon, Richmond Park, Kew, and so forth—at unnaturally early hours;
+but not a soul had anything more than vague hearsay to tell of.
+Everyone connected with the terminus seemed ill-tempered.
+
+About five o’clock the gathering crowd in the station was immensely
+excited by the opening of the line of communication, which is almost
+invariably closed, between the South-Eastern and the South-Western
+stations, and the passage of carriage trucks bearing huge guns and
+carriages crammed with soldiers. These were the guns that were brought
+up from Woolwich and Chatham to cover Kingston. There was an exchange
+of pleasantries: “You’ll get eaten!” “We’re the beast-tamers!” and so
+forth. A little while after that a squad of police came into the
+station and began to clear the public off the platforms, and my brother
+went out into the street again.
+
+The church bells were ringing for evensong, and a squad of Salvation
+Army lassies came singing down Waterloo Road. On the bridge a number of
+loafers were watching a curious brown scum that came drifting down the
+stream in patches. The sun was just setting, and the Clock Tower and
+the Houses of Parliament rose against one of the most peaceful skies it
+is possible to imagine, a sky of gold, barred with long transverse
+stripes of reddish-purple cloud. There was talk of a floating body. One
+of the men there, a reservist he said he was, told my brother he had
+seen the heliograph flickering in the west.
+
+In Wellington Street my brother met a couple of sturdy roughs who had
+just been rushed out of Fleet Street with still-wet newspapers and
+staring placards. “Dreadful catastrophe!” they bawled one to the other
+down Wellington Street. “Fighting at Weybridge! Full description!
+Repulse of the Martians! London in Danger!” He had to give threepence
+for a copy of that paper.
+
+Then it was, and then only, that he realised something of the full
+power and terror of these monsters. He learned that they were not
+merely a handful of small sluggish creatures, but that they were minds
+swaying vast mechanical bodies; and that they could move swiftly and
+smite with such power that even the mightiest guns could not stand
+against them.
+
+They were described as “vast spiderlike machines, nearly a hundred feet
+high, capable of the speed of an express train, and able to shoot out a
+beam of intense heat.” Masked batteries, chiefly of field guns, had
+been planted in the country about Horsell Common, and especially
+between the Woking district and London. Five of the machines had been
+seen moving towards the Thames, and one, by a happy chance, had been
+destroyed. In the other cases the shells had missed, and the batteries
+had been at once annihilated by the Heat-Rays. Heavy losses of soldiers
+were mentioned, but the tone of the dispatch was optimistic.
+
+The Martians had been repulsed; they were not invulnerable. They had
+retreated to their triangle of cylinders again, in the circle about
+Woking. Signallers with heliographs were pushing forward upon them from
+all sides. Guns were in rapid transit from Windsor, Portsmouth,
+Aldershot, Woolwich—even from the north; among others, long wire-guns
+of ninety-five tons from Woolwich. Altogether one hundred and sixteen
+were in position or being hastily placed, chiefly covering London.
+Never before in England had there been such a vast or rapid
+concentration of military material.
+
+Any further cylinders that fell, it was hoped, could be destroyed at
+once by high explosives, which were being rapidly manufactured and
+distributed. No doubt, ran the report, the situation was of the
+strangest and gravest description, but the public was exhorted to avoid
+and discourage panic. No doubt the Martians were strange and terrible
+in the extreme, but at the outside there could not be more than twenty
+of them against our millions.
+
+The authorities had reason to suppose, from the size of the cylinders,
+that at the outside there could not be more than five in each
+cylinder—fifteen altogether. And one at least was disposed of—perhaps
+more. The public would be fairly warned of the approach of danger, and
+elaborate measures were being taken for the protection of the people in
+the threatened southwestern suburbs. And so, with reiterated assurances
+of the safety of London and the ability of the authorities to cope with
+the difficulty, this quasi-proclamation closed.
+
+This was printed in enormous type on paper so fresh that it was still
+wet, and there had been no time to add a word of comment. It was
+curious, my brother said, to see how ruthlessly the usual contents of
+the paper had been hacked and taken out to give this place.
+
+All down Wellington Street people could be seen fluttering out the pink
+sheets and reading, and the Strand was suddenly noisy with the voices
+of an army of hawkers following these pioneers. Men came scrambling off
+buses to secure copies. Certainly this news excited people intensely,
+whatever their previous apathy. The shutters of a map shop in the
+Strand were being taken down, my brother said, and a man in his Sunday
+raiment, lemon-yellow gloves even, was visible inside the window
+hastily fastening maps of Surrey to the glass.
+
+Going on along the Strand to Trafalgar Square, the paper in his hand,
+my brother saw some of the fugitives from West Surrey. There was a man
+with his wife and two boys and some articles of furniture in a cart
+such as greengrocers use. He was driving from the direction of
+Westminster Bridge; and close behind him came a hay waggon with five or
+six respectable-looking people in it, and some boxes and bundles. The
+faces of these people were haggard, and their entire appearance
+contrasted conspicuously with the Sabbath-best appearance of the people
+on the omnibuses. People in fashionable clothing peeped at them out of
+cabs. They stopped at the Square as if undecided which way to take, and
+finally turned eastward along the Strand. Some way behind these came a
+man in workday clothes, riding one of those old-fashioned tricycles
+with a small front wheel. He was dirty and white in the face.
+
+My brother turned down towards Victoria, and met a number of such
+people. He had a vague idea that he might see something of me. He
+noticed an unusual number of police regulating the traffic. Some of the
+refugees were exchanging news with the people on the omnibuses. One was
+professing to have seen the Martians. “Boilers on stilts, I tell you,
+striding along like men.” Most of them were excited and animated by
+their strange experience.
+
+Beyond Victoria the public-houses were doing a lively trade with these
+arrivals. At all the street corners groups of people were reading
+papers, talking excitedly, or staring at these unusual Sunday visitors.
+They seemed to increase as night drew on, until at last the roads, my
+brother said, were like Epsom High Street on a Derby Day. My brother
+addressed several of these fugitives and got unsatisfactory answers
+from most.
+
+None of them could tell him any news of Woking except one man, who
+assured him that Woking had been entirely destroyed on the previous
+night.
+
+“I come from Byfleet,” he said; “a man on a bicycle came through the
+place in the early morning, and ran from door to door warning us to
+come away. Then came soldiers. We went out to look, and there were
+clouds of smoke to the south—nothing but smoke, and not a soul coming
+that way. Then we heard the guns at Chertsey, and folks coming from
+Weybridge. So I’ve locked up my house and come on.”
+
+At that time there was a strong feeling in the streets that the
+authorities were to blame for their incapacity to dispose of the
+invaders without all this inconvenience.
+
+About eight o’clock a noise of heavy firing was distinctly audible all
+over the south of London. My brother could not hear it for the traffic
+in the main thoroughfares, but by striking through the quiet back
+streets to the river he was able to distinguish it quite plainly.
+
+He walked from Westminster to his apartments near Regent’s Park, about
+two. He was now very anxious on my account, and disturbed at the
+evident magnitude of the trouble. His mind was inclined to run, even as
+mine had run on Saturday, on military details. He thought of all those
+silent, expectant guns, of the suddenly nomadic countryside; he tried
+to imagine “boilers on stilts” a hundred feet high.
+
+There were one or two cartloads of refugees passing along Oxford
+Street, and several in the Marylebone Road, but so slowly was the news
+spreading that Regent Street and Portland Place were full of their
+usual Sunday-night promenaders, albeit they talked in groups, and along
+the edge of Regent’s Park there were as many silent couples “walking
+out” together under the scattered gas lamps as ever there had been. The
+night was warm and still, and a little oppressive; the sound of guns
+continued intermittently, and after midnight there seemed to be sheet
+lightning in the south.
+
+He read and re-read the paper, fearing the worst had happened to me. He
+was restless, and after supper prowled out again aimlessly. He returned
+and tried in vain to divert his attention to his examination notes. He
+went to bed a little after midnight, and was awakened from lurid dreams
+in the small hours of Monday by the sound of door knockers, feet
+running in the street, distant drumming, and a clamour of bells. Red
+reflections danced on the ceiling. For a moment he lay astonished,
+wondering whether day had come or the world gone mad. Then he jumped
+out of bed and ran to the window.
+
+His room was an attic and as he thrust his head out, up and down the
+street there were a dozen echoes to the noise of his window sash, and
+heads in every kind of night disarray appeared. Enquiries were being
+shouted. “They are coming!” bawled a policeman, hammering at the door;
+“the Martians are coming!” and hurried to the next door.
+
+The sound of drumming and trumpeting came from the Albany Street
+Barracks, and every church within earshot was hard at work killing
+sleep with a vehement disorderly tocsin. There was a noise of doors
+opening, and window after window in the houses opposite flashed from
+darkness into yellow illumination.
+
+Up the street came galloping a closed carriage, bursting abruptly into
+noise at the corner, rising to a clattering climax under the window,
+and dying away slowly in the distance. Close on the rear of this came a
+couple of cabs, the forerunners of a long procession of flying
+vehicles, going for the most part to Chalk Farm station, where the
+North-Western special trains were loading up, instead of coming down
+the gradient into Euston.
+
+For a long time my brother stared out of the window in blank
+astonishment, watching the policemen hammering at door after door, and
+delivering their incomprehensible message. Then the door behind him
+opened, and the man who lodged across the landing came in, dressed only
+in shirt, trousers, and slippers, his braces loose about his waist, his
+hair disordered from his pillow.
+
+“What the devil is it?” he asked. “A fire? What a devil of a row!”
+
+They both craned their heads out of the window, straining to hear what
+the policemen were shouting. People were coming out of the side
+streets, and standing in groups at the corners talking.
+
+“What the devil is it all about?” said my brother’s fellow lodger.
+
+My brother answered him vaguely and began to dress, running with each
+garment to the window in order to miss nothing of the growing
+excitement. And presently men selling unnaturally early newspapers came
+bawling into the street:
+
+“London in danger of suffocation! The Kingston and Richmond defences
+forced! Fearful massacres in the Thames Valley!”
+
+And all about him—in the rooms below, in the houses on each side and
+across the road, and behind in the Park Terraces and in the hundred
+other streets of that part of Marylebone, and the Westbourne Park
+district and St. Pancras, and westward and northward in Kilburn and St.
+John’s Wood and Hampstead, and eastward in Shoreditch and Highbury and
+Haggerston and Hoxton, and, indeed, through all the vastness of London
+from Ealing to East Ham—people were rubbing their eyes, and opening
+windows to stare out and ask aimless questions, dressing hastily as the
+first breath of the coming storm of Fear blew through the streets. It
+was the dawn of the great panic. London, which had gone to bed on
+Sunday night oblivious and inert, was awakened, in the small hours of
+Monday morning, to a vivid sense of danger.
+
+Unable from his window to learn what was happening, my brother went
+down and out into the street, just as the sky between the parapets of
+the houses grew pink with the early dawn. The flying people on foot and
+in vehicles grew more numerous every moment. “Black Smoke!” he heard
+people crying, and again “Black Smoke!” The contagion of such a
+unanimous fear was inevitable. As my brother hesitated on the
+door-step, he saw another newsvendor approaching, and got a paper
+forthwith. The man was running away with the rest, and selling his
+papers for a shilling each as he ran—a grotesque mingling of profit and
+panic.
+
+And from this paper my brother read that catastrophic dispatch of the
+Commander-in-Chief:
+
+“The Martians are able to discharge enormous clouds of a black and
+poisonous vapour by means of rockets. They have smothered our
+batteries, destroyed Richmond, Kingston, and Wimbledon, and are
+advancing slowly towards London, destroying everything on the way. It
+is impossible to stop them. There is no safety from the Black Smoke but
+in instant flight.”
+
+
+That was all, but it was enough. The whole population of the great
+six-million city was stirring, slipping, running; presently it would be
+pouring _en masse_ northward.
+
+“Black Smoke!” the voices cried. “Fire!”
+
+The bells of the neighbouring church made a jangling tumult, a cart
+carelessly driven smashed, amid shrieks and curses, against the water
+trough up the street. Sickly yellow lights went to and fro in the
+houses, and some of the passing cabs flaunted unextinguished lamps. And
+overhead the dawn was growing brighter, clear and steady and calm.
+
+He heard footsteps running to and fro in the rooms, and up and down
+stairs behind him. His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in
+dressing gown and shawl; her husband followed, ejaculating.
+
+As my brother began to realise the import of all these things, he
+turned hastily to his own room, put all his available money—some ten
+pounds altogether—into his pockets, and went out again into the
+streets.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+WHAT HAD HAPPENED IN SURREY.
+
+
+It was while the curate had sat and talked so wildly to me under the
+hedge in the flat meadows near Halliford, and while my brother was
+watching the fugitives stream over Westminster Bridge, that the
+Martians had resumed the offensive. So far as one can ascertain from
+the conflicting accounts that have been put forth, the majority of them
+remained busied with preparations in the Horsell pit until nine that
+night, hurrying on some operation that disengaged huge volumes of green
+smoke.
+
+But three certainly came out about eight o’clock and, advancing slowly
+and cautiously, made their way through Byfleet and Pyrford towards
+Ripley and Weybridge, and so came in sight of the expectant batteries
+against the setting sun. These Martians did not advance in a body, but
+in a line, each perhaps a mile and a half from his nearest fellow. They
+communicated with one another by means of sirenlike howls, running up
+and down the scale from one note to another.
+
+It was this howling and firing of the guns at Ripley and St. George’s
+Hill that we had heard at Upper Halliford. The Ripley gunners,
+unseasoned artillery volunteers who ought never to have been placed in
+such a position, fired one wild, premature, ineffectual volley, and
+bolted on horse and foot through the deserted village, while the
+Martian, without using his Heat-Ray, walked serenely over their guns,
+stepped gingerly among them, passed in front of them, and so came
+unexpectedly upon the guns in Painshill Park, which he destroyed.
+
+The St. George’s Hill men, however, were better led or of a better
+mettle. Hidden by a pine wood as they were, they seem to have been
+quite unsuspected by the Martian nearest to them. They laid their guns
+as deliberately as if they had been on parade, and fired at about a
+thousand yards’ range.
+
+The shells flashed all round him, and he was seen to advance a few
+paces, stagger, and go down. Everybody yelled together, and the guns
+were reloaded in frantic haste. The overthrown Martian set up a
+prolonged ululation, and immediately a second glittering giant,
+answering him, appeared over the trees to the south. It would seem that
+a leg of the tripod had been smashed by one of the shells. The whole of
+the second volley flew wide of the Martian on the ground, and,
+simultaneously, both his companions brought their Heat-Rays to bear on
+the battery. The ammunition blew up, the pine trees all about the guns
+flashed into fire, and only one or two of the men who were already
+running over the crest of the hill escaped.
+
+After this it would seem that the three took counsel together and
+halted, and the scouts who were watching them report that they remained
+absolutely stationary for the next half hour. The Martian who had been
+overthrown crawled tediously out of his hood, a small brown figure,
+oddly suggestive from that distance of a speck of blight, and
+apparently engaged in the repair of his support. About nine he had
+finished, for his cowl was then seen above the trees again.
+
+It was a few minutes past nine that night when these three sentinels
+were joined by four other Martians, each carrying a thick black tube. A
+similar tube was handed to each of the three, and the seven proceeded
+to distribute themselves at equal distances along a curved line between
+St. George’s Hill, Weybridge, and the village of Send, southwest of
+Ripley.
+
+A dozen rockets sprang out of the hills before them so soon as they
+began to move, and warned the waiting batteries about Ditton and Esher.
+At the same time four of their fighting machines, similarly armed with
+tubes, crossed the river, and two of them, black against the western
+sky, came into sight of myself and the curate as we hurried wearily and
+painfully along the road that runs northward out of Halliford. They
+moved, as it seemed to us, upon a cloud, for a milky mist covered the
+fields and rose to a third of their height.
+
+At this sight the curate cried faintly in his throat, and began
+running; but I knew it was no good running from a Martian, and I turned
+aside and crawled through dewy nettles and brambles into the broad
+ditch by the side of the road. He looked back, saw what I was doing,
+and turned to join me.
+
+The two halted, the nearer to us standing and facing Sunbury, the
+remoter being a grey indistinctness towards the evening star, away
+towards Staines.
+
+The occasional howling of the Martians had ceased; they took up their
+positions in the huge crescent about their cylinders in absolute
+silence. It was a crescent with twelve miles between its horns. Never
+since the devising of gunpowder was the beginning of a battle so still.
+To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had precisely the
+same effect—the Martians seemed in solitary possession of the darkling
+night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the stars, the afterglow
+of the daylight, and the ruddy glare from St. George’s Hill and the
+woods of Painshill.
+
+But facing that crescent everywhere—at Staines, Hounslow, Ditton,
+Esher, Ockham, behind hills and woods south of the river, and across
+the flat grass meadows to the north of it, wherever a cluster of trees
+or village houses gave sufficient cover—the guns were waiting. The
+signal rockets burst and rained their sparks through the night and
+vanished, and the spirit of all those watching batteries rose to a
+tense expectation. The Martians had but to advance into the line of
+fire, and instantly those motionless black forms of men, those guns
+glittering so darkly in the early night, would explode into a
+thunderous fury of battle.
+
+No doubt the thought that was uppermost in a thousand of those vigilant
+minds, even as it was uppermost in mine, was the riddle—how much they
+understood of us. Did they grasp that we in our millions were
+organized, disciplined, working together? Or did they interpret our
+spurts of fire, the sudden stinging of our shells, our steady
+investment of their encampment, as we should the furious unanimity of
+onslaught in a disturbed hive of bees? Did they dream they might
+exterminate us? (At that time no one knew what food they needed.) A
+hundred such questions struggled together in my mind as I watched that
+vast sentinel shape. And in the back of my mind was the sense of all
+the huge unknown and hidden forces Londonward. Had they prepared
+pitfalls? Were the powder mills at Hounslow ready as a snare? Would the
+Londoners have the heart and courage to make a greater Moscow of their
+mighty province of houses?
+
+Then, after an interminable time, as it seemed to us, crouching and
+peering through the hedge, came a sound like the distant concussion of
+a gun. Another nearer, and then another. And then the Martian beside us
+raised his tube on high and discharged it, gunwise, with a heavy report
+that made the ground heave. The one towards Staines answered him. There
+was no flash, no smoke, simply that loaded detonation.
+
+I was so excited by these heavy minute-guns following one another that
+I so far forgot my personal safety and my scalded hands as to clamber
+up into the hedge and stare towards Sunbury. As I did so a second
+report followed, and a big projectile hurtled overhead towards
+Hounslow. I expected at least to see smoke or fire, or some such
+evidence of its work. But all I saw was the deep blue sky above, with
+one solitary star, and the white mist spreading wide and low beneath.
+And there had been no crash, no answering explosion. The silence was
+restored; the minute lengthened to three.
+
+“What has happened?” said the curate, standing up beside me.
+
+“Heaven knows!” said I.
+
+A bat flickered by and vanished. A distant tumult of shouting began and
+ceased. I looked again at the Martian, and saw he was now moving
+eastward along the riverbank, with a swift, rolling motion.
+
+Every moment I expected the fire of some hidden battery to spring upon
+him; but the evening calm was unbroken. The figure of the Martian grew
+smaller as he receded, and presently the mist and the gathering night
+had swallowed him up. By a common impulse we clambered higher. Towards
+Sunbury was a dark appearance, as though a conical hill had suddenly
+come into being there, hiding our view of the farther country; and
+then, remoter across the river, over Walton, we saw another such
+summit. These hill-like forms grew lower and broader even as we stared.
+
+Moved by a sudden thought, I looked northward, and there I perceived a
+third of these cloudy black kopjes had risen.
+
+Everything had suddenly become very still. Far away to the southeast,
+marking the quiet, we heard the Martians hooting to one another, and
+then the air quivered again with the distant thud of their guns. But
+the earthly artillery made no reply.
+
+Now at the time we could not understand these things, but later I was
+to learn the meaning of these ominous kopjes that gathered in the
+twilight. Each of the Martians, standing in the great crescent I have
+described, had discharged, by means of the gunlike tube he carried, a
+huge canister over whatever hill, copse, cluster of houses, or other
+possible cover for guns, chanced to be in front of him. Some fired only
+one of these, some two—as in the case of the one we had seen; the one
+at Ripley is said to have discharged no fewer than five at that time.
+These canisters smashed on striking the ground—they did not explode—and
+incontinently disengaged an enormous volume of heavy, inky vapour,
+coiling and pouring upward in a huge and ebony cumulus cloud, a gaseous
+hill that sank and spread itself slowly over the surrounding country.
+And the touch of that vapour, the inhaling of its pungent wisps, was
+death to all that breathes.
+
+It was heavy, this vapour, heavier than the densest smoke, so that,
+after the first tumultuous uprush and outflow of its impact, it sank
+down through the air and poured over the ground in a manner rather
+liquid than gaseous, abandoning the hills, and streaming into the
+valleys and ditches and watercourses even as I have heard the
+carbonic-acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do. And
+where it came upon water some chemical action occurred, and the surface
+would be instantly covered with a powdery scum that sank slowly and
+made way for more. The scum was absolutely insoluble, and it is a
+strange thing, seeing the instant effect of the gas, that one could
+drink without hurt the water from which it had been strained. The
+vapour did not diffuse as a true gas would do. It hung together in
+banks, flowing sluggishly down the slope of the land and driving
+reluctantly before the wind, and very slowly it combined with the mist
+and moisture of the air, and sank to the earth in the form of dust.
+Save that an unknown element giving a group of four lines in the blue
+of the spectrum is concerned, we are still entirely ignorant of the
+nature of this substance.
+
+Once the tumultuous upheaval of its dispersion was over, the black
+smoke clung so closely to the ground, even before its precipitation,
+that fifty feet up in the air, on the roofs and upper stories of high
+houses and on great trees, there was a chance of escaping its poison
+altogether, as was proved even that night at Street Cobham and Ditton.
+
+The man who escaped at the former place tells a wonderful story of the
+strangeness of its coiling flow, and how he looked down from the church
+spire and saw the houses of the village rising like ghosts out of its
+inky nothingness. For a day and a half he remained there, weary,
+starving and sun-scorched, the earth under the blue sky and against the
+prospect of the distant hills a velvet-black expanse, with red roofs,
+green trees, and, later, black-veiled shrubs and gates, barns,
+outhouses, and walls, rising here and there into the sunlight.
+
+But that was at Street Cobham, where the black vapour was allowed to
+remain until it sank of its own accord into the ground. As a rule the
+Martians, when it had served its purpose, cleared the air of it again
+by wading into it and directing a jet of steam upon it.
+
+This they did with the vapour banks near us, as we saw in the starlight
+from the window of a deserted house at Upper Halliford, whither we had
+returned. From there we could see the searchlights on Richmond Hill and
+Kingston Hill going to and fro, and about eleven the windows rattled,
+and we heard the sound of the huge siege guns that had been put in
+position there. These continued intermittently for the space of a
+quarter of an hour, sending chance shots at the invisible Martians at
+Hampton and Ditton, and then the pale beams of the electric light
+vanished, and were replaced by a bright red glow.
+
+Then the fourth cylinder fell—a brilliant green meteor—as I learned
+afterwards, in Bushey Park. Before the guns on the Richmond and
+Kingston line of hills began, there was a fitful cannonade far away in
+the southwest, due, I believe, to guns being fired haphazard before the
+black vapour could overwhelm the gunners.
+
+So, setting about it as methodically as men might smoke out a wasps’
+nest, the Martians spread this strange stifling vapour over the
+Londonward country. The horns of the crescent slowly moved apart, until
+at last they formed a line from Hanwell to Coombe and Malden. All night
+through their destructive tubes advanced. Never once, after the Martian
+at St. George’s Hill was brought down, did they give the artillery the
+ghost of a chance against them. Wherever there was a possibility of
+guns being laid for them unseen, a fresh canister of the black vapour
+was discharged, and where the guns were openly displayed the Heat-Ray
+was brought to bear.
+
+By midnight the blazing trees along the slopes of Richmond Park and the
+glare of Kingston Hill threw their light upon a network of black smoke,
+blotting out the whole valley of the Thames and extending as far as the
+eye could reach. And through this two Martians slowly waded, and turned
+their hissing steam jets this way and that.
+
+They were sparing of the Heat-Ray that night, either because they had
+but a limited supply of material for its production or because they did
+not wish to destroy the country but only to crush and overawe the
+opposition they had aroused. In the latter aim they certainly
+succeeded. Sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to
+their movements. After that no body of men would stand against them, so
+hopeless was the enterprise. Even the crews of the torpedo-boats and
+destroyers that had brought their quick-firers up the Thames refused to
+stop, mutinied, and went down again. The only offensive operation men
+ventured upon after that night was the preparation of mines and
+pitfalls, and even in that their energies were frantic and spasmodic.
+
+One has to imagine, as well as one may, the fate of those batteries
+towards Esher, waiting so tensely in the twilight. Survivors there were
+none. One may picture the orderly expectation, the officers alert and
+watchful, the gunners ready, the ammunition piled to hand, the limber
+gunners with their horses and waggons, the groups of civilian
+spectators standing as near as they were permitted, the evening
+stillness, the ambulances and hospital tents with the burned and
+wounded from Weybridge; then the dull resonance of the shots the
+Martians fired, and the clumsy projectile whirling over the trees and
+houses and smashing amid the neighbouring fields.
+
+One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly
+spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong,
+towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a
+strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims,
+men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling
+headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking
+and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque
+cone of smoke. And then night and extinction—nothing but a silent mass
+of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead.
+
+Before dawn the black vapour was pouring through the streets of
+Richmond, and the disintegrating organism of government was, with a
+last expiring effort, rousing the population of London to the necessity
+of flight.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+THE EXODUS FROM LONDON.
+
+
+So you understand the roaring wave of fear that swept through the
+greatest city in the world just as Monday was dawning—the stream of
+flight rising swiftly to a torrent, lashing in a foaming tumult round
+the railway stations, banked up into a horrible struggle about the
+shipping in the Thames, and hurrying by every available channel
+northward and eastward. By ten o’clock the police organisation, and by
+midday even the railway organisations, were losing coherency, losing
+shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in that
+swift liquefaction of the social body.
+
+All the railway lines north of the Thames and the South-Eastern people
+at Cannon Street had been warned by midnight on Sunday, and trains were
+being filled. People were fighting savagely for standing-room in the
+carriages even at two o’clock. By three, people were being trampled and
+crushed even in Bishopsgate Street, a couple of hundred yards or more
+from Liverpool Street station; revolvers were fired, people stabbed,
+and the policemen who had been sent to direct the traffic, exhausted
+and infuriated, were breaking the heads of the people they were called
+out to protect.
+
+And as the day advanced and the engine drivers and stokers refused to
+return to London, the pressure of the flight drove the people in an
+ever-thickening multitude away from the stations and along the
+northward-running roads. By midday a Martian had been seen at Barnes,
+and a cloud of slowly sinking black vapour drove along the Thames and
+across the flats of Lambeth, cutting off all escape over the bridges in
+its sluggish advance. Another bank drove over Ealing, and surrounded a
+little island of survivors on Castle Hill, alive, but unable to escape.
+
+After a fruitless struggle to get aboard a North-Western train at Chalk
+Farm—the engines of the trains that had loaded in the goods yard there
+_ploughed_ through shrieking people, and a dozen stalwart men fought to
+keep the crowd from crushing the driver against his furnace—my brother
+emerged upon the Chalk Farm road, dodged across through a hurrying
+swarm of vehicles, and had the luck to be foremost in the sack of a
+cycle shop. The front tire of the machine he got was punctured in
+dragging it through the window, but he got up and off, notwithstanding,
+with no further injury than a cut wrist. The steep foot of Haverstock
+Hill was impassable owing to several overturned horses, and my brother
+struck into Belsize Road.
+
+So he got out of the fury of the panic, and, skirting the Edgware Road,
+reached Edgware about seven, fasting and wearied, but well ahead of the
+crowd. Along the road people were standing in the roadway, curious,
+wondering. He was passed by a number of cyclists, some horsemen, and
+two motor cars. A mile from Edgware the rim of the wheel broke, and the
+machine became unridable. He left it by the roadside and trudged
+through the village. There were shops half opened in the main street of
+the place, and people crowded on the pavement and in the doorways and
+windows, staring astonished at this extraordinary procession of
+fugitives that was beginning. He succeeded in getting some food at an
+inn.
+
+For a time he remained in Edgware not knowing what next to do. The
+flying people increased in number. Many of them, like my brother,
+seemed inclined to loiter in the place. There was no fresh news of the
+invaders from Mars.
+
+At that time the road was crowded, but as yet far from congested. Most
+of the fugitives at that hour were mounted on cycles, but there were
+soon motor cars, hansom cabs, and carriages hurrying along, and the
+dust hung in heavy clouds along the road to St. Albans.
+
+It was perhaps a vague idea of making his way to Chelmsford, where some
+friends of his lived, that at last induced my brother to strike into a
+quiet lane running eastward. Presently he came upon a stile, and,
+crossing it, followed a footpath northeastward. He passed near several
+farmhouses and some little places whose names he did not learn. He saw
+few fugitives until, in a grass lane towards High Barnet, he happened
+upon two ladies who became his fellow travellers. He came upon them
+just in time to save them.
+
+He heard their screams, and, hurrying round the corner, saw a couple of
+men struggling to drag them out of the little pony-chaise in which they
+had been driving, while a third with difficulty held the frightened
+pony’s head. One of the ladies, a short woman dressed in white, was
+simply screaming; the other, a dark, slender figure, slashed at the man
+who gripped her arm with a whip she held in her disengaged hand.
+
+My brother immediately grasped the situation, shouted, and hurried
+towards the struggle. One of the men desisted and turned towards him,
+and my brother, realising from his antagonist’s face that a fight was
+unavoidable, and being an expert boxer, went into him forthwith and
+sent him down against the wheel of the chaise.
+
+It was no time for pugilistic chivalry and my brother laid him quiet
+with a kick, and gripped the collar of the man who pulled at the
+slender lady’s arm. He heard the clatter of hoofs, the whip stung
+across his face, a third antagonist struck him between the eyes, and
+the man he held wrenched himself free and made off down the lane in the
+direction from which he had come.
+
+Partly stunned, he found himself facing the man who had held the
+horse’s head, and became aware of the chaise receding from him down the
+lane, swaying from side to side, and with the women in it looking back.
+The man before him, a burly rough, tried to close, and he stopped him
+with a blow in the face. Then, realising that he was deserted, he
+dodged round and made off down the lane after the chaise, with the
+sturdy man close behind him, and the fugitive, who had turned now,
+following remotely.
+
+Suddenly he stumbled and fell; his immediate pursuer went headlong, and
+he rose to his feet to find himself with a couple of antagonists again.
+He would have had little chance against them had not the slender lady
+very pluckily pulled up and returned to his help. It seems she had had
+a revolver all this time, but it had been under the seat when she and
+her companion were attacked. She fired at six yards’ distance, narrowly
+missing my brother. The less courageous of the robbers made off, and
+his companion followed him, cursing his cowardice. They both stopped in
+sight down the lane, where the third man lay insensible.
+
+“Take this!” said the slender lady, and she gave my brother her
+revolver.
+
+“Go back to the chaise,” said my brother, wiping the blood from his
+split lip.
+
+She turned without a word—they were both panting—and they went back to
+where the lady in white struggled to hold back the frightened pony.
+
+The robbers had evidently had enough of it. When my brother looked
+again they were retreating.
+
+“I’ll sit here,” said my brother, “if I may”; and he got upon the empty
+front seat. The lady looked over her shoulder.
+
+“Give me the reins,” she said, and laid the whip along the pony’s side.
+In another moment a bend in the road hid the three men from my
+brother’s eyes.
+
+So, quite unexpectedly, my brother found himself, panting, with a cut
+mouth, a bruised jaw, and bloodstained knuckles, driving along an
+unknown lane with these two women.
+
+He learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon
+living at Stanmore, who had come in the small hours from a dangerous
+case at Pinner, and heard at some railway station on his way of the
+Martian advance. He had hurried home, roused the women—their servant
+had left them two days before—packed some provisions, put his revolver
+under the seat—luckily for my brother—and told them to drive on to
+Edgware, with the idea of getting a train there. He stopped behind to
+tell the neighbours. He would overtake them, he said, at about half
+past four in the morning, and now it was nearly nine and they had seen
+nothing of him. They could not stop in Edgware because of the growing
+traffic through the place, and so they had come into this side lane.
+
+That was the story they told my brother in fragments when presently
+they stopped again, nearer to New Barnet. He promised to stay with
+them, at least until they could determine what to do, or until the
+missing man arrived, and professed to be an expert shot with the
+revolver—a weapon strange to him—in order to give them confidence.
+
+They made a sort of encampment by the wayside, and the pony became
+happy in the hedge. He told them of his own escape out of London, and
+all that he knew of these Martians and their ways. The sun crept higher
+in the sky, and after a time their talk died out and gave place to an
+uneasy state of anticipation. Several wayfarers came along the lane,
+and of these my brother gathered such news as he could. Every broken
+answer he had deepened his impression of the great disaster that had
+come on humanity, deepened his persuasion of the immediate necessity
+for prosecuting this flight. He urged the matter upon them.
+
+“We have money,” said the slender woman, and hesitated.
+
+Her eyes met my brother’s, and her hesitation ended.
+
+“So have I,” said my brother.
+
+She explained that they had as much as thirty pounds in gold, besides a
+five-pound note, and suggested that with that they might get upon a
+train at St. Albans or New Barnet. My brother thought that was
+hopeless, seeing the fury of the Londoners to crowd upon the trains,
+and broached his own idea of striking across Essex towards Harwich and
+thence escaping from the country altogether.
+
+Mrs. Elphinstone—that was the name of the woman in white—would listen
+to no reasoning, and kept calling upon “George”; but her sister-in-law
+was astonishingly quiet and deliberate, and at last agreed to my
+brother’s suggestion. So, designing to cross the Great North Road, they
+went on towards Barnet, my brother leading the pony to save it as much
+as possible. As the sun crept up the sky the day became excessively
+hot, and under foot a thick, whitish sand grew burning and blinding, so
+that they travelled only very slowly. The hedges were grey with dust.
+And as they advanced towards Barnet a tumultuous murmuring grew
+stronger.
+
+They began to meet more people. For the most part these were staring
+before them, murmuring indistinct questions, jaded, haggard, unclean.
+One man in evening dress passed them on foot, his eyes on the ground.
+They heard his voice, and, looking back at him, saw one hand clutched
+in his hair and the other beating invisible things. His paroxysm of
+rage over, he went on his way without once looking back.
+
+As my brother’s party went on towards the crossroads to the south of
+Barnet they saw a woman approaching the road across some fields on
+their left, carrying a child and with two other children; and then
+passed a man in dirty black, with a thick stick in one hand and a small
+portmanteau in the other. Then round the corner of the lane, from
+between the villas that guarded it at its confluence with the high
+road, came a little cart drawn by a sweating black pony and driven by a
+sallow youth in a bowler hat, grey with dust. There were three girls,
+East End factory girls, and a couple of little children crowded in the
+cart.
+
+“This’ll tike us rahnd Edgware?” asked the driver, wild-eyed,
+white-faced; and when my brother told him it would if he turned to the
+left, he whipped up at once without the formality of thanks.
+
+My brother noticed a pale grey smoke or haze rising among the houses in
+front of them, and veiling the white façade of a terrace beyond the
+road that appeared between the backs of the villas. Mrs. Elphinstone
+suddenly cried out at a number of tongues of smoky red flame leaping up
+above the houses in front of them against the hot, blue sky. The
+tumultuous noise resolved itself now into the disorderly mingling of
+many voices, the gride of many wheels, the creaking of waggons, and the
+staccato of hoofs. The lane came round sharply not fifty yards from the
+crossroads.
+
+“Good heavens!” cried Mrs. Elphinstone. “What is this you are driving
+us into?”
+
+My brother stopped.
+
+For the main road was a boiling stream of people, a torrent of human
+beings rushing northward, one pressing on another. A great bank of
+dust, white and luminous in the blaze of the sun, made everything
+within twenty feet of the ground grey and indistinct and was
+perpetually renewed by the hurrying feet of a dense crowd of horses and
+of men and women on foot, and by the wheels of vehicles of every
+description.
+
+“Way!” my brother heard voices crying. “Make way!”
+
+It was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting
+point of the lane and road; the crowd roared like a fire, and the dust
+was hot and pungent. And, indeed, a little way up the road a villa was
+burning and sending rolling masses of black smoke across the road to
+add to the confusion.
+
+Two men came past them. Then a dirty woman, carrying a heavy bundle and
+weeping. A lost retriever dog, with hanging tongue, circled dubiously
+round them, scared and wretched, and fled at my brother’s threat.
+
+So much as they could see of the road Londonward between the houses to
+the right was a tumultuous stream of dirty, hurrying people, pent in
+between the villas on either side; the black heads, the crowded forms,
+grew into distinctness as they rushed towards the corner, hurried past,
+and merged their individuality again in a receding multitude that was
+swallowed up at last in a cloud of dust.
+
+“Go on! Go on!” cried the voices. “Way! Way!”
+
+One man’s hands pressed on the back of another. My brother stood at the
+pony’s head. Irresistibly attracted, he advanced slowly, pace by pace,
+down the lane.
+
+Edgware had been a scene of confusion, Chalk Farm a riotous tumult, but
+this was a whole population in movement. It is hard to imagine that
+host. It had no character of its own. The figures poured out past the
+corner, and receded with their backs to the group in the lane. Along
+the margin came those who were on foot threatened by the wheels,
+stumbling in the ditches, blundering into one another.
+
+The carts and carriages crowded close upon one another, making little
+way for those swifter and more impatient vehicles that darted forward
+every now and then when an opportunity showed itself of doing so,
+sending the people scattering against the fences and gates of the
+villas.
+
+“Push on!” was the cry. “Push on! They are coming!”
+
+In one cart stood a blind man in the uniform of the Salvation Army,
+gesticulating with his crooked fingers and bawling, “Eternity!
+Eternity!” His voice was hoarse and very loud so that my brother could
+hear him long after he was lost to sight in the dust. Some of the
+people who crowded in the carts whipped stupidly at their horses and
+quarrelled with other drivers; some sat motionless, staring at nothing
+with miserable eyes; some gnawed their hands with thirst, or lay
+prostrate in the bottoms of their conveyances. The horses’ bits were
+covered with foam, their eyes bloodshot.
+
+There were cabs, carriages, shop-carts, waggons, beyond counting; a
+mail cart, a road-cleaner’s cart marked “Vestry of St. Pancras,” a huge
+timber waggon crowded with roughs. A brewer’s dray rumbled by with its
+two near wheels splashed with fresh blood.
+
+“Clear the way!” cried the voices. “Clear the way!”
+
+“Eter-nity! Eter-nity!” came echoing down the road.
+
+There were sad, haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with children
+that cried and stumbled, their dainty clothes smothered in dust, their
+weary faces smeared with tears. With many of these came men, sometimes
+helpful, sometimes lowering and savage. Fighting side by side with them
+pushed some weary street outcast in faded black rags, wide-eyed,
+loud-voiced, and foul-mouthed. There were sturdy workmen thrusting
+their way along, wretched, unkempt men, clothed like clerks or shopmen,
+struggling spasmodically; a wounded soldier my brother noticed, men
+dressed in the clothes of railway porters, one wretched creature in a
+nightshirt with a coat thrown over it.
+
+But varied as its composition was, certain things all that host had in
+common. There were fear and pain on their faces, and fear behind them.
+A tumult up the road, a quarrel for a place in a waggon, sent the whole
+host of them quickening their pace; even a man so scared and broken
+that his knees bent under him was galvanised for a moment into renewed
+activity. The heat and dust had already been at work upon this
+multitude. Their skins were dry, their lips black and cracked. They
+were all thirsty, weary, and footsore. And amid the various cries one
+heard disputes, reproaches, groans of weariness and fatigue; the voices
+of most of them were hoarse and weak. Through it all ran a refrain:
+
+“Way! Way! The Martians are coming!”
+
+Few stopped and came aside from that flood. The lane opened slantingly
+into the main road with a narrow opening, and had a delusive appearance
+of coming from the direction of London. Yet a kind of eddy of people
+drove into its mouth; weaklings elbowed out of the stream, who for the
+most part rested but a moment before plunging into it again. A little
+way down the lane, with two friends bending over him, lay a man with a
+bare leg, wrapped about with bloody rags. He was a lucky man to have
+friends.
+
+A little old man, with a grey military moustache and a filthy black
+frock coat, limped out and sat down beside the trap, removed his
+boot—his sock was blood-stained—shook out a pebble, and hobbled on
+again; and then a little girl of eight or nine, all alone, threw
+herself under the hedge close by my brother, weeping.
+
+“I can’t go on! I can’t go on!”
+
+My brother woke from his torpor of astonishment and lifted her up,
+speaking gently to her, and carried her to Miss Elphinstone. So soon as
+my brother touched her she became quite still, as if frightened.
+
+“Ellen!” shrieked a woman in the crowd, with tears in her
+voice—“Ellen!” And the child suddenly darted away from my brother,
+crying “Mother!”
+
+“They are coming,” said a man on horseback, riding past along the lane.
+
+“Out of the way, there!” bawled a coachman, towering high; and my
+brother saw a closed carriage turning into the lane.
+
+The people crushed back on one another to avoid the horse. My brother
+pushed the pony and chaise back into the hedge, and the man drove by
+and stopped at the turn of the way. It was a carriage, with a pole for
+a pair of horses, but only one was in the traces. My brother saw dimly
+through the dust that two men lifted out something on a white stretcher
+and put it gently on the grass beneath the privet hedge.
+
+One of the men came running to my brother.
+
+“Where is there any water?” he said. “He is dying fast, and very
+thirsty. It is Lord Garrick.”
+
+“Lord Garrick!” said my brother; “the Chief Justice?”
+
+“The water?” he said.
+
+“There may be a tap,” said my brother, “in some of the houses. We have
+no water. I dare not leave my people.”
+
+The man pushed against the crowd towards the gate of the corner house.
+
+“Go on!” said the people, thrusting at him. “They are coming! Go on!”
+
+Then my brother’s attention was distracted by a bearded, eagle-faced
+man lugging a small handbag, which split even as my brother’s eyes
+rested on it and disgorged a mass of sovereigns that seemed to break up
+into separate coins as it struck the ground. They rolled hither and
+thither among the struggling feet of men and horses. The man stopped
+and looked stupidly at the heap, and the shaft of a cab struck his
+shoulder and sent him reeling. He gave a shriek and dodged back, and a
+cartwheel shaved him narrowly.
+
+“Way!” cried the men all about him. “Make way!”
+
+So soon as the cab had passed, he flung himself, with both hands open,
+upon the heap of coins, and began thrusting handfuls in his pocket. A
+horse rose close upon him, and in another moment, half rising, he had
+been borne down under the horse’s hoofs.
+
+“Stop!” screamed my brother, and pushing a woman out of his way, tried
+to clutch the bit of the horse.
+
+Before he could get to it, he heard a scream under the wheels, and saw
+through the dust the rim passing over the poor wretch’s back. The
+driver of the cart slashed his whip at my brother, who ran round behind
+the cart. The multitudinous shouting confused his ears. The man was
+writhing in the dust among his scattered money, unable to rise, for the
+wheel had broken his back, and his lower limbs lay limp and dead. My
+brother stood up and yelled at the next driver, and a man on a black
+horse came to his assistance.
+
+“Get him out of the road,” said he; and, clutching the man’s collar
+with his free hand, my brother lugged him sideways. But he still
+clutched after his money, and regarded my brother fiercely, hammering
+at his arm with a handful of gold. “Go on! Go on!” shouted angry voices
+behind. “Way! Way!”
+
+There was a smash as the pole of a carriage crashed into the cart that
+the man on horseback stopped. My brother looked up, and the man with
+the gold twisted his head round and bit the wrist that held his collar.
+There was a concussion, and the black horse came staggering sideways,
+and the carthorse pushed beside it. A hoof missed my brother’s foot by
+a hair’s breadth. He released his grip on the fallen man and jumped
+back. He saw anger change to terror on the face of the poor wretch on
+the ground, and in a moment he was hidden and my brother was borne
+backward and carried past the entrance of the lane, and had to fight
+hard in the torrent to recover it.
+
+He saw Miss Elphinstone covering her eyes, and a little child, with all
+a child’s want of sympathetic imagination, staring with dilated eyes at
+a dusty something that lay black and still, ground and crushed under
+the rolling wheels. “Let us go back!” he shouted, and began turning the
+pony round. “We cannot cross this—hell,” he said and they went back a
+hundred yards the way they had come, until the fighting crowd was
+hidden. As they passed the bend in the lane my brother saw the face of
+the dying man in the ditch under the privet, deadly white and drawn,
+and shining with perspiration. The two women sat silent, crouching in
+their seat and shivering.
+
+Then beyond the bend my brother stopped again. Miss Elphinstone was
+white and pale, and her sister-in-law sat weeping, too wretched even to
+call upon “George.” My brother was horrified and perplexed. So soon as
+they had retreated he realised how urgent and unavoidable it was to
+attempt this crossing. He turned to Miss Elphinstone, suddenly
+resolute.
+
+“We must go that way,” he said, and led the pony round again.
+
+For the second time that day this girl proved her quality. To force
+their way into the torrent of people, my brother plunged into the
+traffic and held back a cab horse, while she drove the pony across its
+head. A waggon locked wheels for a moment and ripped a long splinter
+from the chaise. In another moment they were caught and swept forward
+by the stream. My brother, with the cabman’s whip marks red across his
+face and hands, scrambled into the chaise and took the reins from her.
+
+“Point the revolver at the man behind,” he said, giving it to her, “if
+he presses us too hard. No!—point it at his horse.”
+
+Then he began to look out for a chance of edging to the right across
+the road. But once in the stream he seemed to lose volition, to become
+a part of that dusty rout. They swept through Chipping Barnet with the
+torrent; they were nearly a mile beyond the centre of the town before
+they had fought across to the opposite side of the way. It was din and
+confusion indescribable; but in and beyond the town the road forks
+repeatedly, and this to some extent relieved the stress.
+
+They struck eastward through Hadley, and there on either side of the
+road, and at another place farther on they came upon a great multitude
+of people drinking at the stream, some fighting to come at the water.
+And farther on, from a lull near East Barnet, they saw two trains
+running slowly one after the other without signal or order—trains
+swarming with people, with men even among the coals behind the
+engines—going northward along the Great Northern Railway. My brother
+supposes they must have filled outside London, for at that time the
+furious terror of the people had rendered the central termini
+impossible.
+
+Near this place they halted for the rest of the afternoon, for the
+violence of the day had already utterly exhausted all three of them.
+They began to suffer the beginnings of hunger; the night was cold, and
+none of them dared to sleep. And in the evening many people came
+hurrying along the road nearby their stopping place, fleeing from
+unknown dangers before them, and going in the direction from which my
+brother had come.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+THE “THUNDER CHILD”.
+
+
+Had the Martians aimed only at destruction, they might on Monday have
+annihilated the entire population of London, as it spread itself slowly
+through the home counties. Not only along the road through Barnet, but
+also through Edgware and Waltham Abbey, and along the roads eastward to
+Southend and Shoeburyness, and south of the Thames to Deal and
+Broadstairs, poured the same frantic rout. If one could have hung that
+June morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above London every
+northward and eastward road running out of the tangled maze of streets
+would have seemed stippled black with the streaming fugitives, each dot
+a human agony of terror and physical distress. I have set forth at
+length in the last chapter my brother’s account of the road through
+Chipping Barnet, in order that my readers may realise how that swarming
+of black dots appeared to one of those concerned. Never before in the
+history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered
+together. The legendary hosts of Goths and Huns, the hugest armies Asia
+has ever seen, would have been but a drop in that current. And this was
+no disciplined march; it was a stampede—a stampede gigantic and
+terrible—without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed
+and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout
+of civilisation, of the massacre of mankind.
+
+Directly below him the balloonist would have seen the network of
+streets far and wide, houses, churches, squares, crescents,
+gardens—already derelict—spread out like a huge map, and in the
+southward _blotted_. Over Ealing, Richmond, Wimbledon, it would have
+seemed as if some monstrous pen had flung ink upon the chart. Steadily,
+incessantly, each black splash grew and spread, shooting out
+ramifications this way and that, now banking itself against rising
+ground, now pouring swiftly over a crest into a new-found valley,
+exactly as a gout of ink would spread itself upon blotting paper.
+
+And beyond, over the blue hills that rise southward of the river, the
+glittering Martians went to and fro, calmly and methodically spreading
+their poison cloud over this patch of country and then over that,
+laying it again with their steam jets when it had served its purpose,
+and taking possession of the conquered country. They do not seem to
+have aimed at extermination so much as at complete demoralisation and
+the destruction of any opposition. They exploded any stores of powder
+they came upon, cut every telegraph, and wrecked the railways here and
+there. They were hamstringing mankind. They seemed in no hurry to
+extend the field of their operations, and did not come beyond the
+central part of London all that day. It is possible that a very
+considerable number of people in London stuck to their houses through
+Monday morning. Certain it is that many died at home suffocated by the
+Black Smoke.
+
+Until about midday the Pool of London was an astonishing scene.
+Steamboats and shipping of all sorts lay there, tempted by the enormous
+sums of money offered by fugitives, and it is said that many who swam
+out to these vessels were thrust off with boathooks and drowned. About
+one o’clock in the afternoon the thinning remnant of a cloud of the
+black vapour appeared between the arches of Blackfriars Bridge. At that
+the Pool became a scene of mad confusion, fighting, and collision, and
+for some time a multitude of boats and barges jammed in the northern
+arch of the Tower Bridge, and the sailors and lightermen had to fight
+savagely against the people who swarmed upon them from the riverfront.
+People were actually clambering down the piers of the bridge from
+above.
+
+When, an hour later, a Martian appeared beyond the Clock Tower and
+waded down the river, nothing but wreckage floated above Limehouse.
+
+Of the falling of the fifth cylinder I have presently to tell. The
+sixth star fell at Wimbledon. My brother, keeping watch beside the
+women in the chaise in a meadow, saw the green flash of it far beyond
+the hills. On Tuesday the little party, still set upon getting across
+the sea, made its way through the swarming country towards Colchester.
+The news that the Martians were now in possession of the whole of
+London was confirmed. They had been seen at Highgate, and even, it was
+said, at Neasden. But they did not come into my brother’s view until
+the morrow.
+
+That day the scattered multitudes began to realise the urgent need of
+provisions. As they grew hungry the rights of property ceased to be
+regarded. Farmers were out to defend their cattle-sheds, granaries, and
+ripening root crops with arms in their hands. A number of people now,
+like my brother, had their faces eastward, and there were some
+desperate souls even going back towards London to get food. These were
+chiefly people from the northern suburbs, whose knowledge of the Black
+Smoke came by hearsay. He heard that about half the members of the
+government had gathered at Birmingham, and that enormous quantities of
+high explosives were being prepared to be used in automatic mines
+across the Midland counties.
+
+He was also told that the Midland Railway Company had replaced the
+desertions of the first day’s panic, had resumed traffic, and was
+running northward trains from St. Albans to relieve the congestion of
+the home counties. There was also a placard in Chipping Ongar
+announcing that large stores of flour were available in the northern
+towns and that within twenty-four hours bread would be distributed
+among the starving people in the neighbourhood. But this intelligence
+did not deter him from the plan of escape he had formed, and the three
+pressed eastward all day, and heard no more of the bread distribution
+than this promise. Nor, as a matter of fact, did anyone else hear more
+of it. That night fell the seventh star, falling upon Primrose Hill. It
+fell while Miss Elphinstone was watching, for she took that duty
+alternately with my brother. She saw it.
+
+On Wednesday the three fugitives—they had passed the night in a field
+of unripe wheat—reached Chelmsford, and there a body of the
+inhabitants, calling itself the Committee of Public Supply, seized the
+pony as provisions, and would give nothing in exchange for it but the
+promise of a share in it the next day. Here there were rumours of
+Martians at Epping, and news of the destruction of Waltham Abbey Powder
+Mills in a vain attempt to blow up one of the invaders.
+
+People were watching for Martians here from the church towers. My
+brother, very luckily for him as it chanced, preferred to push on at
+once to the coast rather than wait for food, although all three of them
+were very hungry. By midday they passed through Tillingham, which,
+strangely enough, seemed to be quite silent and deserted, save for a
+few furtive plunderers hunting for food. Near Tillingham they suddenly
+came in sight of the sea, and the most amazing crowd of shipping of all
+sorts that it is possible to imagine.
+
+For after the sailors could no longer come up the Thames, they came on
+to the Essex coast, to Harwich and Walton and Clacton, and afterwards
+to Foulness and Shoebury, to bring off the people. They lay in a huge
+sickle-shaped curve that vanished into mist at last towards the Naze.
+Close inshore was a multitude of fishing smacks—English, Scotch,
+French, Dutch, and Swedish; steam launches from the Thames, yachts,
+electric boats; and beyond were ships of larger burden, a multitude of
+filthy colliers, trim merchantmen, cattle ships, passenger boats,
+petroleum tanks, ocean tramps, an old white transport even, neat white
+and grey liners from Southampton and Hamburg; and along the blue coast
+across the Blackwater my brother could make out dimly a dense swarm of
+boats chaffering with the people on the beach, a swarm which also
+extended up the Blackwater almost to Maldon.
+
+About a couple of miles out lay an ironclad, very low in the water,
+almost, to my brother’s perception, like a water-logged ship. This was
+the ram _Thunder Child_. It was the only warship in sight, but far away
+to the right over the smooth surface of the sea—for that day there was
+a dead calm—lay a serpent of black smoke to mark the next ironclads of
+the Channel Fleet, which hovered in an extended line, steam up and
+ready for action, across the Thames estuary during the course of the
+Martian conquest, vigilant and yet powerless to prevent it.
+
+At the sight of the sea, Mrs. Elphinstone, in spite of the assurances
+of her sister-in-law, gave way to panic. She had never been out of
+England before, she would rather die than trust herself friendless in a
+foreign country, and so forth. She seemed, poor woman, to imagine that
+the French and the Martians might prove very similar. She had been
+growing increasingly hysterical, fearful, and depressed during the two
+days’ journeyings. Her great idea was to return to Stanmore. Things had
+been always well and safe at Stanmore. They would find George at
+Stanmore....
+
+It was with the greatest difficulty they could get her down to the
+beach, where presently my brother succeeded in attracting the attention
+of some men on a paddle steamer from the Thames. They sent a boat and
+drove a bargain for thirty-six pounds for the three. The steamer was
+going, these men said, to Ostend.
+
+It was about two o’clock when my brother, having paid their fares at
+the gangway, found himself safely aboard the steamboat with his
+charges. There was food aboard, albeit at exorbitant prices, and the
+three of them contrived to eat a meal on one of the seats forward.
+
+There were already a couple of score of passengers aboard, some of whom
+had expended their last money in securing a passage, but the captain
+lay off the Blackwater until five in the afternoon, picking up
+passengers until the seated decks were even dangerously crowded. He
+would probably have remained longer had it not been for the sound of
+guns that began about that hour in the south. As if in answer, the
+ironclad seaward fired a small gun and hoisted a string of flags. A jet
+of smoke sprang out of her funnels.
+
+Some of the passengers were of opinion that this firing came from
+Shoeburyness, until it was noticed that it was growing louder. At the
+same time, far away in the southeast the masts and upperworks of three
+ironclads rose one after the other out of the sea, beneath clouds of
+black smoke. But my brother’s attention speedily reverted to the
+distant firing in the south. He fancied he saw a column of smoke rising
+out of the distant grey haze.
+
+The little steamer was already flapping her way eastward of the big
+crescent of shipping, and the low Essex coast was growing blue and
+hazy, when a Martian appeared, small and faint in the remote distance,
+advancing along the muddy coast from the direction of Foulness. At that
+the captain on the bridge swore at the top of his voice with fear and
+anger at his own delay, and the paddles seemed infected with his
+terror. Every soul aboard stood at the bulwarks or on the seats of the
+steamer and stared at that distant shape, higher than the trees or
+church towers inland, and advancing with a leisurely parody of a human
+stride.
+
+It was the first Martian my brother had seen, and he stood, more amazed
+than terrified, watching this Titan advancing deliberately towards the
+shipping, wading farther and farther into the water as the coast fell
+away. Then, far away beyond the Crouch, came another, striding over
+some stunted trees, and then yet another, still farther off, wading
+deeply through a shiny mudflat that seemed to hang halfway up between
+sea and sky. They were all stalking seaward, as if to intercept the
+escape of the multitudinous vessels that were crowded between Foulness
+and the Naze. In spite of the throbbing exertions of the engines of the
+little paddle-boat, and the pouring foam that her wheels flung behind
+her, she receded with terrifying slowness from this ominous advance.
+
+Glancing northwestward, my brother saw the large crescent of shipping
+already writhing with the approaching terror; one ship passing behind
+another, another coming round from broadside to end on, steamships
+whistling and giving off volumes of steam, sails being let out,
+launches rushing hither and thither. He was so fascinated by this and
+by the creeping danger away to the left that he had no eyes for
+anything seaward. And then a swift movement of the steamboat (she had
+suddenly come round to avoid being run down) flung him headlong from
+the seat upon which he was standing. There was a shouting all about
+him, a trampling of feet, and a cheer that seemed to be answered
+faintly. The steamboat lurched and rolled him over upon his hands.
+
+He sprang to his feet and saw to starboard, and not a hundred yards
+from their heeling, pitching boat, a vast iron bulk like the blade of a
+plough tearing through the water, tossing it on either side in huge
+waves of foam that leaped towards the steamer, flinging her paddles
+helplessly in the air, and then sucking her deck down almost to the
+waterline.
+
+A douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment. When his eyes were
+clear again he saw the monster had passed and was rushing landward. Big
+iron upperworks rose out of this headlong structure, and from that twin
+funnels projected and spat a smoking blast shot with fire. It was the
+torpedo ram, _Thunder Child_, steaming headlong, coming to the rescue
+of the threatened shipping.
+
+Keeping his footing on the heaving deck by clutching the bulwarks, my
+brother looked past this charging leviathan at the Martians again, and
+he saw the three of them now close together, and standing so far out to
+sea that their tripod supports were almost entirely submerged. Thus
+sunken, and seen in remote perspective, they appeared far less
+formidable than the huge iron bulk in whose wake the steamer was
+pitching so helplessly. It would seem they were regarding this new
+antagonist with astonishment. To their intelligence, it may be, the
+giant was even such another as themselves. The _Thunder Child_ fired no
+gun, but simply drove full speed towards them. It was probably her not
+firing that enabled her to get so near the enemy as she did. They did
+not know what to make of her. One shell, and they would have sent her
+to the bottom forthwith with the Heat-Ray.
+
+She was steaming at such a pace that in a minute she seemed halfway
+between the steamboat and the Martians—a diminishing black bulk against
+the receding horizontal expanse of the Essex coast.
+
+Suddenly the foremost Martian lowered his tube and discharged a
+canister of the black gas at the ironclad. It hit her larboard side and
+glanced off in an inky jet that rolled away to seaward, an unfolding
+torrent of Black Smoke, from which the ironclad drove clear. To the
+watchers from the steamer, low in the water and with the sun in their
+eyes, it seemed as though she were already among the Martians.
+
+They saw the gaunt figures separating and rising out of the water as
+they retreated shoreward, and one of them raised the camera-like
+generator of the Heat-Ray. He held it pointing obliquely downward, and
+a bank of steam sprang from the water at its touch. It must have driven
+through the iron of the ship’s side like a white-hot iron rod through
+paper.
+
+A flicker of flame went up through the rising steam, and then the
+Martian reeled and staggered. In another moment he was cut down, and a
+great body of water and steam shot high in the air. The guns of the
+_Thunder Child_ sounded through the reek, going off one after the
+other, and one shot splashed the water high close by the steamer,
+ricocheted towards the other flying ships to the north, and smashed a
+smack to matchwood.
+
+But no one heeded that very much. At the sight of the Martian’s
+collapse the captain on the bridge yelled inarticulately, and all the
+crowding passengers on the steamer’s stern shouted together. And then
+they yelled again. For, surging out beyond the white tumult, drove
+something long and black, the flames streaming from its middle parts,
+its ventilators and funnels spouting fire.
+
+She was alive still; the steering gear, it seems, was intact and her
+engines working. She headed straight for a second Martian, and was
+within a hundred yards of him when the Heat-Ray came to bear. Then with
+a violent thud, a blinding flash, her decks, her funnels, leaped
+upward. The Martian staggered with the violence of her explosion, and
+in another moment the flaming wreckage, still driving forward with the
+impetus of its pace, had struck him and crumpled him up like a thing of
+cardboard. My brother shouted involuntarily. A boiling tumult of steam
+hid everything again.
+
+“Two!” yelled the captain.
+
+Everyone was shouting. The whole steamer from end to end rang with
+frantic cheering that was taken up first by one and then by all in the
+crowding multitude of ships and boats that was driving out to sea.
+
+The steam hung upon the water for many minutes, hiding the third
+Martian and the coast altogether. And all this time the boat was
+paddling steadily out to sea and away from the fight; and when at last
+the confusion cleared, the drifting bank of black vapour intervened,
+and nothing of the _Thunder Child_ could be made out, nor could the
+third Martian be seen. But the ironclads to seaward were now quite
+close and standing in towards shore past the steamboat.
+
+The little vessel continued to beat its way seaward, and the ironclads
+receded slowly towards the coast, which was hidden still by a marbled
+bank of vapour, part steam, part black gas, eddying and combining in
+the strangest way. The fleet of refugees was scattering to the
+northeast; several smacks were sailing between the ironclads and the
+steamboat. After a time, and before they reached the sinking cloud
+bank, the warships turned northward, and then abruptly went about and
+passed into the thickening haze of evening southward. The coast grew
+faint, and at last indistinguishable amid the low banks of clouds that
+were gathering about the sinking sun.
+
+Then suddenly out of the golden haze of the sunset came the vibration
+of guns, and a form of black shadows moving. Everyone struggled to the
+rail of the steamer and peered into the blinding furnace of the west,
+but nothing was to be distinguished clearly. A mass of smoke rose
+slanting and barred the face of the sun. The steamboat throbbed on its
+way through an interminable suspense.
+
+The sun sank into grey clouds, the sky flushed and darkened, the
+evening star trembled into sight. It was deep twilight when the captain
+cried out and pointed. My brother strained his eyes. Something rushed
+up into the sky out of the greyness—rushed slantingly upward and very
+swiftly into the luminous clearness above the clouds in the western
+sky; something flat and broad, and very large, that swept round in a
+vast curve, grew smaller, sank slowly, and vanished again into the grey
+mystery of the night. And as it flew it rained down darkness upon the
+land.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+THE EARTH UNDER THE MARTIANS.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+UNDER FOOT.
+
+
+In the first book I have wandered so much from my own adventures to
+tell of the experiences of my brother that all through the last two
+chapters I and the curate have been lurking in the empty house at
+Halliford whither we fled to escape the Black Smoke. There I will
+resume. We stopped there all Sunday night and all the next day—the day
+of the panic—in a little island of daylight, cut off by the Black Smoke
+from the rest of the world. We could do nothing but wait in aching
+inactivity during those two weary days.
+
+My mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife. I figured her at
+Leatherhead, terrified, in danger, mourning me already as a dead man. I
+paced the rooms and cried aloud when I thought of how I was cut off
+from her, of all that might happen to her in my absence. My cousin I
+knew was brave enough for any emergency, but he was not the sort of man
+to realise danger quickly, to rise promptly. What was needed now was
+not bravery, but circumspection. My only consolation was to believe
+that the Martians were moving Londonward and away from her. Such vague
+anxieties keep the mind sensitive and painful. I grew very weary and
+irritable with the curate’s perpetual ejaculations; I tired of the
+sight of his selfish despair. After some ineffectual remonstrance I
+kept away from him, staying in a room—evidently a children’s
+schoolroom—containing globes, forms, and copybooks. When he followed me
+thither, I went to a box room at the top of the house and, in order to
+be alone with my aching miseries, locked myself in.
+
+We were hopelessly hemmed in by the Black Smoke all that day and the
+morning of the next. There were signs of people in the next house on
+Sunday evening—a face at a window and moving lights, and later the
+slamming of a door. But I do not know who these people were, nor what
+became of them. We saw nothing of them next day. The Black Smoke
+drifted slowly riverward all through Monday morning, creeping nearer
+and nearer to us, driving at last along the roadway outside the house
+that hid us.
+
+A Martian came across the fields about midday, laying the stuff with a
+jet of superheated steam that hissed against the walls, smashed all the
+windows it touched, and scalded the curate’s hand as he fled out of the
+front room. When at last we crept across the sodden rooms and looked
+out again, the country northward was as though a black snowstorm had
+passed over it. Looking towards the river, we were astonished to see an
+unaccountable redness mingling with the black of the scorched meadows.
+
+For a time we did not see how this change affected our position, save
+that we were relieved of our fear of the Black Smoke. But later I
+perceived that we were no longer hemmed in, that now we might get away.
+So soon as I realised that the way of escape was open, my dream of
+action returned. But the curate was lethargic, unreasonable.
+
+“We are safe here,” he repeated; “safe here.”
+
+I resolved to leave him—would that I had! Wiser now for the
+artilleryman’s teaching, I sought out food and drink. I had found oil
+and rags for my burns, and I also took a hat and a flannel shirt that I
+found in one of the bedrooms. When it was clear to him that I meant to
+go alone—had reconciled myself to going alone—he suddenly roused
+himself to come. And all being quiet throughout the afternoon, we
+started about five o’clock, as I should judge, along the blackened road
+to Sunbury.
+
+In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road, were dead bodies lying in
+contorted attitudes, horses as well as men, overturned carts and
+luggage, all covered thickly with black dust. That pall of cindery
+powder made me think of what I had read of the destruction of Pompeii.
+We got to Hampton Court without misadventure, our minds full of strange
+and unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our eyes were relieved
+to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating drift. We
+went through Bushey Park, with its deer going to and fro under the
+chestnuts, and some men and women hurrying in the distance towards
+Hampton, and so we came to Twickenham. These were the first people we
+saw.
+
+Away across the road the woods beyond Ham and Petersham were still
+afire. Twickenham was uninjured by either Heat-Ray or Black Smoke, and
+there were more people about here, though none could give us news. For
+the most part they were like ourselves, taking advantage of a lull to
+shift their quarters. I have an impression that many of the houses here
+were still occupied by scared inhabitants, too frightened even for
+flight. Here too the evidence of a hasty rout was abundant along the
+road. I remember most vividly three smashed bicycles in a heap, pounded
+into the road by the wheels of subsequent carts. We crossed Richmond
+Bridge about half past eight. We hurried across the exposed bridge, of
+course, but I noticed floating down the stream a number of red masses,
+some many feet across. I did not know what these were—there was no time
+for scrutiny—and I put a more horrible interpretation on them than they
+deserved. Here again on the Surrey side were black dust that had once
+been smoke, and dead bodies—a heap near the approach to the station;
+but we had no glimpse of the Martians until we were some way towards
+Barnes.
+
+We saw in the blackened distance a group of three people running down a
+side street towards the river, but otherwise it seemed deserted. Up the
+hill Richmond town was burning briskly; outside the town of Richmond
+there was no trace of the Black Smoke.
+
+Then suddenly, as we approached Kew, came a number of people running,
+and the upperworks of a Martian fighting-machine loomed in sight over
+the housetops, not a hundred yards away from us. We stood aghast at our
+danger, and had the Martian looked down we must immediately have
+perished. We were so terrified that we dared not go on, but turned
+aside and hid in a shed in a garden. There the curate crouched, weeping
+silently, and refusing to stir again.
+
+But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let me rest, and in
+the twilight I ventured out again. I went through a shrubbery, and
+along a passage beside a big house standing in its own grounds, and so
+emerged upon the road towards Kew. The curate I left in the shed, but
+he came hurrying after me.
+
+That second start was the most foolhardy thing I ever did. For it was
+manifest the Martians were about us. No sooner had the curate overtaken
+me than we saw either the fighting-machine we had seen before or
+another, far away across the meadows in the direction of Kew Lodge.
+Four or five little black figures hurried before it across the
+green-grey of the field, and in a moment it was evident this Martian
+pursued them. In three strides he was among them, and they ran
+radiating from his feet in all directions. He used no Heat-Ray to
+destroy them, but picked them up one by one. Apparently he tossed them
+into the great metallic carrier which projected behind him, much as a
+workman’s basket hangs over his shoulder.
+
+It was the first time I realised that the Martians might have any other
+purpose than destruction with defeated humanity. We stood for a moment
+petrified, then turned and fled through a gate behind us into a walled
+garden, fell into, rather than found, a fortunate ditch, and lay there,
+scarce daring to whisper to each other until the stars were out.
+
+I suppose it was nearly eleven o’clock before we gathered courage to
+start again, no longer venturing into the road, but sneaking along
+hedgerows and through plantations, and watching keenly through the
+darkness, he on the right and I on the left, for the Martians, who
+seemed to be all about us. In one place we blundered upon a scorched
+and blackened area, now cooling and ashen, and a number of scattered
+dead bodies of men, burned horribly about the heads and trunks but with
+their legs and boots mostly intact; and of dead horses, fifty feet,
+perhaps, behind a line of four ripped guns and smashed gun carriages.
+
+Sheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the place was silent and
+deserted. Here we happened on no dead, though the night was too dark
+for us to see into the side roads of the place. In Sheen my companion
+suddenly complained of faintness and thirst, and we decided to try one
+of the houses.
+
+The first house we entered, after a little difficulty with the window,
+was a small semi-detached villa, and I found nothing eatable left in
+the place but some mouldy cheese. There was, however, water to drink;
+and I took a hatchet, which promised to be useful in our next
+house-breaking.
+
+We then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake. Here
+there stood a white house within a walled garden, and in the pantry of
+this domicile we found a store of food—two loaves of bread in a pan, an
+uncooked steak, and the half of a ham. I give this catalogue so
+precisely because, as it happened, we were destined to subsist upon
+this store for the next fortnight. Bottled beer stood under a shelf,
+and there were two bags of haricot beans and some limp lettuces. This
+pantry opened into a kind of wash-up kitchen, and in this was firewood;
+there was also a cupboard, in which we found nearly a dozen of
+burgundy, tinned soups and salmon, and two tins of biscuits.
+
+We sat in the adjacent kitchen in the dark—for we dared not strike a
+light—and ate bread and ham, and drank beer out of the same bottle. The
+curate, who was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly enough, for
+pushing on, and I was urging him to keep up his strength by eating when
+the thing happened that was to imprison us.
+
+“It can’t be midnight yet,” I said, and then came a blinding glare of
+vivid green light. Everything in the kitchen leaped out, clearly
+visible in green and black, and vanished again. And then followed such
+a concussion as I have never heard before or since. So close on the
+heels of this as to seem instantaneous came a thud behind me, a clash
+of glass, a crash and rattle of falling masonry all about us, and the
+plaster of the ceiling came down upon us, smashing into a multitude of
+fragments upon our heads. I was knocked headlong across the floor
+against the oven handle and stunned. I was insensible for a long time,
+the curate told me, and when I came to we were in darkness again, and
+he, with a face wet, as I found afterwards, with blood from a cut
+forehead, was dabbing water over me.
+
+For some time I could not recollect what had happened. Then things came
+to me slowly. A bruise on my temple asserted itself.
+
+“Are you better?” asked the curate in a whisper.
+
+At last I answered him. I sat up.
+
+“Don’t move,” he said. “The floor is covered with smashed crockery from
+the dresser. You can’t possibly move without making a noise, and I
+fancy _they_ are outside.”
+
+We both sat quite silent, so that we could scarcely hear each other
+breathing. Everything seemed deadly still, but once something near us,
+some plaster or broken brickwork, slid down with a rumbling sound.
+Outside and very near was an intermittent, metallic rattle.
+
+“That!” said the curate, when presently it happened again.
+
+“Yes,” I said. “But what is it?”
+
+“A Martian!” said the curate.
+
+I listened again.
+
+“It was not like the Heat-Ray,” I said, and for a time I was inclined
+to think one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled against the
+house, as I had seen one stumble against the tower of Shepperton
+Church.
+
+Our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three or
+four hours, until the dawn came, we scarcely moved. And then the light
+filtered in, not through the window, which remained black, but through
+a triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken bricks in the
+wall behind us. The interior of the kitchen we now saw greyly for the
+first time.
+
+The window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which flowed
+over the table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our feet.
+Outside, the soil was banked high against the house. At the top of the
+window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe. The floor was littered
+with smashed hardware; the end of the kitchen towards the house was
+broken into, and since the daylight shone in there, it was evident the
+greater part of the house had collapsed. Contrasting vividly with this
+ruin was the neat dresser, stained in the fashion, pale green, and with
+a number of copper and tin vessels below it, the wallpaper imitating
+blue and white tiles, and a couple of coloured supplements fluttering
+from the walls above the kitchen range.
+
+As the dawn grew clearer, we saw through the gap in the wall the body
+of a Martian, standing sentinel, I suppose, over the still glowing
+cylinder. At the sight of that we crawled as circumspectly as possible
+out of the twilight of the kitchen into the darkness of the scullery.
+
+Abruptly the right interpretation dawned upon my mind.
+
+“The fifth cylinder,” I whispered, “the fifth shot from Mars, has
+struck this house and buried us under the ruins!”
+
+For a time the curate was silent, and then he whispered:
+
+“God have mercy upon us!”
+
+I heard him presently whimpering to himself.
+
+Save for that sound we lay quite still in the scullery; I for my part
+scarce dared breathe, and sat with my eyes fixed on the faint light of
+the kitchen door. I could just see the curate’s face, a dim, oval
+shape, and his collar and cuffs. Outside there began a metallic
+hammering, then a violent hooting, and then again, after a quiet
+interval, a hissing like the hissing of an engine. These noises, for
+the most part problematical, continued intermittently, and seemed if
+anything to increase in number as time wore on. Presently a measured
+thudding and a vibration that made everything about us quiver and the
+vessels in the pantry ring and shift, began and continued. Once the
+light was eclipsed, and the ghostly kitchen doorway became absolutely
+dark. For many hours we must have crouched there, silent and shivering,
+until our tired attention failed. . . .
+
+At last I found myself awake and very hungry. I am inclined to believe
+we must have spent the greater portion of a day before that awakening.
+My hunger was at a stride so insistent that it moved me to action. I
+told the curate I was going to seek food, and felt my way towards the
+pantry. He made me no answer, but so soon as I began eating the faint
+noise I made stirred him up and I heard him crawling after me.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+WHAT WE SAW FROM THE RUINED HOUSE.
+
+
+After eating we crept back to the scullery, and there I must have dozed
+again, for when presently I looked round I was alone. The thudding
+vibration continued with wearisome persistence. I whispered for the
+curate several times, and at last felt my way to the door of the
+kitchen. It was still daylight, and I perceived him across the room,
+lying against the triangular hole that looked out upon the Martians.
+His shoulders were hunched, so that his head was hidden from me.
+
+I could hear a number of noises almost like those in an engine shed;
+and the place rocked with that beating thud. Through the aperture in
+the wall I could see the top of a tree touched with gold and the warm
+blue of a tranquil evening sky. For a minute or so I remained watching
+the curate, and then I advanced, crouching and stepping with extreme
+care amid the broken crockery that littered the floor.
+
+I touched the curate’s leg, and he started so violently that a mass of
+plaster went sliding down outside and fell with a loud impact. I
+gripped his arm, fearing he might cry out, and for a long time we
+crouched motionless. Then I turned to see how much of our rampart
+remained. The detachment of the plaster had left a vertical slit open
+in the debris, and by raising myself cautiously across a beam I was
+able to see out of this gap into what had been overnight a quiet
+suburban roadway. Vast, indeed, was the change that we beheld.
+
+The fifth cylinder must have fallen right into the midst of the house
+we had first visited. The building had vanished, completely smashed,
+pulverised, and dispersed by the blow. The cylinder lay now far beneath
+the original foundations—deep in a hole, already vastly larger than the
+pit I had looked into at Woking. The earth all round it had splashed
+under that tremendous impact—“splashed” is the only word—and lay in
+heaped piles that hid the masses of the adjacent houses. It had behaved
+exactly like mud under the violent blow of a hammer. Our house had
+collapsed backward; the front portion, even on the ground floor, had
+been destroyed completely; by a chance the kitchen and scullery had
+escaped, and stood buried now under soil and ruins, closed in by tons
+of earth on every side save towards the cylinder. Over that aspect we
+hung now on the very edge of the great circular pit the Martians were
+engaged in making. The heavy beating sound was evidently just behind
+us, and ever and again a bright green vapour drove up like a veil
+across our peephole.
+
+The cylinder was already opened in the centre of the pit, and on the
+farther edge of the pit, amid the smashed and gravel-heaped shrubbery,
+one of the great fighting-machines, deserted by its occupant, stood
+stiff and tall against the evening sky. At first I scarcely noticed the
+pit and the cylinder, although it has been convenient to describe them
+first, on account of the extraordinary glittering mechanism I saw busy
+in the excavation, and on account of the strange creatures that were
+crawling slowly and painfully across the heaped mould near it.
+
+The mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first. It was one
+of those complicated fabrics that have since been called
+handling-machines, and the study of which has already given such an
+enormous impetus to terrestrial invention. As it dawned upon me first,
+it presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed, agile legs,
+and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars, and reaching
+and clutching tentacles about its body. Most of its arms were
+retracted, but with three long tentacles it was fishing out a number of
+rods, plates, and bars which lined the covering and apparently
+strengthened the walls of the cylinder. These, as it extracted them,
+were lifted out and deposited upon a level surface of earth behind it.
+
+Its motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first I did not
+see it as a machine, in spite of its metallic glitter. The
+fighting-machines were coordinated and animated to an extraordinary
+pitch, but nothing to compare with this. People who have never seen
+these structures, and have only the ill-imagined efforts of artists or
+the imperfect descriptions of such eye-witnesses as myself to go upon,
+scarcely realise that living quality.
+
+I recall particularly the illustration of one of the first pamphlets to
+give a consecutive account of the war. The artist had evidently made a
+hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and there his knowledge
+ended. He presented them as tilted, stiff tripods, without either
+flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether misleading monotony of
+effect. The pamphlet containing these renderings had a considerable
+vogue, and I mention them here simply to warn the reader against the
+impression they may have created. They were no more like the Martians I
+saw in action than a Dutch doll is like a human being. To my mind, the
+pamphlet would have been much better without them.
+
+At first, I say, the handling-machine did not impress me as a machine,
+but as a crablike creature with a glittering integument, the
+controlling Martian whose delicate tentacles actuated its movements
+seeming to be simply the equivalent of the crab’s cerebral portion. But
+then I perceived the resemblance of its grey-brown, shiny, leathery
+integument to that of the other sprawling bodies beyond, and the true
+nature of this dexterous workman dawned upon me. With that realisation
+my interest shifted to those other creatures, the real Martians.
+Already I had had a transient impression of these, and the first nausea
+no longer obscured my observation. Moreover, I was concealed and
+motionless, and under no urgency of action.
+
+They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible to
+conceive. They were huge round bodies—or, rather, heads—about four feet
+in diameter, each body having in front of it a face. This face had no
+nostrils—indeed, the Martians do not seem to have had any sense of
+smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured eyes, and just
+beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. In the back of this head or body—I
+scarcely know how to speak of it—was the single tight tympanic surface,
+since known to be anatomically an ear, though it must have been almost
+useless in our dense air. In a group round the mouth were sixteen
+slender, almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in two bunches of eight
+each. These bunches have since been named rather aptly, by that
+distinguished anatomist, Professor Howes, the _hands_. Even as I saw
+these Martians for the first time they seemed to be endeavouring to
+raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with the increased
+weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible. There is reason
+to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed upon them with some
+facility.
+
+The internal anatomy, I may remark here, as dissection has since shown,
+was almost equally simple. The greater part of the structure was the
+brain, sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear, and tactile tentacles.
+Besides this were the bulky lungs, into which the mouth opened, and the
+heart and its vessels. The pulmonary distress caused by the denser
+atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only too evident in
+the convulsive movements of the outer skin.
+
+And this was the sum of the Martian organs. Strange as it may seem to a
+human being, all the complex apparatus of digestion, which makes up the
+bulk of our bodies, did not exist in the Martians. They were
+heads—merely heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less
+digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures,
+and _injected_ it into their own veins. I have myself seen this being
+done, as I shall mention in its place. But, squeamish as I may seem, I
+cannot bring myself to describe what I could not endure even to
+continue watching. Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still
+living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run directly by
+means of a little pipette into the recipient canal. . . .
+
+The bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, but at the
+same time I think that we should remember how repulsive our carnivorous
+habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit.
+
+The physiological advantages of the practice of injection are
+undeniable, if one thinks of the tremendous waste of human time and
+energy occasioned by eating and the digestive process. Our bodies are
+half made up of glands and tubes and organs, occupied in turning
+heterogeneous food into blood. The digestive processes and their
+reaction upon the nervous system sap our strength and colour our minds.
+Men go happy or miserable as they have healthy or unhealthy livers, or
+sound gastric glands. But the Martians were lifted above all these
+organic fluctuations of mood and emotion.
+
+Their undeniable preference for men as their source of nourishment is
+partly explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they had
+brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, to judge
+from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were
+bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost like those of the
+silicious sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high
+and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or
+three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all were
+killed before earth was reached. It was just as well for them, for the
+mere attempt to stand upright upon our planet would have broken every
+bone in their bodies.
+
+And while I am engaged in this description, I may add in this place
+certain further details which, although they were not all evident to us
+at the time, will enable the reader who is unacquainted with them to
+form a clearer picture of these offensive creatures.
+
+In three other points their physiology differed strangely from ours.
+Their organisms did not sleep, any more than the heart of man sleeps.
+Since they had no extensive muscular mechanism to recuperate, that
+periodical extinction was unknown to them. They had little or no sense
+of fatigue, it would seem. On earth they could never have moved without
+effort, yet even to the last they kept in action. In twenty-four hours
+they did twenty-four hours of work, as even on earth is perhaps the
+case with the ants.
+
+In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the
+Martians were absolutely without sex, and therefore without any of the
+tumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men. A young
+Martian, there can now be no dispute, was really born upon earth during
+the war, and it was found attached to its parent, partially _budded_
+off, just as young lilybulbs bud off, or like the young animals in the
+fresh-water polyp.
+
+In man, in all the higher terrestrial animals, such a method of
+increase has disappeared; but even on this earth it was certainly the
+primitive method. Among the lower animals, up even to those first
+cousins of the vertebrated animals, the Tunicates, the two processes
+occur side by side, but finally the sexual method superseded its
+competitor altogether. On Mars, however, just the reverse has
+apparently been the case.
+
+It is worthy of remark that a certain speculative writer of
+quasi-scientific repute, writing long before the Martian invasion, did
+forecast for man a final structure not unlike the actual Martian
+condition. His prophecy, I remember, appeared in November or December,
+1893, in a long-defunct publication, the _Pall Mall Budget_, and I
+recall a caricature of it in a pre-Martian periodical called _Punch_.
+He pointed out—writing in a foolish, facetious tone—that the perfection
+of mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede limbs; the
+perfection of chemical devices, digestion; that such organs as hair,
+external nose, teeth, ears, and chin were no longer essential parts of
+the human being, and that the tendency of natural selection would lie
+in the direction of their steady diminution through the coming ages.
+The brain alone remained a cardinal necessity. Only one other part of
+the body had a strong case for survival, and that was the hand,
+“teacher and agent of the brain.” While the rest of the body dwindled,
+the hands would grow larger.
+
+There is many a true word written in jest, and here in the Martians we
+have beyond dispute the actual accomplishment of such a suppression of
+the animal side of the organism by the intelligence. To me it is quite
+credible that the Martians may be descended from beings not unlike
+ourselves, by a gradual development of brain and hands (the latter
+giving rise to the two bunches of delicate tentacles at last) at the
+expense of the rest of the body. Without the body the brain would, of
+course, become a mere selfish intelligence, without any of the
+emotional substratum of the human being.
+
+The last salient point in which the systems of these creatures differed
+from ours was in what one might have thought a very trivial particular.
+Micro-organisms, which cause so much disease and pain on earth, have
+either never appeared upon Mars or Martian sanitary science eliminated
+them ages ago. A hundred diseases, all the fevers and contagions of
+human life, consumption, cancers, tumours and such morbidities, never
+enter the scheme of their life. And speaking of the differences between
+the life on Mars and terrestrial life, I may allude here to the curious
+suggestions of the red weed.
+
+Apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green for a
+dominant colour, is of a vivid blood-red tint. At any rate, the seeds
+which the Martians (intentionally or accidentally) brought with them
+gave rise in all cases to red-coloured growths. Only that known
+popularly as the red weed, however, gained any footing in competition
+with terrestrial forms. The red creeper was quite a transitory growth,
+and few people have seen it growing. For a time, however, the red weed
+grew with astonishing vigour and luxuriance. It spread up the sides of
+the pit by the third or fourth day of our imprisonment, and its
+cactus-like branches formed a carmine fringe to the edges of our
+triangular window. And afterwards I found it broadcast throughout the
+country, and especially wherever there was a stream of water.
+
+The Martians had what appears to have been an auditory organ, a single
+round drum at the back of the head-body, and eyes with a visual range
+not very different from ours except that, according to Philips, blue
+and violet were as black to them. It is commonly supposed that they
+communicated by sounds and tentacular gesticulations; this is asserted,
+for instance, in the able but hastily compiled pamphlet (written
+evidently by someone not an eye-witness of Martian actions) to which I
+have already alluded, and which, so far, has been the chief source of
+information concerning them. Now no surviving human being saw so much
+of the Martians in action as I did. I take no credit to myself for an
+accident, but the fact is so. And I assert that I watched them closely
+time after time, and that I have seen four, five, and (once) six of
+them sluggishly performing the most elaborately complicated operations
+together without either sound or gesture. Their peculiar hooting
+invariably preceded feeding; it had no modulation, and was, I believe,
+in no sense a signal, but merely the expiration of air preparatory to
+the suctional operation. I have a certain claim to at least an
+elementary knowledge of psychology, and in this matter I am
+convinced—as firmly as I am convinced of anything—that the Martians
+interchanged thoughts without any physical intermediation. And I have
+been convinced of this in spite of strong preconceptions. Before the
+Martian invasion, as an occasional reader here or there may remember, I
+had written with some little vehemence against the telepathic theory.
+
+The Martians wore no clothing. Their conceptions of ornament and
+decorum were necessarily different from ours; and not only were they
+evidently much less sensible of changes of temperature than we are, but
+changes of pressure do not seem to have affected their health at all
+seriously. Yet though they wore no clothing, it was in the other
+artificial additions to their bodily resources that their great
+superiority over man lay. We men, with our bicycles and road-skates,
+our Lilienthal soaring-machines, our guns and sticks and so forth, are
+just in the beginning of the evolution that the Martians have worked
+out. They have become practically mere brains, wearing different bodies
+according to their needs just as men wear suits of clothes and take a
+bicycle in a hurry or an umbrella in the wet. And of their appliances,
+perhaps nothing is more wonderful to a man than the curious fact that
+what is the dominant feature of almost all human devices in mechanism
+is absent—the _wheel_ is absent; among all the things they brought to
+earth there is no trace or suggestion of their use of wheels. One would
+have at least expected it in locomotion. And in this connection it is
+curious to remark that even on this earth Nature has never hit upon the
+wheel, or has preferred other expedients to its development. And not
+only did the Martians either not know of (which is incredible), or
+abstain from, the wheel, but in their apparatus singularly little use
+is made of the fixed pivot or relatively fixed pivot, with circular
+motions thereabout confined to one plane. Almost all the joints of the
+machinery present a complicated system of sliding parts moving over
+small but beautifully curved friction bearings. And while upon this
+matter of detail, it is remarkable that the long leverages of their
+machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature of
+the disks in an elastic sheath; these disks become polarised and drawn
+closely and powerfully together when traversed by a current of
+electricity. In this way the curious parallelism to animal motions,
+which was so striking and disturbing to the human beholder, was
+attained. Such quasi-muscles abounded in the crablike handling-machine
+which, on my first peeping out of the slit, I watched unpacking the
+cylinder. It seemed infinitely more alive than the actual Martians
+lying beyond it in the sunset light, panting, stirring ineffectual
+tentacles, and moving feebly after their vast journey across space.
+
+While I was still watching their sluggish motions in the sunlight, and
+noting each strange detail of their form, the curate reminded me of his
+presence by pulling violently at my arm. I turned to a scowling face,
+and silent, eloquent lips. He wanted the slit, which permitted only one
+of us to peep through; and so I had to forego watching them for a time
+while he enjoyed that privilege.
+
+When I looked again, the busy handling-machine had already put together
+several of the pieces of apparatus it had taken out of the cylinder
+into a shape having an unmistakable likeness to its own; and down on
+the left a busy little digging mechanism had come into view, emitting
+jets of green vapour and working its way round the pit, excavating and
+embanking in a methodical and discriminating manner. This it was which
+had caused the regular beating noise, and the rhythmic shocks that had
+kept our ruinous refuge quivering. It piped and whistled as it worked.
+So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at
+all.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+THE DAYS OF IMPRISONMENT.
+
+
+The arrival of a second fighting-machine drove us from our peephole
+into the scullery, for we feared that from his elevation the Martian
+might see down upon us behind our barrier. At a later date we began to
+feel less in danger of their eyes, for to an eye in the dazzle of the
+sunlight outside our refuge must have been blank blackness, but at
+first the slightest suggestion of approach drove us into the scullery
+in heart-throbbing retreat. Yet terrible as was the danger we incurred,
+the attraction of peeping was for both of us irresistible. And I recall
+now with a sort of wonder that, in spite of the infinite danger in
+which we were between starvation and a still more terrible death, we
+could yet struggle bitterly for that horrible privilege of sight. We
+would race across the kitchen in a grotesque way between eagerness and
+the dread of making a noise, and strike each other, and thrust and
+kick, within a few inches of exposure.
+
+The fact is that we had absolutely incompatible dispositions and habits
+of thought and action, and our danger and isolation only accentuated
+the incompatibility. At Halliford I had already come to hate the
+curate’s trick of helpless exclamation, his stupid rigidity of mind.
+His endless muttering monologue vitiated every effort I made to think
+out a line of action, and drove me at times, thus pent up and
+intensified, almost to the verge of craziness. He was as lacking in
+restraint as a silly woman. He would weep for hours together, and I
+verily believe that to the very end this spoiled child of life thought
+his weak tears in some way efficacious. And I would sit in the darkness
+unable to keep my mind off him by reason of his importunities. He ate
+more than I did, and it was in vain I pointed out that our only chance
+of life was to stop in the house until the Martians had done with their
+pit, that in that long patience a time might presently come when we
+should need food. He ate and drank impulsively in heavy meals at long
+intervals. He slept little.
+
+As the days wore on, his utter carelessness of any consideration so
+intensified our distress and danger that I had, much as I loathed doing
+it, to resort to threats, and at last to blows. That brought him to
+reason for a time. But he was one of those weak creatures, void of
+pride, timorous, anæmic, hateful souls, full of shifty cunning, who
+face neither God nor man, who face not even themselves.
+
+It is disagreeable for me to recall and write these things, but I set
+them down that my story may lack nothing. Those who have escaped the
+dark and terrible aspects of life will find my brutality, my flash of
+rage in our final tragedy, easy enough to blame; for they know what is
+wrong as well as any, but not what is possible to tortured men. But
+those who have been under the shadow, who have gone down at last to
+elemental things, will have a wider charity.
+
+And while within we fought out our dark, dim contest of whispers,
+snatched food and drink, and gripping hands and blows, without, in the
+pitiless sunlight of that terrible June, was the strange wonder, the
+unfamiliar routine of the Martians in the pit. Let me return to those
+first new experiences of mine. After a long time I ventured back to the
+peephole, to find that the new-comers had been reinforced by the
+occupants of no fewer than three of the fighting-machines. These last
+had brought with them certain fresh appliances that stood in an orderly
+manner about the cylinder. The second handling-machine was now
+completed, and was busied in serving one of the novel contrivances the
+big machine had brought. This was a body resembling a milk can in its
+general form, above which oscillated a pear-shaped receptacle, and from
+which a stream of white powder flowed into a circular basin below.
+
+The oscillatory motion was imparted to this by one tentacle of the
+handling-machine. With two spatulate hands the handling-machine was
+digging out and flinging masses of clay into the pear-shaped receptacle
+above, while with another arm it periodically opened a door and removed
+rusty and blackened clinkers from the middle part of the machine.
+Another steely tentacle directed the powder from the basin along a
+ribbed channel towards some receiver that was hidden from me by the
+mound of bluish dust. From this unseen receiver a little thread of
+green smoke rose vertically into the quiet air. As I looked, the
+handling-machine, with a faint and musical clinking, extended,
+telescopic fashion, a tentacle that had been a moment before a mere
+blunt projection, until its end was hidden behind the mound of clay. In
+another second it had lifted a bar of white aluminium into sight,
+untarnished as yet, and shining dazzlingly, and deposited it in a
+growing stack of bars that stood at the side of the pit. Between sunset
+and starlight this dexterous machine must have made more than a hundred
+such bars out of the crude clay, and the mound of bluish dust rose
+steadily until it topped the side of the pit.
+
+The contrast between the swift and complex movements of these
+contrivances and the inert panting clumsiness of their masters was
+acute, and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that these latter
+were indeed the living of the two things.
+
+The curate had possession of the slit when the first men were brought
+to the pit. I was sitting below, huddled up, listening with all my
+ears. He made a sudden movement backward, and I, fearful that we were
+observed, crouched in a spasm of terror. He came sliding down the
+rubbish and crept beside me in the darkness, inarticulate,
+gesticulating, and for a moment I shared his panic. His gesture
+suggested a resignation of the slit, and after a little while my
+curiosity gave me courage, and I rose up, stepped across him, and
+clambered up to it. At first I could see no reason for his frantic
+behaviour. The twilight had now come, the stars were little and faint,
+but the pit was illuminated by the flickering green fire that came from
+the aluminium-making. The whole picture was a flickering scheme of
+green gleams and shifting rusty black shadows, strangely trying to the
+eyes. Over and through it all went the bats, heeding it not at all. The
+sprawling Martians were no longer to be seen, the mound of blue-green
+powder had risen to cover them from sight, and a fighting-machine, with
+its legs contracted, crumpled, and abbreviated, stood across the corner
+of the pit. And then, amid the clangour of the machinery, came a
+drifting suspicion of human voices, that I entertained at first only to
+dismiss.
+
+I crouched, watching this fighting-machine closely, satisfying myself
+now for the first time that the hood did indeed contain a Martian. As
+the green flames lifted I could see the oily gleam of his integument
+and the brightness of his eyes. And suddenly I heard a yell, and saw a
+long tentacle reaching over the shoulder of the machine to the little
+cage that hunched upon its back. Then something—something struggling
+violently—was lifted high against the sky, a black, vague enigma
+against the starlight; and as this black object came down again, I saw
+by the green brightness that it was a man. For an instant he was
+clearly visible. He was a stout, ruddy, middle-aged man, well dressed;
+three days before, he must have been walking the world, a man of
+considerable consequence. I could see his staring eyes and gleams of
+light on his studs and watch chain. He vanished behind the mound, and
+for a moment there was silence. And then began a shrieking and a
+sustained and cheerful hooting from the Martians.
+
+I slid down the rubbish, struggled to my feet, clapped my hands over my
+ears, and bolted into the scullery. The curate, who had been crouching
+silently with his arms over his head, looked up as I passed, cried out
+quite loudly at my desertion of him, and came running after me.
+
+That night, as we lurked in the scullery, balanced between our horror
+and the terrible fascination this peeping had, although I felt an
+urgent need of action I tried in vain to conceive some plan of escape;
+but afterwards, during the second day, I was able to consider our
+position with great clearness. The curate, I found, was quite incapable
+of discussion; this new and culminating atrocity had robbed him of all
+vestiges of reason or forethought. Practically he had already sunk to
+the level of an animal. But as the saying goes, I gripped myself with
+both hands. It grew upon my mind, once I could face the facts, that
+terrible as our position was, there was as yet no justification for
+absolute despair. Our chief chance lay in the possibility of the
+Martians making the pit nothing more than a temporary encampment. Or
+even if they kept it permanently, they might not consider it necessary
+to guard it, and a chance of escape might be afforded us. I also
+weighed very carefully the possibility of our digging a way out in a
+direction away from the pit, but the chances of our emerging within
+sight of some sentinel fighting-machine seemed at first too great. And
+I should have had to do all the digging myself. The curate would
+certainly have failed me.
+
+It was on the third day, if my memory serves me right, that I saw the
+lad killed. It was the only occasion on which I actually saw the
+Martians feed. After that experience I avoided the hole in the wall for
+the better part of a day. I went into the scullery, removed the door,
+and spent some hours digging with my hatchet as silently as possible;
+but when I had made a hole about a couple of feet deep the loose earth
+collapsed noisily, and I did not dare continue. I lost heart, and lay
+down on the scullery floor for a long time, having no spirit even to
+move. And after that I abandoned altogether the idea of escaping by
+excavation.
+
+It says much for the impression the Martians had made upon me that at
+first I entertained little or no hope of our escape being brought about
+by their overthrow through any human effort. But on the fourth or fifth
+night I heard a sound like heavy guns.
+
+It was very late in the night, and the moon was shining brightly. The
+Martians had taken away the excavating-machine, and, save for a
+fighting-machine that stood in the remoter bank of the pit and a
+handling-machine that was buried out of my sight in a corner of the pit
+immediately beneath my peephole, the place was deserted by them. Except
+for the pale glow from the handling-machine and the bars and patches of
+white moonlight the pit was in darkness, and, except for the clinking
+of the handling-machine, quite still. That night was a beautiful
+serenity; save for one planet, the moon seemed to have the sky to
+herself. I heard a dog howling, and that familiar sound it was that
+made me listen. Then I heard quite distinctly a booming exactly like
+the sound of great guns. Six distinct reports I counted, and after a
+long interval six again. And that was all.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+THE DEATH OF THE CURATE.
+
+
+It was on the sixth day of our imprisonment that I peeped for the last
+time, and presently found myself alone. Instead of keeping close to me
+and trying to oust me from the slit, the curate had gone back into the
+scullery. I was struck by a sudden thought. I went back quickly and
+quietly into the scullery. In the darkness I heard the curate drinking.
+I snatched in the darkness, and my fingers caught a bottle of burgundy.
+
+For a few minutes there was a tussle. The bottle struck the floor and
+broke, and I desisted and rose. We stood panting and threatening each
+other. In the end I planted myself between him and the food, and told
+him of my determination to begin a discipline. I divided the food in
+the pantry, into rations to last us ten days. I would not let him eat
+any more that day. In the afternoon he made a feeble effort to get at
+the food. I had been dozing, but in an instant I was awake. All day and
+all night we sat face to face, I weary but resolute, and he weeping and
+complaining of his immediate hunger. It was, I know, a night and a day,
+but to me it seemed—it seems now—an interminable length of time.
+
+And so our widened incompatibility ended at last in open conflict. For
+two vast days we struggled in undertones and wrestling contests. There
+were times when I beat and kicked him madly, times when I cajoled and
+persuaded him, and once I tried to bribe him with the last bottle of
+burgundy, for there was a rain-water pump from which I could get water.
+But neither force nor kindness availed; he was indeed beyond reason. He
+would neither desist from his attacks on the food nor from his noisy
+babbling to himself. The rudimentary precautions to keep our
+imprisonment endurable he would not observe. Slowly I began to realise
+the complete overthrow of his intelligence, to perceive that my sole
+companion in this close and sickly darkness was a man insane.
+
+From certain vague memories I am inclined to think my own mind wandered
+at times. I had strange and hideous dreams whenever I slept. It sounds
+paradoxical, but I am inclined to think that the weakness and insanity
+of the curate warned me, braced me, and kept me a sane man.
+
+On the eighth day he began to talk aloud instead of whispering, and
+nothing I could do would moderate his speech.
+
+“It is just, O God!” he would say, over and over again. “It is just. On
+me and mine be the punishment laid. We have sinned, we have fallen
+short. There was poverty, sorrow; the poor were trodden in the dust,
+and I held my peace. I preached acceptable folly—my God, what
+folly!—when I should have stood up, though I died for it, and called
+upon them to repent—repent! . . . Oppressors of the poor and needy . .
+. ! The wine press of God!”
+
+Then he would suddenly revert to the matter of the food I withheld from
+him, praying, begging, weeping, at last threatening. He began to raise
+his voice—I prayed him not to. He perceived a hold on me—he threatened
+he would shout and bring the Martians upon us. For a time that scared
+me; but any concession would have shortened our chance of escape beyond
+estimating. I defied him, although I felt no assurance that he might
+not do this thing. But that day, at any rate, he did not. He talked
+with his voice rising slowly, through the greater part of the eighth
+and ninth days—threats, entreaties, mingled with a torrent of half-sane
+and always frothy repentance for his vacant sham of God’s service, such
+as made me pity him. Then he slept awhile, and began again with renewed
+strength, so loudly that I must needs make him desist.
+
+“Be still!” I implored.
+
+He rose to his knees, for he had been sitting in the darkness near the
+copper.
+
+“I have been still too long,” he said, in a tone that must have reached
+the pit, “and now I must bear my witness. Woe unto this unfaithful
+city! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! To the inhabitants of the earth by
+reason of the other voices of the trumpet——”
+
+“Shut up!” I said, rising to my feet, and in a terror lest the Martians
+should hear us. “For God’s sake——”
+
+“Nay,” shouted the curate, at the top of his voice, standing likewise
+and extending his arms. “Speak! The word of the Lord is upon me!”
+
+In three strides he was at the door leading into the kitchen.
+
+“I must bear my witness! I go! It has already been too long delayed.”
+
+I put out my hand and felt the meat chopper hanging to the wall. In a
+flash I was after him. I was fierce with fear. Before he was halfway
+across the kitchen I had overtaken him. With one last touch of humanity
+I turned the blade back and struck him with the butt. He went headlong
+forward and lay stretched on the ground. I stumbled over him and stood
+panting. He lay still.
+
+Suddenly I heard a noise without, the run and smash of slipping
+plaster, and the triangular aperture in the wall was darkened. I looked
+up and saw the lower surface of a handling-machine coming slowly across
+the hole. One of its gripping limbs curled amid the debris; another
+limb appeared, feeling its way over the fallen beams. I stood
+petrified, staring. Then I saw through a sort of glass plate near the
+edge of the body the face, as we may call it, and the large dark eyes
+of a Martian, peering, and then a long metallic snake of tentacle came
+feeling slowly through the hole.
+
+I turned by an effort, stumbled over the curate, and stopped at the
+scullery door. The tentacle was now some way, two yards or more, in the
+room, and twisting and turning, with queer sudden movements, this way
+and that. For a while I stood fascinated by that slow, fitful advance.
+Then, with a faint, hoarse cry, I forced myself across the scullery. I
+trembled violently; I could scarcely stand upright. I opened the door
+of the coal cellar, and stood there in the darkness staring at the
+faintly lit doorway into the kitchen, and listening. Had the Martian
+seen me? What was it doing now?
+
+Something was moving to and fro there, very quietly; every now and then
+it tapped against the wall, or started on its movements with a faint
+metallic ringing, like the movements of keys on a split-ring. Then a
+heavy body—I knew too well what—was dragged across the floor of the
+kitchen towards the opening. Irresistibly attracted, I crept to the
+door and peeped into the kitchen. In the triangle of bright outer
+sunlight I saw the Martian, in its Briareus of a handling-machine,
+scrutinizing the curate’s head. I thought at once that it would infer
+my presence from the mark of the blow I had given him.
+
+I crept back to the coal cellar, shut the door, and began to cover
+myself up as much as I could, and as noiselessly as possible in the
+darkness, among the firewood and coal therein. Every now and then I
+paused, rigid, to hear if the Martian had thrust its tentacles through
+the opening again.
+
+Then the faint metallic jingle returned. I traced it slowly feeling
+over the kitchen. Presently I heard it nearer—in the scullery, as I
+judged. I thought that its length might be insufficient to reach me. I
+prayed copiously. It passed, scraping faintly across the cellar door.
+An age of almost intolerable suspense intervened; then I heard it
+fumbling at the latch! It had found the door! The Martians understood
+doors!
+
+It worried at the catch for a minute, perhaps, and then the door
+opened.
+
+In the darkness I could just see the thing—like an elephant’s trunk
+more than anything else—waving towards me and touching and examining
+the wall, coals, wood and ceiling. It was like a black worm swaying its
+blind head to and fro.
+
+Once, even, it touched the heel of my boot. I was on the verge of
+screaming; I bit my hand. For a time the tentacle was silent. I could
+have fancied it had been withdrawn. Presently, with an abrupt click, it
+gripped something—I thought it had me!—and seemed to go out of the
+cellar again. For a minute I was not sure. Apparently it had taken a
+lump of coal to examine.
+
+I seized the opportunity of slightly shifting my position, which had
+become cramped, and then listened. I whispered passionate prayers for
+safety.
+
+Then I heard the slow, deliberate sound creeping towards me again.
+Slowly, slowly it drew near, scratching against the walls and tapping
+the furniture.
+
+While I was still doubtful, it rapped smartly against the cellar door
+and closed it. I heard it go into the pantry, and the biscuit-tins
+rattled and a bottle smashed, and then came a heavy bump against the
+cellar door. Then silence that passed into an infinity of suspense.
+
+Had it gone?
+
+At last I decided that it had.
+
+It came into the scullery no more; but I lay all the tenth day in the
+close darkness, buried among coals and firewood, not daring even to
+crawl out for the drink for which I craved. It was the eleventh day
+before I ventured so far from my security.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+THE STILLNESS.
+
+
+My first act before I went into the pantry was to fasten the door
+between the kitchen and the scullery. But the pantry was empty; every
+scrap of food had gone. Apparently, the Martian had taken it all on the
+previous day. At that discovery I despaired for the first time. I took
+no food, or no drink either, on the eleventh or the twelfth day.
+
+At first my mouth and throat were parched, and my strength ebbed
+sensibly. I sat about in the darkness of the scullery, in a state of
+despondent wretchedness. My mind ran on eating. I thought I had become
+deaf, for the noises of movement I had been accustomed to hear from the
+pit had ceased absolutely. I did not feel strong enough to crawl
+noiselessly to the peephole, or I would have gone there.
+
+On the twelfth day my throat was so painful that, taking the chance of
+alarming the Martians, I attacked the creaking rain-water pump that
+stood by the sink, and got a couple of glassfuls of blackened and
+tainted rain water. I was greatly refreshed by this, and emboldened by
+the fact that no enquiring tentacle followed the noise of my pumping.
+
+During these days, in a rambling, inconclusive way, I thought much of
+the curate and of the manner of his death.
+
+On the thirteenth day I drank some more water, and dozed and thought
+disjointedly of eating and of vague impossible plans of escape.
+Whenever I dozed I dreamt of horrible phantasms, of the death of the
+curate, or of sumptuous dinners; but, asleep or awake, I felt a keen
+pain that urged me to drink again and again. The light that came into
+the scullery was no longer grey, but red. To my disordered imagination
+it seemed the colour of blood.
+
+On the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen, and I was surprised to
+find that the fronds of the red weed had grown right across the hole in
+the wall, turning the half-light of the place into a crimson-coloured
+obscurity.
+
+It was early on the fifteenth day that I heard a curious, familiar
+sequence of sounds in the kitchen, and, listening, identified it as the
+snuffing and scratching of a dog. Going into the kitchen, I saw a dog’s
+nose peering in through a break among the ruddy fronds. This greatly
+surprised me. At the scent of me he barked shortly.
+
+I thought if I could induce him to come into the place quietly I should
+be able, perhaps, to kill and eat him; and in any case, it would be
+advisable to kill him, lest his actions attracted the attention of the
+Martians.
+
+I crept forward, saying “Good dog!” very softly; but he suddenly
+withdrew his head and disappeared.
+
+I listened—I was not deaf—but certainly the pit was still. I heard a
+sound like the flutter of a bird’s wings, and a hoarse croaking, but
+that was all.
+
+For a long while I lay close to the peephole, but not daring to move
+aside the red plants that obscured it. Once or twice I heard a faint
+pitter-patter like the feet of the dog going hither and thither on the
+sand far below me, and there were more birdlike sounds, but that was
+all. At length, encouraged by the silence, I looked out.
+
+Except in the corner, where a multitude of crows hopped and fought over
+the skeletons of the dead the Martians had consumed, there was not a
+living thing in the pit.
+
+I stared about me, scarcely believing my eyes. All the machinery had
+gone. Save for the big mound of greyish-blue powder in one corner,
+certain bars of aluminium in another, the black birds, and the
+skeletons of the killed, the place was merely an empty circular pit in
+the sand.
+
+Slowly I thrust myself out through the red weed, and stood upon the
+mound of rubble. I could see in any direction save behind me, to the
+north, and neither Martians nor sign of Martians were to be seen. The
+pit dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along the rubbish
+afforded a practicable slope to the summit of the ruins. My chance of
+escape had come. I began to tremble.
+
+I hesitated for some time, and then, in a gust of desperate resolution,
+and with a heart that throbbed violently, I scrambled to the top of the
+mound in which I had been buried so long.
+
+I looked about again. To the northward, too, no Martian was visible.
+
+When I had last seen this part of Sheen in the daylight it had been a
+straggling street of comfortable white and red houses, interspersed
+with abundant shady trees. Now I stood on a mound of smashed brickwork,
+clay, and gravel, over which spread a multitude of red cactus-shaped
+plants, knee-high, without a solitary terrestrial growth to dispute
+their footing. The trees near me were dead and brown, but further a
+network of red thread scaled the still living stems.
+
+The neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been burned;
+their walls stood, sometimes to the second story, with smashed windows
+and shattered doors. The red weed grew tumultuously in their roofless
+rooms. Below me was the great pit, with the crows struggling for its
+refuse. A number of other birds hopped about among the ruins. Far away
+I saw a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along a wall, but traces of men
+there were none.
+
+The day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement, dazzlingly
+bright, the sky a glowing blue. A gentle breeze kept the red weed that
+covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying. And oh! the
+sweetness of the air!
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+THE WORK OF FIFTEEN DAYS.
+
+
+For some time I stood tottering on the mound regardless of my safety.
+Within that noisome den from which I had emerged I had thought with a
+narrow intensity only of our immediate security. I had not realised
+what had been happening to the world, had not anticipated this
+startling vision of unfamiliar things. I had expected to see Sheen in
+ruins—I found about me the landscape, weird and lurid, of another
+planet.
+
+For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of men,
+yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I felt as
+a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly confronted by
+the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. I
+felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my
+mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a
+persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the
+animals, under the Martian heel. With us it would be as with them, to
+lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire of man had passed
+away.
+
+But so soon as this strangeness had been realised it passed, and my
+dominant motive became the hunger of my long and dismal fast. In the
+direction away from the pit I saw, beyond a red-covered wall, a patch
+of garden ground unburied. This gave me a hint, and I went knee-deep,
+and sometimes neck-deep, in the red weed. The density of the weed gave
+me a reassuring sense of hiding. The wall was some six feet high, and
+when I attempted to clamber it I found I could not lift my feet to the
+crest. So I went along by the side of it, and came to a corner and a
+rockwork that enabled me to get to the top, and tumble into the garden
+I coveted. Here I found some young onions, a couple of gladiolus bulbs,
+and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which I secured, and,
+scrambling over a ruined wall, went on my way through scarlet and
+crimson trees towards Kew—it was like walking through an avenue of
+gigantic blood drops—possessed with two ideas: to get more food, and to
+limp, as soon and as far as my strength permitted, out of this accursed
+unearthly region of the pit.
+
+Some way farther, in a grassy place, was a group of mushrooms which
+also I devoured, and then I came upon a brown sheet of flowing shallow
+water, where meadows used to be. These fragments of nourishment served
+only to whet my hunger. At first I was surprised at this flood in a
+hot, dry summer, but afterwards I discovered that it was caused by the
+tropical exuberance of the red weed. Directly this extraordinary growth
+encountered water it straightway became gigantic and of unparalleled
+fecundity. Its seeds were simply poured down into the water of the Wey
+and Thames, and its swiftly growing and Titanic water fronds speedily
+choked both those rivers.
+
+At Putney, as I afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a tangle
+of this weed, and at Richmond, too, the Thames water poured in a broad
+and shallow stream across the meadows of Hampton and Twickenham. As the
+water spread the weed followed them, until the ruined villas of the
+Thames valley were for a time lost in this red swamp, whose margin I
+explored, and much of the desolation the Martians had caused was
+concealed.
+
+In the end the red weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had spread. A
+cankering disease, due, it is believed, to the action of certain
+bacteria, presently seized upon it. Now by the action of natural
+selection, all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting power
+against bacterial diseases—they never succumb without a severe
+struggle, but the red weed rotted like a thing already dead. The fronds
+became bleached, and then shrivelled and brittle. They broke off at the
+least touch, and the waters that had stimulated their early growth
+carried their last vestiges out to sea.
+
+My first act on coming to this water was, of course, to slake my
+thirst. I drank a great deal of it and, moved by an impulse, gnawed
+some fronds of red weed; but they were watery, and had a sickly,
+metallic taste. I found the water was sufficiently shallow for me to
+wade securely, although the red weed impeded my feet a little; but the
+flood evidently got deeper towards the river, and I turned back to
+Mortlake. I managed to make out the road by means of occasional ruins
+of its villas and fences and lamps, and so presently I got out of this
+spate and made my way to the hill going up towards Roehampton and came
+out on Putney Common.
+
+Here the scenery changed from the strange and unfamiliar to the
+wreckage of the familiar: patches of ground exhibited the devastation
+of a cyclone, and in a few score yards I would come upon perfectly
+undisturbed spaces, houses with their blinds trimly drawn and doors
+closed, as if they had been left for a day by the owners, or as if
+their inhabitants slept within. The red weed was less abundant; the
+tall trees along the lane were free from the red creeper. I hunted for
+food among the trees, finding nothing, and I also raided a couple of
+silent houses, but they had already been broken into and ransacked. I
+rested for the remainder of the daylight in a shrubbery, being, in my
+enfeebled condition, too fatigued to push on.
+
+All this time I saw no human beings, and no signs of the Martians. I
+encountered a couple of hungry-looking dogs, but both hurried
+circuitously away from the advances I made them. Near Roehampton I had
+seen two human skeletons—not bodies, but skeletons, picked clean—and in
+the wood by me I found the crushed and scattered bones of several cats
+and rabbits and the skull of a sheep. But though I gnawed parts of
+these in my mouth, there was nothing to be got from them.
+
+After sunset I struggled on along the road towards Putney, where I
+think the Heat-Ray must have been used for some reason. And in the
+garden beyond Roehampton I got a quantity of immature potatoes,
+sufficient to stay my hunger. From this garden one looked down upon
+Putney and the river. The aspect of the place in the dusk was
+singularly desolate: blackened trees, blackened, desolate ruins, and
+down the hill the sheets of the flooded river, red-tinged with the
+weed. And over all—silence. It filled me with indescribable terror to
+think how swiftly that desolating change had come.
+
+For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence, and
+that I stood there alone, the last man left alive. Hard by the top of
+Putney Hill I came upon another skeleton, with the arms dislocated and
+removed several yards from the rest of the body. As I proceeded I
+became more and more convinced that the extermination of mankind was,
+save for such stragglers as myself, already accomplished in this part
+of the world. The Martians, I thought, had gone on and left the country
+desolated, seeking food elsewhere. Perhaps even now they were
+destroying Berlin or Paris, or it might be they had gone northward.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL.
+
+
+I spent that night in the inn that stands at the top of Putney Hill,
+sleeping in a made bed for the first time since my flight to
+Leatherhead. I will not tell the needless trouble I had breaking into
+that house—afterwards I found the front door was on the latch—nor how I
+ransacked every room for food, until just on the verge of despair, in
+what seemed to me to be a servant’s bedroom, I found a rat-gnawed crust
+and two tins of pineapple. The place had been already searched and
+emptied. In the bar I afterwards found some biscuits and sandwiches
+that had been overlooked. The latter I could not eat, they were too
+rotten, but the former not only stayed my hunger, but filled my
+pockets. I lit no lamps, fearing some Martian might come beating that
+part of London for food in the night. Before I went to bed I had an
+interval of restlessness, and prowled from window to window, peering
+out for some sign of these monsters. I slept little. As I lay in bed I
+found myself thinking consecutively—a thing I do not remember to have
+done since my last argument with the curate. During all the intervening
+time my mental condition had been a hurrying succession of vague
+emotional states or a sort of stupid receptivity. But in the night my
+brain, reinforced, I suppose, by the food I had eaten, grew clear
+again, and I thought.
+
+Three things struggled for possession of my mind: the killing of the
+curate, the whereabouts of the Martians, and the possible fate of my
+wife. The former gave me no sensation of horror or remorse to recall; I
+saw it simply as a thing done, a memory infinitely disagreeable but
+quite without the quality of remorse. I saw myself then as I see myself
+now, driven step by step towards that hasty blow, the creature of a
+sequence of accidents leading inevitably to that. I felt no
+condemnation; yet the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted me. In the
+silence of the night, with that sense of the nearness of God that
+sometimes comes into the stillness and the darkness, I stood my trial,
+my only trial, for that moment of wrath and fear. I retraced every step
+of our conversation from the moment when I had found him crouching
+beside me, heedless of my thirst, and pointing to the fire and smoke
+that streamed up from the ruins of Weybridge. We had been incapable of
+co-operation—grim chance had taken no heed of that. Had I foreseen, I
+should have left him at Halliford. But I did not foresee; and crime is
+to foresee and do. And I set this down as I have set all this story
+down, as it was. There were no witnesses—all these things I might have
+concealed. But I set it down, and the reader must form his judgment as
+he will.
+
+And when, by an effort, I had set aside that picture of a prostrate
+body, I faced the problem of the Martians and the fate of my wife. For
+the former I had no data; I could imagine a hundred things, and so,
+unhappily, I could for the latter. And suddenly that night became
+terrible. I found myself sitting up in bed, staring at the dark. I
+found myself praying that the Heat-Ray might have suddenly and
+painlessly struck her out of being. Since the night of my return from
+Leatherhead I had not prayed. I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers,
+had prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now I
+prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the
+darkness of God. Strange night! Strangest in this, that so soon as dawn
+had come, I, who had talked with God, crept out of the house like a rat
+leaving its hiding place—a creature scarcely larger, an inferior
+animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be
+hunted and killed. Perhaps they also prayed confidently to God. Surely,
+if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity—pity for
+those witless souls that suffer our dominion.
+
+The morning was bright and fine, and the eastern sky glowed pink, and
+was fretted with little golden clouds. In the road that runs from the
+top of Putney Hill to Wimbledon was a number of poor vestiges of the
+panic torrent that must have poured Londonward on the Sunday night
+after the fighting began. There was a little two-wheeled cart inscribed
+with the name of Thomas Lobb, Greengrocer, New Malden, with a smashed
+wheel and an abandoned tin trunk; there was a straw hat trampled into
+the now hardened mud, and at the top of West Hill a lot of
+blood-stained glass about the overturned water trough. My movements
+were languid, my plans of the vaguest. I had an idea of going to
+Leatherhead, though I knew that there I had the poorest chance of
+finding my wife. Certainly, unless death had overtaken them suddenly,
+my cousins and she would have fled thence; but it seemed to me I might
+find or learn there whither the Surrey people had fled. I knew I wanted
+to find my wife, that my heart ached for her and the world of men, but
+I had no clear idea how the finding might be done. I was also sharply
+aware now of my intense loneliness. From the corner I went, under cover
+of a thicket of trees and bushes, to the edge of Wimbledon Common,
+stretching wide and far.
+
+That dark expanse was lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom; there
+was no red weed to be seen, and as I prowled, hesitating, on the verge
+of the open, the sun rose, flooding it all with light and vitality. I
+came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place among the
+trees. I stopped to look at them, drawing a lesson from their stout
+resolve to live. And presently, turning suddenly, with an odd feeling
+of being watched, I beheld something crouching amid a clump of bushes.
+I stood regarding this. I made a step towards it, and it rose up and
+became a man armed with a cutlass. I approached him slowly. He stood
+silent and motionless, regarding me.
+
+As I drew nearer I perceived he was dressed in clothes as dusty and
+filthy as my own; he looked, indeed, as though he had been dragged
+through a culvert. Nearer, I distinguished the green slime of ditches
+mixing with the pale drab of dried clay and shiny, coaly patches. His
+black hair fell over his eyes, and his face was dark and dirty and
+sunken, so that at first I did not recognise him. There was a red cut
+across the lower part of his face.
+
+“Stop!” he cried, when I was within ten yards of him, and I stopped.
+His voice was hoarse. “Where do you come from?” he said.
+
+I thought, surveying him.
+
+“I come from Mortlake,” I said. “I was buried near the pit the Martians
+made about their cylinder. I have worked my way out and escaped.”
+
+“There is no food about here,” he said. “This is my country. All this
+hill down to the river, and back to Clapham, and up to the edge of the
+common. There is only food for one. Which way are you going?”
+
+I answered slowly.
+
+“I don’t know,” I said. “I have been buried in the ruins of a house
+thirteen or fourteen days. I don’t know what has happened.”
+
+He looked at me doubtfully, then started, and looked with a changed
+expression.
+
+“I’ve no wish to stop about here,” said I. “I think I shall go to
+Leatherhead, for my wife was there.”
+
+He shot out a pointing finger.
+
+“It is you,” said he; “the man from Woking. And you weren’t killed at
+Weybridge?”
+
+I recognised him at the same moment.
+
+“You are the artilleryman who came into my garden.”
+
+“Good luck!” he said. “We are lucky ones! Fancy _you_!” He put out a
+hand, and I took it. “I crawled up a drain,” he said. “But they didn’t
+kill everyone. And after they went away I got off towards Walton across
+the fields. But—— It’s not sixteen days altogether—and your hair is
+grey.” He looked over his shoulder suddenly. “Only a rook,” he said.
+“One gets to know that birds have shadows these days. This is a bit
+open. Let us crawl under those bushes and talk.”
+
+“Have you seen any Martians?” I said. “Since I crawled out——”
+
+“They’ve gone away across London,” he said. “I guess they’ve got a
+bigger camp there. Of a night, all over there, Hampstead way, the sky
+is alive with their lights. It’s like a great city, and in the glare
+you can just see them moving. By daylight you can’t. But nearer—I
+haven’t seen them—” (he counted on his fingers) “five days. Then I saw
+a couple across Hammersmith way carrying something big. And the night
+before last”—he stopped and spoke impressively—“it was just a matter of
+lights, but it was something up in the air. I believe they’ve built a
+flying-machine, and are learning to fly.”
+
+I stopped, on hands and knees, for we had come to the bushes.
+
+“Fly!”
+
+“Yes,” he said, “fly.”
+
+I went on into a little bower, and sat down.
+
+“It is all over with humanity,” I said. “If they can do that they will
+simply go round the world.”
+
+He nodded.
+
+“They will. But—— It will relieve things over here a bit. And
+besides——” He looked at me. “Aren’t you satisfied it _is_ up with
+humanity? I am. We’re down; we’re beat.”
+
+I stared. Strange as it may seem, I had not arrived at this fact—a fact
+perfectly obvious so soon as he spoke. I had still held a vague hope;
+rather, I had kept a lifelong habit of mind. He repeated his words,
+“We’re beat.” They carried absolute conviction.
+
+“It’s all over,” he said. “They’ve lost _one_—just _one_. And they’ve
+made their footing good and crippled the greatest power in the world.
+They’ve walked over us. The death of that one at Weybridge was an
+accident. And these are only pioneers. They kept on coming. These green
+stars—I’ve seen none these five or six days, but I’ve no doubt they’re
+falling somewhere every night. Nothing’s to be done. We’re under! We’re
+beat!”
+
+I made him no answer. I sat staring before me, trying in vain to devise
+some countervailing thought.
+
+“This isn’t a war,” said the artilleryman. “It never was a war, any
+more than there’s war between man and ants.”
+
+Suddenly I recalled the night in the observatory.
+
+“After the tenth shot they fired no more—at least, until the first
+cylinder came.”
+
+“How do you know?” said the artilleryman. I explained. He thought.
+“Something wrong with the gun,” he said. “But what if there is? They’ll
+get it right again. And even if there’s a delay, how can it alter the
+end? It’s just men and ants. There’s the ants builds their cities, live
+their lives, have wars, revolutions, until the men want them out of the
+way, and then they go out of the way. That’s what we are now—just ants.
+Only——”
+
+“Yes,” I said.
+
+“We’re eatable ants.”
+
+We sat looking at each other.
+
+“And what will they do with us?” I said.
+
+“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” he said; “that’s what I’ve been
+thinking. After Weybridge I went south—thinking. I saw what was up.
+Most of the people were hard at it squealing and exciting themselves.
+But I’m not so fond of squealing. I’ve been in sight of death once or
+twice; I’m not an ornamental soldier, and at the best and worst,
+death—it’s just death. And it’s the man that keeps on thinking comes
+through. I saw everyone tracking away south. Says I, ‘Food won’t last
+this way,’ and I turned right back. I went for the Martians like a
+sparrow goes for man. All round”—he waved a hand to the
+horizon—“they’re starving in heaps, bolting, treading on each other. .
+. .”
+
+He saw my face, and halted awkwardly.
+
+“No doubt lots who had money have gone away to France,” he said. He
+seemed to hesitate whether to apologise, met my eyes, and went on:
+“There’s food all about here. Canned things in shops; wines, spirits,
+mineral waters; and the water mains and drains are empty. Well, I was
+telling you what I was thinking. ‘Here’s intelligent things,’ I said,
+‘and it seems they want us for food. First, they’ll smash us up—ships,
+machines, guns, cities, all the order and organisation. All that will
+go. If we were the size of ants we might pull through. But we’re not.
+It’s all too bulky to stop. That’s the first certainty.’ Eh?”
+
+I assented.
+
+“It is; I’ve thought it out. Very well, then—next; at present we’re
+caught as we’re wanted. A Martian has only to go a few miles to get a
+crowd on the run. And I saw one, one day, out by Wandsworth, picking
+houses to pieces and routing among the wreckage. But they won’t keep on
+doing that. So soon as they’ve settled all our guns and ships, and
+smashed our railways, and done all the things they are doing over
+there, they will begin catching us systematic, picking the best and
+storing us in cages and things. That’s what they will start doing in a
+bit. Lord! They haven’t begun on us yet. Don’t you see that?”
+
+“Not begun!” I exclaimed.
+
+“Not begun. All that’s happened so far is through our not having the
+sense to keep quiet—worrying them with guns and such foolery. And
+losing our heads, and rushing off in crowds to where there wasn’t any
+more safety than where we were. They don’t want to bother us yet.
+They’re making their things—making all the things they couldn’t bring
+with them, getting things ready for the rest of their people. Very
+likely that’s why the cylinders have stopped for a bit, for fear of
+hitting those who are here. And instead of our rushing about blind, on
+the howl, or getting dynamite on the chance of busting them up, we’ve
+got to fix ourselves up according to the new state of affairs. That’s
+how I figure it out. It isn’t quite according to what a man wants for
+his species, but it’s about what the facts point to. And that’s the
+principle I acted upon. Cities, nations, civilisation, progress—it’s
+all over. That game’s up. We’re beat.”
+
+“But if that is so, what is there to live for?”
+
+The artilleryman looked at me for a moment.
+
+“There won’t be any more blessed concerts for a million years or so;
+there won’t be any Royal Academy of Arts, and no nice little feeds at
+restaurants. If it’s amusement you’re after, I reckon the game is up.
+If you’ve got any drawing-room manners or a dislike to eating peas with
+a knife or dropping aitches, you’d better chuck ’em away. They ain’t no
+further use.”
+
+“You mean——”
+
+“I mean that men like me are going on living—for the sake of the breed.
+I tell you, I’m grim set on living. And if I’m not mistaken, you’ll
+show what insides _you’ve_ got, too, before long. We aren’t going to be
+exterminated. And I don’t mean to be caught either, and tamed and
+fattened and bred like a thundering ox. Ugh! Fancy those brown
+creepers!”
+
+“You don’t mean to say——”
+
+“I do. I’m going on, under their feet. I’ve got it planned; I’ve
+thought it out. We men are beat. We don’t know enough. We’ve got to
+learn before we’ve got a chance. And we’ve got to live and keep
+independent while we learn. See! That’s what has to be done.”
+
+I stared, astonished, and stirred profoundly by the man’s resolution.
+
+“Great God!” cried I. “But you are a man indeed!” And suddenly I
+gripped his hand.
+
+“Eh!” he said, with his eyes shining. “I’ve thought it out, eh?”
+
+“Go on,” I said.
+
+“Well, those who mean to escape their catching must get ready. I’m
+getting ready. Mind you, it isn’t all of us that are made for wild
+beasts; and that’s what it’s got to be. That’s why I watched you. I had
+my doubts. You’re slender. I didn’t know that it was you, you see, or
+just how you’d been buried. All these—the sort of people that lived in
+these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down
+_that_ way—they’d be no good. They haven’t any spirit in them—no proud
+dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn’t one or the other—Lord!
+What is he but funk and precautions? They just used to skedaddle off to
+work—I’ve seen hundreds of ’em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild
+and shining to catch their little season-ticket train, for fear they’d
+get dismissed if they didn’t; working at businesses they were afraid to
+take the trouble to understand; skedaddling back for fear they wouldn’t
+be in time for dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the
+back streets, and sleeping with the wives they married, not because
+they wanted them, but because they had a bit of money that would make
+for safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the world.
+Lives insured and a bit invested for fear of accidents. And on
+Sundays—fear of the hereafter. As if hell was built for rabbits! Well,
+the Martians will just be a godsend to these. Nice roomy cages,
+fattening food, careful breeding, no worry. After a week or so chasing
+about the fields and lands on empty stomachs, they’ll come and be
+caught cheerful. They’ll be quite glad after a bit. They’ll wonder what
+people did before there were Martians to take care of them. And the bar
+loafers, and mashers, and singers—I can imagine them. I can imagine
+them,” he said, with a sort of sombre gratification. “There’ll be any
+amount of sentiment and religion loose among them. There’s hundreds of
+things I saw with my eyes that I’ve only begun to see clearly these
+last few days. There’s lots will take things as they are—fat and
+stupid; and lots will be worried by a sort of feeling that it’s all
+wrong, and that they ought to be doing something. Now whenever things
+are so that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the
+weak, and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always
+make for a sort of do-nothing religion, very pious and superior, and
+submit to persecution and the will of the Lord. Very likely you’ve seen
+the same thing. It’s energy in a gale of funk, and turned clean inside
+out. These cages will be full of psalms and hymns and piety. And those
+of a less simple sort will work in a bit of—what is it?—eroticism.”
+
+He paused.
+
+“Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train them
+to do tricks—who knows?—get sentimental over the pet boy who grew up
+and had to be killed. And some, maybe, they will train to hunt us.”
+
+“No,” I cried, “that’s impossible! No human being——”
+
+“What’s the good of going on with such lies?” said the artilleryman.
+“There’s men who’d do it cheerful. What nonsense to pretend there
+isn’t!”
+
+And I succumbed to his conviction.
+
+“If they come after me,” he said; “Lord, if they come after me!” and
+subsided into a grim meditation.
+
+I sat contemplating these things. I could find nothing to bring against
+this man’s reasoning. In the days before the invasion no one would have
+questioned my intellectual superiority to his—I, a professed and
+recognised writer on philosophical themes, and he, a common soldier;
+and yet he had already formulated a situation that I had scarcely
+realised.
+
+“What are you doing?” I said presently. “What plans have you made?”
+
+He hesitated.
+
+“Well, it’s like this,” he said. “What have we to do? We have to invent
+a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be sufficiently secure
+to bring the children up. Yes—wait a bit, and I’ll make it clearer what
+I think ought to be done. The tame ones will go like all tame beasts;
+in a few generations they’ll be big, beautiful, rich-blooded,
+stupid—rubbish! The risk is that we who keep wild will go
+savage—degenerate into a sort of big, savage rat. . . . You see, how I
+mean to live is underground. I’ve been thinking about the drains. Of
+course those who don’t know drains think horrible things; but under
+this London are miles and miles—hundreds of miles—and a few days rain
+and London empty will leave them sweet and clean. The main drains are
+big enough and airy enough for anyone. Then there’s cellars, vaults,
+stores, from which bolting passages may be made to the drains. And the
+railway tunnels and subways. Eh? You begin to see? And we form a
+band—able-bodied, clean-minded men. We’re not going to pick up any
+rubbish that drifts in. Weaklings go out again.”
+
+“As you meant me to go?”
+
+“Well—I parleyed, didn’t I?”
+
+“We won’t quarrel about that. Go on.”
+
+“Those who stop obey orders. Able-bodied, clean-minded women we want
+also—mothers and teachers. No lackadaisical ladies—no blasted rolling
+eyes. We can’t have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the
+useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought to die.
+They ought to be willing to die. It’s a sort of disloyalty, after all,
+to live and taint the race. And they can’t be happy. Moreover, dying’s
+none so dreadful; it’s the funking makes it bad. And in all those
+places we shall gather. Our district will be London. And we may even be
+able to keep a watch, and run about in the open when the Martians keep
+away. Play cricket, perhaps. That’s how we shall save the race. Eh?
+It’s a possible thing? But saving the race is nothing in itself. As I
+say, that’s only being rats. It’s saving our knowledge and adding to it
+is the thing. There men like you come in. There’s books, there’s
+models. We must make great safe places down deep, and get all the books
+we can; not novels and poetry swipes, but ideas, science books. That’s
+where men like you come in. We must go to the British Museum and pick
+all those books through. Especially we must keep up our science—learn
+more. We must watch these Martians. Some of us must go as spies. When
+it’s all working, perhaps I will. Get caught, I mean. And the great
+thing is, we must leave the Martians alone. We mustn’t even steal. If
+we get in their way, we clear out. We must show them we mean no harm.
+Yes, I know. But they’re intelligent things, and they won’t hunt us
+down if they have all they want, and think we’re just harmless vermin.”
+
+The artilleryman paused and laid a brown hand upon my arm.
+
+“After all, it may not be so much we may have to learn before—Just
+imagine this: four or five of their fighting machines suddenly starting
+off—Heat-Rays right and left, and not a Martian in ’em. Not a Martian
+in ’em, but men—men who have learned the way how. It may be in my time,
+even—those men. Fancy having one of them lovely things, with its
+Heat-Ray wide and free! Fancy having it in control! What would it
+matter if you smashed to smithereens at the end of the run, after a
+bust like that? I reckon the Martians’ll open their beautiful eyes!
+Can’t you see them, man? Can’t you see them hurrying, hurrying—puffing
+and blowing and hooting to their other mechanical affairs? Something
+out of gear in every case. And swish, bang, rattle, swish! Just as they
+are fumbling over it, _swish_ comes the Heat-Ray, and, behold! man has
+come back to his own.”
+
+For a while the imaginative daring of the artilleryman, and the tone of
+assurance and courage he assumed, completely dominated my mind. I
+believed unhesitatingly both in his forecast of human destiny and in
+the practicability of his astonishing scheme, and the reader who thinks
+me susceptible and foolish must contrast his position, reading steadily
+with all his thoughts about his subject, and mine, crouching fearfully
+in the bushes and listening, distracted by apprehension. We talked in
+this manner through the early morning time, and later crept out of the
+bushes, and, after scanning the sky for Martians, hurried precipitately
+to the house on Putney Hill where he had made his lair. It was the coal
+cellar of the place, and when I saw the work he had spent a week
+upon—it was a burrow scarcely ten yards long, which he designed to
+reach to the main drain on Putney Hill—I had my first inkling of the
+gulf between his dreams and his powers. Such a hole I could have dug in
+a day. But I believed in him sufficiently to work with him all that
+morning until past midday at his digging. We had a garden barrow and
+shot the earth we removed against the kitchen range. We refreshed
+ourselves with a tin of mock-turtle soup and wine from the neighbouring
+pantry. I found a curious relief from the aching strangeness of the
+world in this steady labour. As we worked, I turned his project over in
+my mind, and presently objections and doubts began to arise; but I
+worked there all the morning, so glad was I to find myself with a
+purpose again. After working an hour I began to speculate on the
+distance one had to go before the cloaca was reached, the chances we
+had of missing it altogether. My immediate trouble was why we should
+dig this long tunnel, when it was possible to get into the drain at
+once down one of the manholes, and work back to the house. It seemed to
+me, too, that the house was inconveniently chosen, and required a
+needless length of tunnel. And just as I was beginning to face these
+things, the artilleryman stopped digging, and looked at me.
+
+“We’re working well,” he said. He put down his spade. “Let us knock off
+a bit” he said. “I think it’s time we reconnoitred from the roof of the
+house.”
+
+I was for going on, and after a little hesitation he resumed his spade;
+and then suddenly I was struck by a thought. I stopped, and so did he
+at once.
+
+“Why were you walking about the common,” I said, “instead of being
+here?”
+
+“Taking the air,” he said. “I was coming back. It’s safer by night.”
+
+“But the work?”
+
+“Oh, one can’t always work,” he said, and in a flash I saw the man
+plain. He hesitated, holding his spade. “We ought to reconnoitre now,”
+he said, “because if any come near they may hear the spades and drop
+upon us unawares.”
+
+I was no longer disposed to object. We went together to the roof and
+stood on a ladder peeping out of the roof door. No Martians were to be
+seen, and we ventured out on the tiles, and slipped down under shelter
+of the parapet.
+
+From this position a shrubbery hid the greater portion of Putney, but
+we could see the river below, a bubbly mass of red weed, and the low
+parts of Lambeth flooded and red. The red creeper swarmed up the trees
+about the old palace, and their branches stretched gaunt and dead, and
+set with shrivelled leaves, from amid its clusters. It was strange how
+entirely dependent both these things were upon flowing water for their
+propagation. About us neither had gained a footing; laburnums, pink
+mays, snowballs, and trees of arbor-vitae, rose out of laurels and
+hydrangeas, green and brilliant into the sunlight. Beyond Kensington
+dense smoke was rising, and that and a blue haze hid the northward
+hills.
+
+The artilleryman began to tell me of the sort of people who still
+remained in London.
+
+“One night last week,” he said, “some fools got the electric light in
+order, and there was all Regent Street and the Circus ablaze, crowded
+with painted and ragged drunkards, men and women, dancing and shouting
+till dawn. A man who was there told me. And as the day came they became
+aware of a fighting-machine standing near by the Langham and looking
+down at them. Heaven knows how long he had been there. It must have
+given some of them a nasty turn. He came down the road towards them,
+and picked up nearly a hundred too drunk or frightened to run away.”
+
+Grotesque gleam of a time no history will ever fully describe!
+
+From that, in answer to my questions, he came round to his grandiose
+plans again. He grew enthusiastic. He talked so eloquently of the
+possibility of capturing a fighting-machine that I more than half
+believed in him again. But now that I was beginning to understand
+something of his quality, I could divine the stress he laid on doing
+nothing precipitately. And I noted that now there was no question that
+he personally was to capture and fight the great machine.
+
+After a time we went down to the cellar. Neither of us seemed disposed
+to resume digging, and when he suggested a meal, I was nothing loath.
+He became suddenly very generous, and when we had eaten he went away
+and returned with some excellent cigars. We lit these, and his optimism
+glowed. He was inclined to regard my coming as a great occasion.
+
+“There’s some champagne in the cellar,” he said.
+
+“We can dig better on this Thames-side burgundy,” said I.
+
+“No,” said he; “I am host today. Champagne! Great God! We’ve a heavy
+enough task before us! Let us take a rest and gather strength while we
+may. Look at these blistered hands!”
+
+And pursuant to this idea of a holiday, he insisted upon playing cards
+after we had eaten. He taught me euchre, and after dividing London
+between us, I taking the northern side and he the southern, we played
+for parish points. Grotesque and foolish as this will seem to the sober
+reader, it is absolutely true, and what is more remarkable, I found the
+card game and several others we played extremely interesting.
+
+Strange mind of man! that, with our species upon the edge of
+extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before
+us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the
+chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the “joker” with vivid
+delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three tough
+chess games. When dark came we decided to take the risk, and lit a
+lamp.
+
+After an interminable string of games, we supped, and the artilleryman
+finished the champagne. We went on smoking the cigars. He was no longer
+the energetic regenerator of his species I had encountered in the
+morning. He was still optimistic, but it was a less kinetic, a more
+thoughtful optimism. I remember he wound up with my health, proposed in
+a speech of small variety and considerable intermittence. I took a
+cigar, and went upstairs to look at the lights of which he had spoken
+that blazed so greenly along the Highgate hills.
+
+At first I stared unintelligently across the London valley. The
+northern hills were shrouded in darkness; the fires near Kensington
+glowed redly, and now and then an orange-red tongue of flame flashed up
+and vanished in the deep blue night. All the rest of London was black.
+Then, nearer, I perceived a strange light, a pale, violet-purple
+fluorescent glow, quivering under the night breeze. For a space I could
+not understand it, and then I knew that it must be the red weed from
+which this faint irradiation proceeded. With that realisation my
+dormant sense of wonder, my sense of the proportion of things, awoke
+again. I glanced from that to Mars, red and clear, glowing high in the
+west, and then gazed long and earnestly at the darkness of Hampstead
+and Highgate.
+
+I remained a very long time upon the roof, wondering at the grotesque
+changes of the day. I recalled my mental states from the midnight
+prayer to the foolish card-playing. I had a violent revulsion of
+feeling. I remember I flung away the cigar with a certain wasteful
+symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring exaggeration. I seemed a
+traitor to my wife and to my kind; I was filled with remorse. I
+resolved to leave this strange undisciplined dreamer of great things to
+his drink and gluttony, and to go on into London. There, it seemed to
+me, I had the best chance of learning what the Martians and my
+fellowmen were doing. I was still upon the roof when the late moon
+rose.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+DEAD LONDON.
+
+
+After I had parted from the artilleryman, I went down the hill, and by
+the High Street across the bridge to Fulham. The red weed was
+tumultuous at that time, and nearly choked the bridge roadway; but its
+fronds were already whitened in patches by the spreading disease that
+presently removed it so swiftly.
+
+At the corner of the lane that runs to Putney Bridge station I found a
+man lying. He was as black as a sweep with the black dust, alive, but
+helplessly and speechlessly drunk. I could get nothing from him but
+curses and furious lunges at my head. I think I should have stayed by
+him but for the brutal expression of his face.
+
+There was black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards, and it
+grew thicker in Fulham. The streets were horribly quiet. I got
+food—sour, hard, and mouldy, but quite eatable—in a baker’s shop here.
+Some way towards Walham Green the streets became clear of powder, and I
+passed a white terrace of houses on fire; the noise of the burning was
+an absolute relief. Going on towards Brompton, the streets were quiet
+again.
+
+Here I came once more upon the black powder in the streets and upon
+dead bodies. I saw altogether about a dozen in the length of the Fulham
+Road. They had been dead many days, so that I hurried quickly past
+them. The black powder covered them over, and softened their outlines.
+One or two had been disturbed by dogs.
+
+Where there was no black powder, it was curiously like a Sunday in the
+City, with the closed shops, the houses locked up and the blinds drawn,
+the desertion, and the stillness. In some places plunderers had been at
+work, but rarely at other than the provision and wine shops. A
+jeweller’s window had been broken open in one place, but apparently the
+thief had been disturbed, and a number of gold chains and a watch lay
+scattered on the pavement. I did not trouble to touch them. Farther on
+was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep; the hand that hung over
+her knee was gashed and bled down her rusty brown dress, and a smashed
+magnum of champagne formed a pool across the pavement. She seemed
+asleep, but she was dead.
+
+The farther I penetrated into London, the profounder grew the
+stillness. But it was not so much the stillness of death—it was the
+stillness of suspense, of expectation. At any time the destruction that
+had already singed the northwestern borders of the metropolis, and had
+annihilated Ealing and Kilburn, might strike among these houses and
+leave them smoking ruins. It was a city condemned and derelict. . . .
+
+In South Kensington the streets were clear of dead and of black powder.
+It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling. It crept
+almost imperceptibly upon my senses. It was a sobbing alternation of
+two notes, “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” keeping on perpetually. When I
+passed streets that ran northward it grew in volume, and houses and
+buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off again. It came in a full tide
+down Exhibition Road. I stopped, staring towards Kensington Gardens,
+wondering at this strange, remote wailing. It was as if that mighty
+desert of houses had found a voice for its fear and solitude.
+
+“Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” wailed that superhuman note—great waves of
+sound sweeping down the broad, sunlit roadway, between the tall
+buildings on each side. I turned northwards, marvelling, towards the
+iron gates of Hyde Park. I had half a mind to break into the Natural
+History Museum and find my way up to the summits of the towers, in
+order to see across the park. But I decided to keep to the ground,
+where quick hiding was possible, and so went on up the Exhibition Road.
+All the large mansions on each side of the road were empty and still,
+and my footsteps echoed against the sides of the houses. At the top,
+near the park gate, I came upon a strange sight—a bus overturned, and
+the skeleton of a horse picked clean. I puzzled over this for a time,
+and then went on to the bridge over the Serpentine. The voice grew
+stronger and stronger, though I could see nothing above the housetops
+on the north side of the park, save a haze of smoke to the northwest.
+
+“Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” cried the voice, coming, as it seemed to me,
+from the district about Regent’s Park. The desolating cry worked upon
+my mind. The mood that had sustained me passed. The wailing took
+possession of me. I found I was intensely weary, footsore, and now
+again hungry and thirsty.
+
+It was already past noon. Why was I wandering alone in this city of the
+dead? Why was I alone when all London was lying in state, and in its
+black shroud? I felt intolerably lonely. My mind ran on old friends
+that I had forgotten for years. I thought of the poisons in the
+chemists’ shops, of the liquors the wine merchants stored; I recalled
+the two sodden creatures of despair, who so far as I knew, shared the
+city with myself. . . .
+
+I came into Oxford Street by the Marble Arch, and here again were black
+powder and several bodies, and an evil, ominous smell from the gratings
+of the cellars of some of the houses. I grew very thirsty after the
+heat of my long walk. With infinite trouble I managed to break into a
+public-house and get food and drink. I was weary after eating, and went
+into the parlour behind the bar, and slept on a black horsehair sofa I
+found there.
+
+I awoke to find that dismal howling still in my ears, “Ulla, ulla,
+ulla, ulla.” It was now dusk, and after I had routed out some biscuits
+and a cheese in the bar—there was a meat safe, but it contained nothing
+but maggots—I wandered on through the silent residential squares to
+Baker Street—Portman Square is the only one I can name—and so came out
+at last upon Regent’s Park. And as I emerged from the top of Baker
+Street, I saw far away over the trees in the clearness of the sunset
+the hood of the Martian giant from which this howling proceeded. I was
+not terrified. I came upon him as if it were a matter of course. I
+watched him for some time, but he did not move. He appeared to be
+standing and yelling, for no reason that I could discover.
+
+I tried to formulate a plan of action. That perpetual sound of “Ulla,
+ulla, ulla, ulla,” confused my mind. Perhaps I was too tired to be very
+fearful. Certainly I was more curious to know the reason of this
+monotonous crying than afraid. I turned back away from the park and
+struck into Park Road, intending to skirt the park, went along under
+the shelter of the terraces, and got a view of this stationary, howling
+Martian from the direction of St. John’s Wood. A couple of hundred
+yards out of Baker Street I heard a yelping chorus, and saw, first a
+dog with a piece of putrescent red meat in his jaws coming headlong
+towards me, and then a pack of starving mongrels in pursuit of him. He
+made a wide curve to avoid me, as though he feared I might prove a
+fresh competitor. As the yelping died away down the silent road, the
+wailing sound of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” reasserted itself.
+
+I came upon the wrecked handling-machine halfway to St. John’s Wood
+station. At first I thought a house had fallen across the road. It was
+only as I clambered among the ruins that I saw, with a start, this
+mechanical Samson lying, with its tentacles bent and smashed and
+twisted, among the ruins it had made. The forepart was shattered. It
+seemed as if it had driven blindly straight at the house, and had been
+overwhelmed in its overthrow. It seemed to me then that this might have
+happened by a handling-machine escaping from the guidance of its
+Martian. I could not clamber among the ruins to see it, and the
+twilight was now so far advanced that the blood with which its seat was
+smeared, and the gnawed gristle of the Martian that the dogs had left,
+were invisible to me.
+
+Wondering still more at all that I had seen, I pushed on towards
+Primrose Hill. Far away, through a gap in the trees, I saw a second
+Martian, as motionless as the first, standing in the park towards the
+Zoological Gardens, and silent. A little beyond the ruins about the
+smashed handling-machine I came upon the red weed again, and found the
+Regent’s Canal, a spongy mass of dark-red vegetation.
+
+As I crossed the bridge, the sound of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” ceased.
+It was, as it were, cut off. The silence came like a thunderclap.
+
+The dusky houses about me stood faint and tall and dim; the trees
+towards the park were growing black. All about me the red weed
+clambered among the ruins, writhing to get above me in the dimness.
+Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me. But while
+that voice sounded the solitude, the desolation, had been endurable; by
+virtue of it London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life about
+me had upheld me. Then suddenly a change, the passing of something—I
+knew not what—and then a stillness that could be felt. Nothing but this
+gaunt quiet.
+
+London about me gazed at me spectrally. The windows in the white houses
+were like the eye sockets of skulls. About me my imagination found a
+thousand noiseless enemies moving. Terror seized me, a horror of my
+temerity. In front of me the road became pitchy black as though it was
+tarred, and I saw a contorted shape lying across the pathway. I could
+not bring myself to go on. I turned down St. John’s Wood Road, and ran
+headlong from this unendurable stillness towards Kilburn. I hid from
+the night and the silence, until long after midnight, in a cabmen’s
+shelter in Harrow Road. But before the dawn my courage returned, and
+while the stars were still in the sky I turned once more towards
+Regent’s Park. I missed my way among the streets, and presently saw
+down a long avenue, in the half-light of the early dawn, the curve of
+Primrose Hill. On the summit, towering up to the fading stars, was a
+third Martian, erect and motionless like the others.
+
+An insane resolve possessed me. I would die and end it. And I would
+save myself even the trouble of killing myself. I marched on recklessly
+towards this Titan, and then, as I drew nearer and the light grew, I
+saw that a multitude of black birds was circling and clustering about
+the hood. At that my heart gave a bound, and I began running along the
+road.
+
+I hurried through the red weed that choked St. Edmund’s Terrace (I
+waded breast-high across a torrent of water that was rushing down from
+the waterworks towards the Albert Road), and emerged upon the grass
+before the rising of the sun. Great mounds had been heaped about the
+crest of the hill, making a huge redoubt of it—it was the final and
+largest place the Martians had made—and from behind these heaps there
+rose a thin smoke against the sky. Against the sky line an eager dog
+ran and disappeared. The thought that had flashed into my mind grew
+real, grew credible. I felt no fear, only a wild, trembling exultation,
+as I ran up the hill towards the motionless monster. Out of the hood
+hung lank shreds of brown, at which the hungry birds pecked and tore.
+
+In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon
+its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space
+it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of
+material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in
+their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines,
+and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the
+Martians—_dead_!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against
+which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being
+slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest
+things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.
+
+For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen
+had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease
+have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things—taken toll of
+our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this
+natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no
+germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many—those that cause
+putrefaction in dead matter, for instance—our living frames are
+altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly
+these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic
+allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they
+were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and
+fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought
+his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would
+still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For
+neither do men live nor die in vain.
+
+Here and there they were scattered, nearly fifty altogether, in that
+great gulf they had made, overtaken by a death that must have seemed to
+them as incomprehensible as any death could be. To me also at that time
+this death was incomprehensible. All I knew was that these things that
+had been alive and so terrible to men were dead. For a moment I
+believed that the destruction of Sennacherib had been repeated, that
+God had repented, that the Angel of Death had slain them in the night.
+
+I stood staring into the pit, and my heart lightened gloriously, even
+as the rising sun struck the world to fire about me with his rays. The
+pit was still in darkness; the mighty engines, so great and wonderful
+in their power and complexity, so unearthly in their tortuous forms,
+rose weird and vague and strange out of the shadows towards the light.
+A multitude of dogs, I could hear, fought over the bodies that lay
+darkly in the depth of the pit, far below me. Across the pit on its
+farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay the great flying-machine
+with which they had been experimenting upon our denser atmosphere when
+decay and death arrested them. Death had come not a day too soon. At
+the sound of a cawing overhead I looked up at the huge fighting-machine
+that would fight no more for ever, at the tattered red shreds of flesh
+that dripped down upon the overturned seats on the summit of Primrose
+Hill.
+
+I turned and looked down the slope of the hill to where, enhaloed now
+in birds, stood those other two Martians that I had seen overnight,
+just as death had overtaken them. The one had died, even as it had been
+crying to its companions; perhaps it was the last to die, and its voice
+had gone on perpetually until the force of its machinery was exhausted.
+They glittered now, harmless tripod towers of shining metal, in the
+brightness of the rising sun.
+
+All about the pit, and saved as by a miracle from everlasting
+destruction, stretched the great Mother of Cities. Those who have only
+seen London veiled in her sombre robes of smoke can scarcely imagine
+the naked clearness and beauty of the silent wilderness of houses.
+
+Eastward, over the blackened ruins of the Albert Terrace and the
+splintered spire of the church, the sun blazed dazzling in a clear sky,
+and here and there some facet in the great wilderness of roofs caught
+the light and glared with a white intensity.
+
+Northward were Kilburn and Hampsted, blue and crowded with houses;
+westward the great city was dimmed; and southward, beyond the Martians,
+the green waves of Regent’s Park, the Langham Hotel, the dome of the
+Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and the giant mansions of the
+Brompton Road came out clear and little in the sunrise, the jagged
+ruins of Westminster rising hazily beyond. Far away and blue were the
+Surrey hills, and the towers of the Crystal Palace glittered like two
+silver rods. The dome of St. Paul’s was dark against the sunrise, and
+injured, I saw for the first time, by a huge gaping cavity on its
+western side.
+
+And as I looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and
+churches, silent and abandoned; as I thought of the multitudinous hopes
+and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to build this
+human reef, and of the swift and ruthless destruction that had hung
+over it all; when I realised that the shadow had been rolled back, and
+that men might still live in the streets, and this dear vast dead city
+of mine be once more alive and powerful, I felt a wave of emotion that
+was near akin to tears.
+
+The torment was over. Even that day the healing would begin. The
+survivors of the people scattered over the country—leaderless, lawless,
+foodless, like sheep without a shepherd—the thousands who had fled by
+sea, would begin to return; the pulse of life, growing stronger and
+stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and pour across the
+vacant squares. Whatever destruction was done, the hand of the
+destroyer was stayed. All the gaunt wrecks, the blackened skeletons of
+houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill, would
+presently be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and ringing with
+the tapping of their trowels. At the thought I extended my hands
+towards the sky and began thanking God. In a year, thought I—in a year.
+. . .
+
+With overwhelming force came the thought of myself, of my wife, and the
+old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased for ever.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+WRECKAGE.
+
+
+And now comes the strangest thing in my story. Yet, perhaps, it is not
+altogether strange. I remember, clearly and coldly and vividly, all
+that I did that day until the time that I stood weeping and praising
+God upon the summit of Primrose Hill. And then I forget.
+
+Of the next three days I know nothing. I have learned since that, so
+far from my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow,
+several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the
+previous night. One man—the first—had gone to St. Martin’s-le-Grand,
+and, while I sheltered in the cabmen’s hut, had contrived to telegraph
+to Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world; a
+thousand cities, chilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly flashed
+into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh,
+Manchester, Birmingham, at the time when I stood upon the verge of the
+pit. Already men, weeping with joy, as I have heard, shouting and
+staying their work to shake hands and shout, were making up trains,
+even as near as Crewe, to descend upon London. The church bells that
+had ceased a fortnight since suddenly caught the news, until all
+England was bell-ringing. Men on cycles, lean-faced, unkempt, scorched
+along every country lane shouting of unhoped deliverance, shouting to
+gaunt, staring figures of despair. And for the food! Across the
+Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic, corn, bread, and
+meat were tearing to our relief. All the shipping in the world seemed
+going Londonward in those days. But of all this I have no memory. I
+drifted—a demented man. I found myself in a house of kindly people, who
+had found me on the third day wandering, weeping, and raving through
+the streets of St. John’s Wood. They have told me since that I was
+singing some insane doggerel about “The Last Man Left Alive! Hurrah!
+The Last Man Left Alive!” Troubled as they were with their own affairs,
+these people, whose name, much as I would like to express my gratitude
+to them, I may not even give here, nevertheless cumbered themselves
+with me, sheltered me, and protected me from myself. Apparently they
+had learned something of my story from me during the days of my lapse.
+
+Very gently, when my mind was assured again, did they break to me what
+they had learned of the fate of Leatherhead. Two days after I was
+imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a Martian.
+He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any
+provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the mere wantonness
+of power.
+
+I was a lonely man, and they were very kind to me. I was a lonely man
+and a sad one, and they bore with me. I remained with them four days
+after my recovery. All that time I felt a vague, a growing craving to
+look once more on whatever remained of the little life that seemed so
+happy and bright in my past. It was a mere hopeless desire to feast
+upon my misery. They dissuaded me. They did all they could to divert me
+from this morbidity. But at last I could resist the impulse no longer,
+and, promising faithfully to return to them, and parting, as I will
+confess, from these four-day friends with tears, I went out again into
+the streets that had lately been so dark and strange and empty.
+
+Already they were busy with returning people; in places even there were
+shops open, and I saw a drinking fountain running water.
+
+I remember how mockingly bright the day seemed as I went back on my
+melancholy pilgrimage to the little house at Woking, how busy the
+streets and vivid the moving life about me. So many people were abroad
+everywhere, busied in a thousand activities, that it seemed incredible
+that any great proportion of the population could have been slain. But
+then I noticed how yellow were the skins of the people I met, how
+shaggy the hair of the men, how large and bright their eyes, and that
+every other man still wore his dirty rags. Their faces seemed all with
+one of two expressions—a leaping exultation and energy or a grim
+resolution. Save for the expression of the faces, London seemed a city
+of tramps. The vestries were indiscriminately distributing bread sent
+us by the French government. The ribs of the few horses showed
+dismally. Haggard special constables with white badges stood at the
+corners of every street. I saw little of the mischief wrought by the
+Martians until I reached Wellington Street, and there I saw the red
+weed clambering over the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge.
+
+At the corner of the bridge, too, I saw one of the common contrasts of
+that grotesque time—a sheet of paper flaunting against a thicket of the
+red weed, transfixed by a stick that kept it in place. It was the
+placard of the first newspaper to resume publication—the _Daily Mail_.
+I bought a copy for a blackened shilling I found in my pocket. Most of
+it was in blank, but the solitary compositor who did the thing had
+amused himself by making a grotesque scheme of advertisement stereo on
+the back page. The matter he printed was emotional; the news
+organisation had not as yet found its way back. I learned nothing fresh
+except that already in one week the examination of the Martian
+mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other things, the
+article assured me what I did not believe at the time, that the “Secret
+of Flying,” was discovered. At Waterloo I found the free trains that
+were taking people to their homes. The first rush was already over.
+There were few people in the train, and I was in no mood for casual
+conversation. I got a compartment to myself, and sat with folded arms,
+looking greyly at the sunlit devastation that flowed past the windows.
+And just outside the terminus the train jolted over temporary rails,
+and on either side of the railway the houses were blackened ruins. To
+Clapham Junction the face of London was grimy with powder of the Black
+Smoke, in spite of two days of thunderstorms and rain, and at Clapham
+Junction the line had been wrecked again; there were hundreds of
+out-of-work clerks and shopmen working side by side with the customary
+navvies, and we were jolted over a hasty relaying.
+
+All down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt and
+unfamiliar; Wimbledon particularly had suffered. Walton, by virtue of
+its unburned pine woods, seemed the least hurt of any place along the
+line. The Wandle, the Mole, every little stream, was a heaped mass of
+red weed, in appearance between butcher’s meat and pickled cabbage. The
+Surrey pine woods were too dry, however, for the festoons of the red
+climber. Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line, in certain nursery
+grounds, were the heaped masses of earth about the sixth cylinder. A
+number of people were standing about it, and some sappers were busy in
+the midst of it. Over it flaunted a Union Jack, flapping cheerfully in
+the morning breeze. The nursery grounds were everywhere crimson with
+the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut with purple shadows, and
+very painful to the eye. One’s gaze went with infinite relief from the
+scorched greys and sullen reds of the foreground to the blue-green
+softness of the eastward hills.
+
+The line on the London side of Woking station was still undergoing
+repair, so I descended at Byfleet station and took the road to Maybury,
+past the place where I and the artilleryman had talked to the hussars,
+and on by the spot where the Martian had appeared to me in the
+thunderstorm. Here, moved by curiosity, I turned aside to find, among a
+tangle of red fronds, the warped and broken dog cart with the whitened
+bones of the horse scattered and gnawed. For a time I stood regarding
+these vestiges. . . .
+
+Then I returned through the pine wood, neck-high with red weed here and
+there, to find the landlord of the Spotted Dog had already found
+burial, and so came home past the College Arms. A man standing at an
+open cottage door greeted me by name as I passed.
+
+I looked at my house with a quick flash of hope that faded immediately.
+The door had been forced; it was unfast and was opening slowly as I
+approached.
+
+It slammed again. The curtains of my study fluttered out of the open
+window from which I and the artilleryman had watched the dawn. No one
+had closed it since. The smashed bushes were just as I had left them
+nearly four weeks ago. I stumbled into the hall, and the house felt
+empty. The stair carpet was ruffled and discoloured where I had
+crouched, soaked to the skin from the thunderstorm the night of the
+catastrophe. Our muddy footsteps I saw still went up the stairs.
+
+I followed them to my study, and found lying on my writing-table still,
+with the selenite paper weight upon it, the sheet of work I had left on
+the afternoon of the opening of the cylinder. For a space I stood
+reading over my abandoned arguments. It was a paper on the probable
+development of Moral Ideas with the development of the civilising
+process; and the last sentence was the opening of a prophecy: “In about
+two hundred years,” I had written, “we may expect——” The sentence ended
+abruptly. I remembered my inability to fix my mind that morning,
+scarcely a month gone by, and how I had broken off to get my _Daily
+Chronicle_ from the newsboy. I remembered how I went down to the garden
+gate as he came along, and how I had listened to his odd story of “Men
+from Mars.”
+
+I came down and went into the dining room. There were the mutton and
+the bread, both far gone now in decay, and a beer bottle overturned,
+just as I and the artilleryman had left them. My home was desolate. I
+perceived the folly of the faint hope I had cherished so long. And then
+a strange thing occurred. “It is no use,” said a voice. “The house is
+deserted. No one has been here these ten days. Do not stay here to
+torment yourself. No one escaped but you.”
+
+I was startled. Had I spoken my thought aloud? I turned, and the French
+window was open behind me. I made a step to it, and stood looking out.
+
+And there, amazed and afraid, even as I stood amazed and afraid, were
+my cousin and my wife—my wife white and tearless. She gave a faint cry.
+
+“I came,” she said. “I knew—knew——”
+
+She put her hand to her throat—swayed. I made a step forward, and
+caught her in my arms.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+THE EPILOGUE.
+
+
+I cannot but regret, now that I am concluding my story, how little I am
+able to contribute to the discussion of the many debatable questions
+which are still unsettled. In one respect I shall certainly provoke
+criticism. My particular province is speculative philosophy. My
+knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a book or two, but
+it seems to me that Carver’s suggestions as to the reason of the rapid
+death of the Martians is so probable as to be regarded almost as a
+proven conclusion. I have assumed that in the body of my narrative.
+
+At any rate, in all the bodies of the Martians that were examined after
+the war, no bacteria except those already known as terrestrial species
+were found. That they did not bury any of their dead, and the reckless
+slaughter they perpetrated, point also to an entire ignorance of the
+putrefactive process. But probable as this seems, it is by no means a
+proven conclusion.
+
+Neither is the composition of the Black Smoke known, which the Martians
+used with such deadly effect, and the generator of the Heat-Rays
+remains a puzzle. The terrible disasters at the Ealing and South
+Kensington laboratories have disinclined analysts for further
+investigations upon the latter. Spectrum analysis of the black powder
+points unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element with a
+brilliant group of three lines in the green, and it is possible that it
+combines with argon to form a compound which acts at once with deadly
+effect upon some constituent in the blood. But such unproven
+speculations will scarcely be of interest to the general reader, to
+whom this story is addressed. None of the brown scum that drifted down
+the Thames after the destruction of Shepperton was examined at the
+time, and now none is forthcoming.
+
+The results of an anatomical examination of the Martians, so far as the
+prowling dogs had left such an examination possible, I have already
+given. But everyone is familiar with the magnificent and almost
+complete specimen in spirits at the Natural History Museum, and the
+countless drawings that have been made from it; and beyond that the
+interest of their physiology and structure is purely scientific.
+
+A question of graver and universal interest is the possibility of
+another attack from the Martians. I do not think that nearly enough
+attention is being given to this aspect of the matter. At present the
+planet Mars is in conjunction, but with every return to opposition I,
+for one, anticipate a renewal of their adventure. In any case, we
+should be prepared. It seems to me that it should be possible to define
+the position of the gun from which the shots are discharged, to keep a
+sustained watch upon this part of the planet, and to anticipate the
+arrival of the next attack.
+
+In that case the cylinder might be destroyed with dynamite or artillery
+before it was sufficiently cool for the Martians to emerge, or they
+might be butchered by means of guns so soon as the screw opened. It
+seems to me that they have lost a vast advantage in the failure of
+their first surprise. Possibly they see it in the same light.
+
+Lessing has advanced excellent reasons for supposing that the Martians
+have actually succeeded in effecting a landing on the planet Venus.
+Seven months ago now, Venus and Mars were in alignment with the sun;
+that is to say, Mars was in opposition from the point of view of an
+observer on Venus. Subsequently a peculiar luminous and sinuous marking
+appeared on the unillumined half of the inner planet, and almost
+simultaneously a faint dark mark of a similar sinuous character was
+detected upon a photograph of the Martian disk. One needs to see the
+drawings of these appearances in order to appreciate fully their
+remarkable resemblance in character.
+
+At any rate, whether we expect another invasion or not, our views of
+the human future must be greatly modified by these events. We have
+learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a
+secure abiding place for Man; we can never anticipate the unseen good
+or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space. It may be that in
+the larger design of the universe this invasion from Mars is not
+without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene
+confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of
+decadence, the gifts to human science it has brought are enormous, and
+it has done much to promote the conception of the commonweal of
+mankind. It may be that across the immensity of space the Martians have
+watched the fate of these pioneers of theirs and learned their lesson,
+and that on the planet Venus they have found a securer settlement. Be
+that as it may, for many years yet there will certainly be no
+relaxation of the eager scrutiny of the Martian disk, and those fiery
+darts of the sky, the shooting stars, will bring with them as they fall
+an unavoidable apprehension to all the sons of men.
+
+The broadening of men’s views that has resulted can scarcely be
+exaggerated. Before the cylinder fell there was a general persuasion
+that through all the deep of space no life existed beyond the petty
+surface of our minute sphere. Now we see further. If the Martians can
+reach Venus, there is no reason to suppose that the thing is impossible
+for men, and when the slow cooling of the sun makes this earth
+uninhabitable, as at last it must do, it may be that the thread of life
+that has begun here will have streamed out and caught our sister planet
+within its toils.
+
+Dim and wonderful is the vision I have conjured up in my mind of life
+spreading slowly from this little seed bed of the solar system
+throughout the inanimate vastness of sidereal space. But that is a
+remote dream. It may be, on the other hand, that the destruction of the
+Martians is only a reprieve. To them, and not to us, perhaps, is the
+future ordained.
+
+I must confess the stress and danger of the time have left an abiding
+sense of doubt and insecurity in my mind. I sit in my study writing by
+lamplight, and suddenly I see again the healing valley below set with
+writhing flames, and feel the house behind and about me empty and
+desolate. I go out into the Byfleet Road, and vehicles pass me, a
+butcher boy in a cart, a cabful of visitors, a workman on a bicycle,
+children going to school, and suddenly they become vague and unreal,
+and I hurry again with the artilleryman through the hot, brooding
+silence. Of a night I see the black powder darkening the silent
+streets, and the contorted bodies shrouded in that layer; they rise
+upon me tattered and dog-bitten. They gibber and grow fiercer, paler,
+uglier, mad distortions of humanity at last, and I wake, cold and
+wretched, in the darkness of the night.
+
+I go to London and see the busy multitudes in Fleet Street and the
+Strand, and it comes across my mind that they are but the ghosts of the
+past, haunting the streets that I have seen silent and wretched, going
+to and fro, phantasms in a dead city, the mockery of life in a
+galvanised body. And strange, too, it is to stand on Primrose Hill, as
+I did but a day before writing this last chapter, to see the great
+province of houses, dim and blue through the haze of the smoke and
+mist, vanishing at last into the vague lower sky, to see the people
+walking to and fro among the flower beds on the hill, to see the
+sight-seers about the Martian machine that stands there still, to hear
+the tumult of playing children, and to recall the time when I saw it
+all bright and clear-cut, hard and silent, under the dawn of that last
+great day. . . .
+
+And strangest of all is it to hold my wife’s hand again, and to think
+that I have counted her, and that she has counted me, among the dead.
diff --git a/search-engine/books/Treasure Island.txt b/search-engine/books/Treasure Island.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910576c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/search-engine/books/Treasure Island.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7494 @@
+Title: Treasure Island
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+TREASURE ISLAND
+
+by Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+
+
+
+TREASURE ISLAND
+
+To S.L.O., an American gentleman in accordance with whose classic taste
+the following narrative has been designed, it is now, in return for
+numerous delightful hours, and with the kindest wishes, dedicated by his
+affectionate friend, the author.
+
+
+
+               TO THE HESITATING PURCHASER
+
+               If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
+                  Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
+               If schooners, islands, and maroons,
+                  And buccaneers, and buried gold,
+               And all the old romance, retold
+                  Exactly in the ancient way,
+               Can please, as me they pleased of old,
+                  The wiser youngsters of today:
+
+               --So be it, and fall on!  If not,
+                  If studious youth no longer crave,
+               His ancient appetites forgot,
+                  Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
+               Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
+                  So be it, also!  And may I
+               And all my pirates share the grave
+                  Where these and their creations lie!
+
+
+     CONTENTS
+
+     PART ONE
+     The Old Buccaneer
+
+     1.  THE OLD SEA-DOG AT THE ADMIRAL BENBOW     11
+     2.  BLACK DOG APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS . . . .  17
+     3.  THE BLACK SPOT . . . . . . . . . . . . .  24
+     4.  THE SEA-CHEST  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30
+     5.  THE LAST OF THE BLIND MAN  . . . . . . .  36
+     6.  THE CAPTAIN’S PAPERS . . . . . . . . . .  41
+
+     PART TWO
+     The Sea Cook
+
+     7.  I GO TO BRISTOL  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
+     8.  AT THE SIGN OF THE SPY-GLASS . . . . . . . 54
+     9.  POWDER AND ARMS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
+     10.  THE VOYAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  64
+     11.  WHAT I HEARD IN THE APPLE BARREL . . . .  70
+     12.  COUNCIL OF WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . .  76
+
+     PART THREE
+     My Shore Adventure
+
+     13.  HOW MY SHORE ADVENTURE BEGAN . . . . . .  82
+     14.  THE FIRST BLOW . . . . . . . . . . . . .  87
+     15.  THE MAN OF THE ISLAND. . . . . . . . . .  93
+
+     PART FOUR
+     The Stockade
+
+     16.  NARRATIVE CONTINUED BY THE DOCTOR:
+            HOW THE SHIP WAS ABANDONED . . . . . . 100
+     17.  NARRATIVE CONTINUED BY THE DOCTOR:
+            THE JOLLY-BOAT’S LAST TRIP . . . . . . 105
+     18.  NARRATIVE CONTINUED BY THE DOCTOR:
+            END OF THE FIRST DAY’S FIGHTING  . . . 109
+     19.  NARRATIVE RESUMED BY JIM HAWKINS:
+            THE GARRISON IN THE STOCKADE . . . . . 114
+     20.  SILVER’S EMBASSY . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
+     21.  THE ATTACK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
+
+     PART FIVE
+     My Sea Adventure
+
+     22.  HOW MY SEA ADVENTURE BEGAN . . . . . . . 132
+     23.  THE EBB-TIDE RUNS  . . . . . . . . . . . 138
+     24.  THE CRUISE OF THE CORACLE  . . . . . . . 143
+     25.  I STRIKE THE JOLLY ROGER . . . . . . . . 148
+     26.  ISRAEL HANDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
+     27.  “PIECES OF EIGHT”  . . . . . . . . . . . 161
+
+     PART SIX
+     Captain Silver
+
+     28.  IN THE ENEMY’S CAMP  . . . . . . . . . . 168
+     29.  THE BLACK SPOT AGAIN . . . . . . . . . . 176
+     30.  ON PAROLE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
+     31.  THE TREASURE-HUNT--FLINT’S POINTER . . . 189
+     32.  THE TREASURE-HUNT--THE VOICE AMONG
+            THE TREES  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
+     33.  THE FALL OF A CHIEFTAIN  . . . . . . . . 201
+     34.  AND LAST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
+
+
+
+
+TREASURE ISLAND
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE--The Old Buccaneer
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow
+
+
+SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having
+asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from
+the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the
+island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I
+take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when
+my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the
+sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.
+
+I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the
+inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow--a
+tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the
+shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with
+black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid
+white. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself
+as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so
+often afterwards:
+
+          “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest--
+             Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
+
+in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and
+broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of
+stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared,
+called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him,
+he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still
+looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.
+
+“This is a handy cove,” says he at length; “and a pleasant sittyated
+grog-shop. Much company, mate?”
+
+My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.
+
+“Well, then,” said he, “this is the berth for me. Here you, matey,” he
+cried to the man who trundled the barrow; “bring up alongside and help
+up my chest. I’ll stay here a bit,” he continued. “I’m a plain man; rum
+and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch
+ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I
+see what you’re at--there”; and he threw down three or four gold pieces
+on the threshold. “You can tell me when I’ve worked through that,” says
+he, looking as fierce as a commander.
+
+And indeed bad as his clothes were and coarsely as he spoke, he had none
+of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like
+a mate or skipper accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who came
+with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at
+the Royal George, that he had inquired what inns there were along the
+coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as
+lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And
+that was all we could learn of our guest.
+
+He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove or
+upon the cliffs with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner
+of the parlour next the fire and drank rum and water very strong. Mostly
+he would not speak when spoken to, only look up sudden and fierce and
+blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came
+about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day when he came back
+from his stroll he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along the
+road. At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind
+that made him ask this question, but at last we began to see he was
+desirous to avoid them. When a seaman did put up at the Admiral Benbow
+(as now and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol) he
+would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the
+parlour; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such
+was present. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter, for
+I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms. He had taken me aside one day
+and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I
+would only keep my “weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg”
+ and let him know the moment he appeared. Often enough when the first
+of the month came round and I applied to him for my wage, he would only
+blow through his nose at me and stare me down, but before the week was
+out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my four-penny piece, and
+repeat his orders to look out for “the seafaring man with one leg.”
+
+How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On
+stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and
+the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a
+thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg
+would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous
+kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the
+middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and
+ditch was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for
+my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.
+
+But though I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring man with one
+leg, I was far less afraid of the captain himself than anybody else who
+knew him. There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water
+than his head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his
+wicked, old, wild sea-songs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would call
+for glasses round and force all the trembling company to listen to his
+stories or bear a chorus to his singing. Often I have heard the house
+shaking with “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum,” all the neighbours joining
+in for dear life, with the fear of death upon them, and each singing
+louder than the other to avoid remark. For in these fits he was the most
+overriding companion ever known; he would slap his hand on the table for
+silence all round; he would fly up in a passion of anger at a question,
+or sometimes because none was put, and so he judged the company was not
+following his story. Nor would he allow anyone to leave the inn till he
+had drunk himself sleepy and reeled off to bed.
+
+His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful stories
+they were--about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, and
+the Dry Tortugas, and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main. By his
+own account he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men
+that God ever allowed upon the sea, and the language in which he told
+these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the
+crimes that he described. My father was always saying the inn would be
+ruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over
+and put down, and sent shivering to their beds; but I really believe his
+presence did us good. People were frightened at the time, but on looking
+back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country
+life, and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to
+admire him, calling him a “true sea-dog” and a “real old salt” and
+such like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England
+terrible at sea.
+
+In one way, indeed, he bade fair to ruin us, for he kept on staying week
+after week, and at last month after month, so that all the money had
+been long exhausted, and still my father never plucked up the heart to
+insist on having more. If ever he mentioned it, the captain blew through
+his nose so loudly that you might say he roared, and stared my poor
+father out of the room. I have seen him wringing his hands after such a
+rebuff, and I am sure the annoyance and the terror he lived in must have
+greatly hastened his early and unhappy death.
+
+All the time he lived with us the captain made no change whatever in his
+dress but to buy some stockings from a hawker. One of the cocks of his
+hat having fallen down, he let it hang from that day forth, though it
+was a great annoyance when it blew. I remember the appearance of his
+coat, which he patched himself upstairs in his room, and which, before
+the end, was nothing but patches. He never wrote or received a letter,
+and he never spoke with any but the neighbours, and with these, for the
+most part, only when drunk on rum. The great sea-chest none of us had
+ever seen open.
+
+He was only once crossed, and that was towards the end, when my poor
+father was far gone in a decline that took him off. Dr. Livesey came
+late one afternoon to see the patient, took a bit of dinner from my
+mother, and went into the parlour to smoke a pipe until his horse should
+come down from the hamlet, for we had no stabling at the old Benbow. I
+followed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat, bright
+doctor, with his powder as white as snow and his bright, black eyes and
+pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all,
+with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting,
+far gone in rum, with his arms on the table. Suddenly he--the captain,
+that is--began to pipe up his eternal song:
+
+          “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest--
+             Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
+           Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
+             Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
+
+At first I had supposed “the dead man’s chest” to be that identical big
+box of his upstairs in the front room, and the thought had been mingled
+in my nightmares with that of the one-legged seafaring man. But by this
+time we had all long ceased to pay any particular notice to the song; it
+was new, that night, to nobody but Dr. Livesey, and on him I observed it
+did not produce an agreeable effect, for he looked up for a moment quite
+angrily before he went on with his talk to old Taylor, the gardener, on
+a new cure for the rheumatics. In the meantime, the captain gradually
+brightened up at his own music, and at last flapped his hand upon
+the table before him in a way we all knew to mean silence. The voices
+stopped at once, all but Dr. Livesey’s; he went on as before speaking
+clear and kind and drawing briskly at his pipe between every word or
+two. The captain glared at him for a while, flapped his hand again,
+glared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainous, low oath,
+“Silence, there, between decks!”
+
+“Were you addressing me, sir?” says the doctor; and when the ruffian had
+told him, with another oath, that this was so, “I have only one thing to
+say to you, sir,” replies the doctor, “that if you keep on drinking rum,
+the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!”
+
+The old fellow’s fury was awful. He sprang to his feet, drew and opened
+a sailor’s clasp-knife, and balancing it open on the palm of his hand,
+threatened to pin the doctor to the wall.
+
+The doctor never so much as moved. He spoke to him as before, over his
+shoulder and in the same tone of voice, rather high, so that all the
+room might hear, but perfectly calm and steady: “If you do not put that
+knife this instant in your pocket, I promise, upon my honour, you shall
+hang at the next assizes.”
+
+Then followed a battle of looks between them, but the captain soon
+knuckled under, put up his weapon, and resumed his seat, grumbling like
+a beaten dog.
+
+“And now, sir,” continued the doctor, “since I now know there’s such a
+fellow in my district, you may count I’ll have an eye upon you day and
+night. I’m not a doctor only; I’m a magistrate; and if I catch a breath
+of complaint against you, if it’s only for a piece of incivility like
+tonight’s, I’ll take effectual means to have you hunted down and routed
+out of this. Let that suffice.”
+
+Soon after, Dr. Livesey’s horse came to the door and he rode away, but
+the captain held his peace that evening, and for many evenings to come.
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+Black Dog Appears and Disappears
+
+
+IT was not very long after this that there occurred the first of the
+mysterious events that rid us at last of the captain, though not, as you
+will see, of his affairs. It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard
+frosts and heavy gales; and it was plain from the first that my poor
+father was little likely to see the spring. He sank daily, and my mother
+and I had all the inn upon our hands, and were kept busy enough without
+paying much regard to our unpleasant guest.
+
+It was one January morning, very early--a pinching, frosty morning--the
+cove all grey with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones,
+the sun still low and only touching the hilltops and shining far to
+seaward. The captain had risen earlier than usual and set out down the
+beach, his cutlass swinging under the broad skirts of the old blue coat,
+his brass telescope under his arm, his hat tilted back upon his head. I
+remember his breath hanging like smoke in his wake as he strode off, and
+the last sound I heard of him as he turned the big rock was a loud snort
+of indignation, as though his mind was still running upon Dr. Livesey.
+
+Well, mother was upstairs with father and I was laying the
+breakfast-table against the captain’s return when the parlour door
+opened and a man stepped in on whom I had never set my eyes before. He
+was a pale, tallowy creature, wanting two fingers of the left hand, and
+though he wore a cutlass, he did not look much like a fighter. I
+had always my eye open for seafaring men, with one leg or two, and I
+remember this one puzzled me. He was not sailorly, and yet he had a
+smack of the sea about him too.
+
+I asked him what was for his service, and he said he would take rum; but
+as I was going out of the room to fetch it, he sat down upon a table
+and motioned me to draw near. I paused where I was, with my napkin in my
+hand.
+
+“Come here, sonny,” says he. “Come nearer here.”
+
+I took a step nearer.
+
+“Is this here table for my mate Bill?” he asked with a kind of leer.
+
+I told him I did not know his mate Bill, and this was for a person who
+stayed in our house whom we called the captain.
+
+“Well,” said he, “my mate Bill would be called the captain, as like
+as not. He has a cut on one cheek and a mighty pleasant way with him,
+particularly in drink, has my mate Bill. We’ll put it, for argument
+like, that your captain has a cut on one cheek--and we’ll put it, if you
+like, that that cheek’s the right one. Ah, well! I told you. Now, is my
+mate Bill in this here house?”
+
+I told him he was out walking.
+
+“Which way, sonny? Which way is he gone?”
+
+And when I had pointed out the rock and told him how the captain was
+likely to return, and how soon, and answered a few other questions,
+“Ah,” said he, “this’ll be as good as drink to my mate Bill.”
+
+The expression of his face as he said these words was not at all
+pleasant, and I had my own reasons for thinking that the stranger was
+mistaken, even supposing he meant what he said. But it was no affair of
+mine, I thought; and besides, it was difficult to know what to do. The
+stranger kept hanging about just inside the inn door, peering round the
+corner like a cat waiting for a mouse. Once I stepped out myself into
+the road, but he immediately called me back, and as I did not obey quick
+enough for his fancy, a most horrible change came over his tallowy face,
+and he ordered me in with an oath that made me jump. As soon as I
+was back again he returned to his former manner, half fawning, half
+sneering, patted me on the shoulder, told me I was a good boy and he had
+taken quite a fancy to me. “I have a son of my own,” said he, “as like
+you as two blocks, and he’s all the pride of my ’art. But the great
+thing for boys is discipline, sonny--discipline. Now, if you had sailed
+along of Bill, you wouldn’t have stood there to be spoke to twice--not
+you. That was never Bill’s way, nor the way of sich as sailed with him.
+And here, sure enough, is my mate Bill, with a spy-glass under his arm,
+bless his old ’art, to be sure. You and me’ll just go back into the
+parlour, sonny, and get behind the door, and we’ll give Bill a little
+surprise--bless his ’art, I say again.”
+
+So saying, the stranger backed along with me into the parlour and put me
+behind him in the corner so that we were both hidden by the open door. I
+was very uneasy and alarmed, as you may fancy, and it rather added to my
+fears to observe that the stranger was certainly frightened himself. He
+cleared the hilt of his cutlass and loosened the blade in the sheath;
+and all the time we were waiting there he kept swallowing as if he felt
+what we used to call a lump in the throat.
+
+At last in strode the captain, slammed the door behind him, without
+looking to the right or left, and marched straight across the room to
+where his breakfast awaited him.
+
+“Bill,” said the stranger in a voice that I thought he had tried to make
+bold and big.
+
+The captain spun round on his heel and fronted us; all the brown had
+gone out of his face, and even his nose was blue; he had the look of a
+man who sees a ghost, or the evil one, or something worse, if anything
+can be; and upon my word, I felt sorry to see him all in a moment turn
+so old and sick.
+
+“Come, Bill, you know me; you know an old shipmate, Bill, surely,” said
+the stranger.
+
+The captain made a sort of gasp.
+
+“Black Dog!” said he.
+
+“And who else?” returned the other, getting more at his ease. “Black
+Dog as ever was, come for to see his old shipmate Billy, at the Admiral
+Benbow inn. Ah, Bill, Bill, we have seen a sight of times, us two, since
+I lost them two talons,” holding up his mutilated hand.
+
+“Now, look here,” said the captain; “you’ve run me down; here I am;
+well, then, speak up; what is it?”
+
+“That’s you, Bill,” returned Black Dog, “you’re in the right of it,
+Billy. I’ll have a glass of rum from this dear child here, as I’ve took
+such a liking to; and we’ll sit down, if you please, and talk square,
+like old shipmates.”
+
+When I returned with the rum, they were already seated on either side
+of the captain’s breakfast-table--Black Dog next to the door and
+sitting sideways so as to have one eye on his old shipmate and one, as I
+thought, on his retreat.
+
+He bade me go and leave the door wide open. “None of your keyholes for
+me, sonny,” he said; and I left them together and retired into the bar.
+
+For a long time, though I certainly did my best to listen, I could hear
+nothing but a low gattling; but at last the voices began to grow higher,
+and I could pick up a word or two, mostly oaths, from the captain.
+
+“No, no, no, no; and an end of it!” he cried once. And again, “If it
+comes to swinging, swing all, say I.”
+
+Then all of a sudden there was a tremendous explosion of oaths and
+other noises--the chair and table went over in a lump, a clash of steel
+followed, and then a cry of pain, and the next instant I saw Black
+Dog in full flight, and the captain hotly pursuing, both with drawn
+cutlasses, and the former streaming blood from the left shoulder. Just
+at the door the captain aimed at the fugitive one last tremendous
+cut, which would certainly have split him to the chine had it not been
+intercepted by our big signboard of Admiral Benbow. You may see the
+notch on the lower side of the frame to this day.
+
+That blow was the last of the battle. Once out upon the road, Black
+Dog, in spite of his wound, showed a wonderful clean pair of heels and
+disappeared over the edge of the hill in half a minute. The captain, for
+his part, stood staring at the signboard like a bewildered man. Then he
+passed his hand over his eyes several times and at last turned back into
+the house.
+
+“Jim,” says he, “rum”; and as he spoke, he reeled a little, and caught
+himself with one hand against the wall.
+
+“Are you hurt?” cried I.
+
+“Rum,” he repeated. “I must get away from here. Rum! Rum!”
+
+I ran to fetch it, but I was quite unsteadied by all that had fallen
+out, and I broke one glass and fouled the tap, and while I was still
+getting in my own way, I heard a loud fall in the parlour, and running
+in, beheld the captain lying full length upon the floor. At the same
+instant my mother, alarmed by the cries and fighting, came running
+downstairs to help me. Between us we raised his head. He was breathing
+very loud and hard, but his eyes were closed and his face a horrible
+colour.
+
+“Dear, deary me,” cried my mother, “what a disgrace upon the house! And
+your poor father sick!”
+
+In the meantime, we had no idea what to do to help the captain, nor any
+other thought but that he had got his death-hurt in the scuffle with
+the stranger. I got the rum, to be sure, and tried to put it down his
+throat, but his teeth were tightly shut and his jaws as strong as iron.
+It was a happy relief for us when the door opened and Doctor Livesey
+came in, on his visit to my father.
+
+“Oh, doctor,” we cried, “what shall we do? Where is he wounded?”
+
+“Wounded? A fiddle-stick’s end!” said the doctor. “No more wounded than
+you or I. The man has had a stroke, as I warned him. Now, Mrs. Hawkins,
+just you run upstairs to your husband and tell him, if possible, nothing
+about it. For my part, I must do my best to save this fellow’s trebly
+worthless life; Jim, you get me a basin.”
+
+When I got back with the basin, the doctor had already ripped up the
+captain’s sleeve and exposed his great sinewy arm. It was tattooed
+in several places. “Here’s luck,” “A fair wind,” and “Billy Bones his
+fancy,” were very neatly and clearly executed on the forearm; and up
+near the shoulder there was a sketch of a gallows and a man hanging from
+it--done, as I thought, with great spirit.
+
+“Prophetic,” said the doctor, touching this picture with his finger.
+“And now, Master Billy Bones, if that be your name, we’ll have a look at
+the colour of your blood. Jim,” he said, “are you afraid of blood?”
+
+“No, sir,” said I.
+
+“Well, then,” said he, “you hold the basin”; and with that he took his
+lancet and opened a vein.
+
+A great deal of blood was taken before the captain opened his eyes
+and looked mistily about him. First he recognized the doctor with
+an unmistakable frown; then his glance fell upon me, and he looked
+relieved. But suddenly his colour changed, and he tried to raise
+himself, crying, “Where’s Black Dog?”
+
+“There is no Black Dog here,” said the doctor, “except what you have
+on your own back. You have been drinking rum; you have had a stroke,
+precisely as I told you; and I have just, very much against my own will,
+dragged you headforemost out of the grave. Now, Mr. Bones--”
+
+“That’s not my name,” he interrupted.
+
+“Much I care,” returned the doctor. “It’s the name of a buccaneer of my
+acquaintance; and I call you by it for the sake of shortness, and what I
+have to say to you is this; one glass of rum won’t kill you, but if
+you take one you’ll take another and another, and I stake my wig if you
+don’t break off short, you’ll die--do you understand that?--die, and go
+to your own place, like the man in the Bible. Come, now, make an effort.
+I’ll help you to your bed for once.”
+
+Between us, with much trouble, we managed to hoist him upstairs, and
+laid him on his bed, where his head fell back on the pillow as if he
+were almost fainting.
+
+“Now, mind you,” said the doctor, “I clear my conscience--the name of
+rum for you is death.”
+
+And with that he went off to see my father, taking me with him by the
+arm.
+
+“This is nothing,” he said as soon as he had closed the door. “I have
+drawn blood enough to keep him quiet awhile; he should lie for a week
+where he is--that is the best thing for him and you; but another stroke
+would settle him.”
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+The Black Spot
+
+ABOUT noon I stopped at the captain’s door with some cooling drinks
+and medicines. He was lying very much as we had left him, only a little
+higher, and he seemed both weak and excited.
+
+“Jim,” he said, “you’re the only one here that’s worth anything, and you
+know I’ve been always good to you. Never a month but I’ve given you a
+silver fourpenny for yourself. And now you see, mate, I’m pretty low,
+and deserted by all; and Jim, you’ll bring me one noggin of rum, now,
+won’t you, matey?”
+
+“The doctor--” I began.
+
+But he broke in cursing the doctor, in a feeble voice but heartily.
+“Doctors is all swabs,” he said; “and that doctor there, why, what do
+he know about seafaring men? I been in places hot as pitch, and mates
+dropping round with Yellow Jack, and the blessed land a-heaving like the
+sea with earthquakes--what to the doctor know of lands like that?--and I
+lived on rum, I tell you. It’s been meat and drink, and man and wife,
+to me; and if I’m not to have my rum now I’m a poor old hulk on a lee
+shore, my blood’ll be on you, Jim, and that doctor swab”; and he ran on
+again for a while with curses. “Look, Jim, how my fingers fidges,”
+ he continued in the pleading tone. “I can’t keep ’em still, not I. I
+haven’t had a drop this blessed day. That doctor’s a fool, I tell you.
+If I don’t have a dram o’ rum, Jim, I’ll have the horrors; I seen some
+on ’em already. I seen old Flint in the corner there, behind you; as
+plain as print, I seen him; and if I get the horrors, I’m a man that
+has lived rough, and I’ll raise Cain. Your doctor hisself said one glass
+wouldn’t hurt me. I’ll give you a golden guinea for a noggin, Jim.”
+
+He was growing more and more excited, and this alarmed me for my father,
+who was very low that day and needed quiet; besides, I was reassured by
+the doctor’s words, now quoted to me, and rather offended by the offer
+of a bribe.
+
+“I want none of your money,” said I, “but what you owe my father. I’ll
+get you one glass, and no more.”
+
+When I brought it to him, he seized it greedily and drank it out.
+
+“Aye, aye,” said he, “that’s some better, sure enough. And now, matey,
+did that doctor say how long I was to lie here in this old berth?”
+
+“A week at least,” said I.
+
+“Thunder!” he cried. “A week! I can’t do that; they’d have the black
+spot on me by then. The lubbers is going about to get the wind of me
+this blessed moment; lubbers as couldn’t keep what they got, and want to
+nail what is another’s. Is that seamanly behaviour, now, I want to know?
+But I’m a saving soul. I never wasted good money of mine, nor lost it
+neither; and I’ll trick ’em again. I’m not afraid on ’em. I’ll shake out
+another reef, matey, and daddle ’em again.”
+
+As he was thus speaking, he had risen from bed with great difficulty,
+holding to my shoulder with a grip that almost made me cry out, and
+moving his legs like so much dead weight. His words, spirited as they
+were in meaning, contrasted sadly with the weakness of the voice in
+which they were uttered. He paused when he had got into a sitting
+position on the edge.
+
+“That doctor’s done me,” he murmured. “My ears is singing. Lay me back.”
+
+Before I could do much to help him he had fallen back again to his
+former place, where he lay for a while silent.
+
+“Jim,” he said at length, “you saw that seafaring man today?”
+
+“Black Dog?” I asked.
+
+“Ah! Black Dog,” says he. “_He’s_ a bad ’un; but there’s worse that put him
+on. Now, if I can’t get away nohow, and they tip me the black spot, mind
+you, it’s my old sea-chest they’re after; you get on a horse--you can,
+can’t you? Well, then, you get on a horse, and go to--well, yes,
+I will!--to that eternal doctor swab, and tell him to pipe all
+hands--magistrates and sich--and he’ll lay ’em aboard at the Admiral
+Benbow--all old Flint’s crew, man and boy, all on ’em that’s left. I was
+first mate, I was, old Flint’s first mate, and I’m the on’y one as knows
+the place. He gave it me at Savannah, when he lay a-dying, like as if I
+was to now, you see. But you won’t peach unless they get the black spot
+on me, or unless you see that Black Dog again or a seafaring man with
+one leg, Jim--him above all.”
+
+“But what is the black spot, captain?” I asked.
+
+“That’s a summons, mate. I’ll tell you if they get that. But you keep
+your weather-eye open, Jim, and I’ll share with you equals, upon my
+honour.”
+
+He wandered a little longer, his voice growing weaker; but soon after I
+had given him his medicine, which he took like a child, with the remark,
+“If ever a seaman wanted drugs, it’s me,” he fell at last into a heavy,
+swoon-like sleep, in which I left him. What I should have done had all
+gone well I do not know. Probably I should have told the whole story to
+the doctor, for I was in mortal fear lest the captain should repent of
+his confessions and make an end of me. But as things fell out, my poor
+father died quite suddenly that evening, which put all other matters
+on one side. Our natural distress, the visits of the neighbours, the
+arranging of the funeral, and all the work of the inn to be carried on
+in the meanwhile kept me so busy that I had scarcely time to think of
+the captain, far less to be afraid of him.
+
+He got downstairs next morning, to be sure, and had his meals as usual,
+though he ate little and had more, I am afraid, than his usual supply of
+rum, for he helped himself out of the bar, scowling and blowing through
+his nose, and no one dared to cross him. On the night before the funeral
+he was as drunk as ever; and it was shocking, in that house of mourning,
+to hear him singing away at his ugly old sea-song; but weak as he was,
+we were all in the fear of death for him, and the doctor was suddenly
+taken up with a case many miles away and was never near the house after
+my father’s death. I have said the captain was weak, and indeed he
+seemed rather to grow weaker than regain his strength. He clambered up
+and down stairs, and went from the parlour to the bar and back again,
+and sometimes put his nose out of doors to smell the sea, holding on to
+the walls as he went for support and breathing hard and fast like a man
+on a steep mountain. He never particularly addressed me, and it is my
+belief he had as good as forgotten his confidences; but his temper was
+more flighty, and allowing for his bodily weakness, more violent than
+ever. He had an alarming way now when he was drunk of drawing his
+cutlass and laying it bare before him on the table. But with all that,
+he minded people less and seemed shut up in his own thoughts and rather
+wandering. Once, for instance, to our extreme wonder, he piped up to a
+different air, a kind of country love-song that he must have learned in
+his youth before he had begun to follow the sea.
+
+So things passed until, the day after the funeral, and about three
+o’clock of a bitter, foggy, frosty afternoon, I was standing at the door
+for a moment, full of sad thoughts about my father, when I saw someone
+drawing slowly near along the road. He was plainly blind, for he tapped
+before him with a stick and wore a great green shade over his eyes and
+nose; and he was hunched, as if with age or weakness, and wore a huge
+old tattered sea-cloak with a hood that made him appear positively
+deformed. I never saw in my life a more dreadful-looking figure.
+He stopped a little from the inn, and raising his voice in an odd
+sing-song, addressed the air in front of him, “Will any kind friend
+inform a poor blind man, who has lost the precious sight of his eyes in
+the gracious defence of his native country, England--and God bless King
+George!--where or in what part of this country he may now be?”
+
+“You are at the Admiral Benbow, Black Hill Cove, my good man,” said I.
+
+“I hear a voice,” said he, “a young voice. Will you give me your hand,
+my kind young friend, and lead me in?”
+
+I held out my hand, and the horrible, soft-spoken, eyeless creature
+gripped it in a moment like a vise. I was so much startled that I
+struggled to withdraw, but the blind man pulled me close up to him with
+a single action of his arm.
+
+“Now, boy,” he said, “take me in to the captain.”
+
+“Sir,” said I, “upon my word I dare not.”
+
+“Oh,” he sneered, “that’s it! Take me in straight or I’ll break your
+arm.”
+
+And he gave it, as he spoke, a wrench that made me cry out.
+
+“Sir,” said I, “it is for yourself I mean. The captain is not what he
+used to be. He sits with a drawn cutlass. Another gentleman--”
+
+“Come, now, march,” interrupted he; and I never heard a voice so cruel,
+and cold, and ugly as that blind man’s. It cowed me more than the pain,
+and I began to obey him at once, walking straight in at the door and
+towards the parlour, where our sick old buccaneer was sitting, dazed
+with rum. The blind man clung close to me, holding me in one iron fist
+and leaning almost more of his weight on me than I could carry. “Lead me
+straight up to him, and when I’m in view, cry out, ‘Here’s a friend
+for you, Bill.’ If you don’t, I’ll do this,” and with that he gave me a
+twitch that I thought would have made me faint. Between this and that, I
+was so utterly terrified of the blind beggar that I forgot my terror of
+the captain, and as I opened the parlour door, cried out the words he
+had ordered in a trembling voice.
+
+The poor captain raised his eyes, and at one look the rum went out of
+him and left him staring sober. The expression of his face was not so
+much of terror as of mortal sickness. He made a movement to rise, but I
+do not believe he had enough force left in his body.
+
+“Now, Bill, sit where you are,” said the beggar. “If I can’t see, I can
+hear a finger stirring. Business is business. Hold out your left hand.
+Boy, take his left hand by the wrist and bring it near to my right.”
+
+We both obeyed him to the letter, and I saw him pass something from the
+hollow of the hand that held his stick into the palm of the captain’s,
+which closed upon it instantly.
+
+“And now that’s done,” said the blind man; and at the words he suddenly
+left hold of me, and with incredible accuracy and nimbleness,
+skipped out of the parlour and into the road, where, as I still stood
+motionless, I could hear his stick go tap-tap-tapping into the distance.
+
+It was some time before either I or the captain seemed to gather our
+senses, but at length, and about at the same moment, I released his
+wrist, which I was still holding, and he drew in his hand and looked
+sharply into the palm.
+
+“Ten o’clock!” he cried. “Six hours. We’ll do them yet,” and he sprang
+to his feet.
+
+Even as he did so, he reeled, put his hand to his throat, stood swaying
+for a moment, and then, with a peculiar sound, fell from his whole
+height face foremost to the floor.
+
+I ran to him at once, calling to my mother. But haste was all in vain.
+The captain had been struck dead by thundering apoplexy. It is a curious
+thing to understand, for I had certainly never liked the man, though of
+late I had begun to pity him, but as soon as I saw that he was dead, I
+burst into a flood of tears. It was the second death I had known, and
+the sorrow of the first was still fresh in my heart.
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+The Sea-chest
+
+I LOST no time, of course, in telling my mother all that I knew, and
+perhaps should have told her long before, and we saw ourselves at once
+in a difficult and dangerous position. Some of the man’s money--if
+he had any--was certainly due to us, but it was not likely that our
+captain’s shipmates, above all the two specimens seen by me, Black
+Dog and the blind beggar, would be inclined to give up their booty in
+payment of the dead man’s debts. The captain’s order to mount at
+once and ride for Doctor Livesey would have left my mother alone
+and unprotected, which was not to be thought of. Indeed, it seemed
+impossible for either of us to remain much longer in the house; the fall
+of coals in the kitchen grate, the very ticking of the clock, filled
+us with alarms. The neighbourhood, to our ears, seemed haunted by
+approaching footsteps; and what between the dead body of the captain
+on the parlour floor and the thought of that detestable blind beggar
+hovering near at hand and ready to return, there were moments when, as
+the saying goes, I jumped in my skin for terror. Something must speedily
+be resolved upon, and it occurred to us at last to go forth together
+and seek help in the neighbouring hamlet. No sooner said than done.
+Bare-headed as we were, we ran out at once in the gathering evening and
+the frosty fog.
+
+The hamlet lay not many hundred yards away, though out of view, on the
+other side of the next cove; and what greatly encouraged me, it was
+in an opposite direction from that whence the blind man had made his
+appearance and whither he had presumably returned. We were not many
+minutes on the road, though we sometimes stopped to lay hold of each
+other and hearken. But there was no unusual sound--nothing but the low
+wash of the ripple and the croaking of the inmates of the wood.
+
+It was already candle-light when we reached the hamlet, and I shall
+never forget how much I was cheered to see the yellow shine in doors and
+windows; but that, as it proved, was the best of the help we were likely
+to get in that quarter. For--you would have thought men would have been
+ashamed of themselves--no soul would consent to return with us to the
+Admiral Benbow. The more we told of our troubles, the more--man, woman,
+and child--they clung to the shelter of their houses. The name of
+Captain Flint, though it was strange to me, was well enough known to
+some there and carried a great weight of terror. Some of the men who
+had been to field-work on the far side of the Admiral Benbow remembered,
+besides, to have seen several strangers on the road, and taking them to
+be smugglers, to have bolted away; and one at least had seen a little
+lugger in what we called Kitt’s Hole. For that matter, anyone who was a
+comrade of the captain’s was enough to frighten them to death. And the
+short and the long of the matter was, that while we could get several
+who were willing enough to ride to Dr. Livesey’s, which lay in another
+direction, not one would help us to defend the inn.
+
+They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other
+hand, a great emboldener; and so when each had said his say, my mother
+made them a speech. She would not, she declared, lose money that
+belonged to her fatherless boy; “If none of the rest of you dare,”
+ she said, “Jim and I dare. Back we will go, the way we came, and small
+thanks to you big, hulking, chicken-hearted men. We’ll have that chest
+open, if we die for it. And I’ll thank you for that bag, Mrs. Crossley,
+to bring back our lawful money in.”
+
+Of course I said I would go with my mother, and of course they all cried
+out at our foolhardiness, but even then not a man would go along with
+us. All they would do was to give me a loaded pistol lest we were
+attacked, and to promise to have horses ready saddled in case we were
+pursued on our return, while one lad was to ride forward to the doctor’s
+in search of armed assistance.
+
+My heart was beating finely when we two set forth in the cold night upon
+this dangerous venture. A full moon was beginning to rise and peered
+redly through the upper edges of the fog, and this increased our haste,
+for it was plain, before we came forth again, that all would be as
+bright as day, and our departure exposed to the eyes of any watchers.
+We slipped along the hedges, noiseless and swift, nor did we see or hear
+anything to increase our terrors, till, to our relief, the door of the
+Admiral Benbow had closed behind us.
+
+I slipped the bolt at once, and we stood and panted for a moment in the
+dark, alone in the house with the dead captain’s body. Then my mother
+got a candle in the bar, and holding each other’s hands, we advanced
+into the parlour. He lay as we had left him, on his back, with his eyes
+open and one arm stretched out.
+
+“Draw down the blind, Jim,” whispered my mother; “they might come and
+watch outside. And now,” said she when I had done so, “we have to get
+the key off _that;_ and who’s to touch it, I should like to know!” and she
+gave a kind of sob as she said the words.
+
+I went down on my knees at once. On the floor close to his hand there
+was a little round of paper, blackened on the one side. I could not
+doubt that this was the _black spot;_ and taking it up, I found written
+on the other side, in a very good, clear hand, this short message: “You
+have till ten tonight.”
+
+“He had till ten, Mother,” said I; and just as I said it, our old clock
+began striking. This sudden noise startled us shockingly; but the news
+was good, for it was only six.
+
+“Now, Jim,” she said, “that key.”
+
+I felt in his pockets, one after another. A few small coins, a thimble,
+and some thread and big needles, a piece of pigtail tobacco bitten away
+at the end, his gully with the crooked handle, a pocket compass, and a
+tinder box were all that they contained, and I began to despair.
+
+“Perhaps it’s round his neck,” suggested my mother.
+
+Overcoming a strong repugnance, I tore open his shirt at the neck, and
+there, sure enough, hanging to a bit of tarry string, which I cut with
+his own gully, we found the key. At this triumph we were filled with
+hope and hurried upstairs without delay to the little room where he had
+slept so long and where his box had stood since the day of his arrival.
+
+It was like any other seaman’s chest on the outside, the initial “B”
+ burned on the top of it with a hot iron, and the corners somewhat
+smashed and broken as by long, rough usage.
+
+“Give me the key,” said my mother; and though the lock was very stiff,
+she had turned it and thrown back the lid in a twinkling.
+
+A strong smell of tobacco and tar rose from the interior, but nothing
+was to be seen on the top except a suit of very good clothes, carefully
+brushed and folded. They had never been worn, my mother said. Under
+that, the miscellany began--a quadrant, a tin canikin, several sticks of
+tobacco, two brace of very handsome pistols, a piece of bar silver, an
+old Spanish watch and some other trinkets of little value and mostly of
+foreign make, a pair of compasses mounted with brass, and five or six
+curious West Indian shells. I have often wondered since why he should
+have carried about these shells with him in his wandering, guilty, and
+hunted life.
+
+In the meantime, we had found nothing of any value but the silver and
+the trinkets, and neither of these were in our way. Underneath there
+was an old boat-cloak, whitened with sea-salt on many a harbour-bar. My
+mother pulled it up with impatience, and there lay before us, the last
+things in the chest, a bundle tied up in oilcloth, and looking like
+papers, and a canvas bag that gave forth, at a touch, the jingle of
+gold.
+
+“I’ll show these rogues that I’m an honest woman,” said my mother. “I’ll
+have my dues, and not a farthing over. Hold Mrs. Crossley’s bag.” And
+she began to count over the amount of the captain’s score from the
+sailor’s bag into the one that I was holding.
+
+It was a long, difficult business, for the coins were of all countries
+and sizes--doubloons, and louis d’ors, and guineas, and pieces of eight,
+and I know not what besides, all shaken together at random. The guineas,
+too, were about the scarcest, and it was with these only that my mother
+knew how to make her count.
+
+When we were about half-way through, I suddenly put my hand upon her
+arm, for I had heard in the silent frosty air a sound that brought my
+heart into my mouth--the tap-tapping of the blind man’s stick upon the
+frozen road. It drew nearer and nearer, while we sat holding our breath.
+Then it struck sharp on the inn door, and then we could hear the handle
+being turned and the bolt rattling as the wretched being tried to enter;
+and then there was a long time of silence both within and without.
+At last the tapping recommenced, and, to our indescribable joy and
+gratitude, died slowly away again until it ceased to be heard.
+
+“Mother,” said I, “take the whole and let’s be going,” for I was sure
+the bolted door must have seemed suspicious and would bring the whole
+hornet’s nest about our ears, though how thankful I was that I had
+bolted it, none could tell who had never met that terrible blind man.
+
+But my mother, frightened as she was, would not consent to take a
+fraction more than was due to her and was obstinately unwilling to be
+content with less. It was not yet seven, she said, by a long way; she
+knew her rights and she would have them; and she was still arguing with
+me when a little low whistle sounded a good way off upon the hill. That
+was enough, and more than enough, for both of us.
+
+“I’ll take what I have,” she said, jumping to her feet.
+
+“And I’ll take this to square the count,” said I, picking up the oilskin
+packet.
+
+Next moment we were both groping downstairs, leaving the candle by
+the empty chest; and the next we had opened the door and were in full
+retreat. We had not started a moment too soon. The fog was rapidly
+dispersing; already the moon shone quite clear on the high ground on
+either side; and it was only in the exact bottom of the dell and round
+the tavern door that a thin veil still hung unbroken to conceal the
+first steps of our escape. Far less than half-way to the hamlet, very
+little beyond the bottom of the hill, we must come forth into the
+moonlight. Nor was this all, for the sound of several footsteps running
+came already to our ears, and as we looked back in their direction, a
+light tossing to and fro and still rapidly advancing showed that one of
+the newcomers carried a lantern.
+
+“My dear,” said my mother suddenly, “take the money and run on. I am
+going to faint.”
+
+This was certainly the end for both of us, I thought. How I cursed the
+cowardice of the neighbours; how I blamed my poor mother for her honesty
+and her greed, for her past foolhardiness and present weakness! We were
+just at the little bridge, by good fortune; and I helped her, tottering
+as she was, to the edge of the bank, where, sure enough, she gave a sigh
+and fell on my shoulder. I do not know how I found the strength to do it
+at all, and I am afraid it was roughly done, but I managed to drag her
+down the bank and a little way under the arch. Farther I could not move
+her, for the bridge was too low to let me do more than crawl below it.
+So there we had to stay--my mother almost entirely exposed and both of
+us within earshot of the inn.
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+The Last of the Blind Man
+
+MY curiosity, in a sense, was stronger than my fear, for I could not
+remain where I was, but crept back to the bank again, whence, sheltering
+my head behind a bush of broom, I might command the road before our
+door. I was scarcely in position ere my enemies began to arrive, seven
+or eight of them, running hard, their feet beating out of time along
+the road and the man with the lantern some paces in front. Three men ran
+together, hand in hand; and I made out, even through the mist, that the
+middle man of this trio was the blind beggar. The next moment his voice
+showed me that I was right.
+
+“Down with the door!” he cried.
+
+“Aye, aye, sir!” answered two or three; and a rush was made upon the
+Admiral Benbow, the lantern-bearer following; and then I could see
+them pause, and hear speeches passed in a lower key, as if they were
+surprised to find the door open. But the pause was brief, for the blind
+man again issued his commands. His voice sounded louder and higher, as
+if he were afire with eagerness and rage.
+
+“In, in, in!” he shouted, and cursed them for their delay.
+
+Four or five of them obeyed at once, two remaining on the road with the
+formidable beggar. There was a pause, then a cry of surprise, and then a
+voice shouting from the house, “Bill’s dead.”
+
+But the blind man swore at them again for their delay.
+
+“Search him, some of you shirking lubbers, and the rest of you aloft and
+get the chest,” he cried.
+
+I could hear their feet rattling up our old stairs, so that the
+house must have shook with it. Promptly afterwards, fresh sounds of
+astonishment arose; the window of the captain’s room was thrown open
+with a slam and a jingle of broken glass, and a man leaned out into the
+moonlight, head and shoulders, and addressed the blind beggar on the
+road below him.
+
+“Pew,” he cried, “they’ve been before us. Someone’s turned the chest out
+alow and aloft.”
+
+“Is it there?” roared Pew.
+
+“The money’s there.”
+
+The blind man cursed the money.
+
+“Flint’s fist, I mean,” he cried.
+
+“We don’t see it here nohow,” returned the man.
+
+“Here, you below there, is it on Bill?” cried the blind man again.
+
+At that another fellow, probably him who had remained below to search
+the captain’s body, came to the door of the inn. “Bill’s been overhauled
+a’ready,” said he; “nothin’ left.”
+
+“It’s these people of the inn--it’s that boy. I wish I had put his eyes
+out!” cried the blind man, Pew. “There were no time ago--they had the
+door bolted when I tried it. Scatter, lads, and find ’em.”
+
+“Sure enough, they left their glim here,” said the fellow from the
+window.
+
+“Scatter and find ’em! Rout the house out!” reiterated Pew, striking
+with his stick upon the road.
+
+Then there followed a great to-do through all our old inn, heavy feet
+pounding to and fro, furniture thrown over, doors kicked in, until the
+very rocks re-echoed and the men came out again, one after another, on
+the road and declared that we were nowhere to be found. And just
+the same whistle that had alarmed my mother and myself over the dead
+captain’s money was once more clearly audible through the night,
+but this time twice repeated. I had thought it to be the blind man’s
+trumpet, so to speak, summoning his crew to the assault, but I now found
+that it was a signal from the hillside towards the hamlet, and from its
+effect upon the buccaneers, a signal to warn them of approaching danger.
+
+“There’s Dirk again,” said one. “Twice! We’ll have to budge, mates.”
+
+“Budge, you skulk!” cried Pew. “Dirk was a fool and a coward from the
+first--you wouldn’t mind him. They must be close by; they can’t be far;
+you have your hands on it. Scatter and look for them, dogs! Oh, shiver
+my soul,” he cried, “if I had eyes!”
+
+This appeal seemed to produce some effect, for two of the fellows began
+to look here and there among the lumber, but half-heartedly, I thought,
+and with half an eye to their own danger all the time, while the rest
+stood irresolute on the road.
+
+“You have your hands on thousands, you fools, and you hang a leg! You’d
+be as rich as kings if you could find it, and you know it’s here, and
+you stand there skulking. There wasn’t one of you dared face Bill, and
+I did it--a blind man! And I’m to lose my chance for you! I’m to be a
+poor, crawling beggar, sponging for rum, when I might be rolling in a
+coach! If you had the pluck of a weevil in a biscuit you would catch
+them still.”
+
+“Hang it, Pew, we’ve got the doubloons!” grumbled one.
+
+“They might have hid the blessed thing,” said another. “Take the
+Georges, Pew, and don’t stand here squalling.”
+
+Squalling was the word for it; Pew’s anger rose so high at these
+objections till at last, his passion completely taking the upper hand,
+he struck at them right and left in his blindness and his stick sounded
+heavily on more than one.
+
+These, in their turn, cursed back at the blind miscreant, threatened him
+in horrid terms, and tried in vain to catch the stick and wrest it from
+his grasp.
+
+This quarrel was the saving of us, for while it was still raging,
+another sound came from the top of the hill on the side of the
+hamlet--the tramp of horses galloping. Almost at the same time a
+pistol-shot, flash and report, came from the hedge side. And that was
+plainly the last signal of danger, for the buccaneers turned at once
+and ran, separating in every direction, one seaward along the cove, one
+slant across the hill, and so on, so that in half a minute not a sign of
+them remained but Pew. Him they had deserted, whether in sheer panic
+or out of revenge for his ill words and blows I know not; but there he
+remained behind, tapping up and down the road in a frenzy, and groping
+and calling for his comrades. Finally he took a wrong turn and ran a few
+steps past me, towards the hamlet, crying, “Johnny, Black Dog, Dirk,”
+ and other names, “you won’t leave old Pew, mates--not old Pew!”
+
+Just then the noise of horses topped the rise, and four or five riders
+came in sight in the moonlight and swept at full gallop down the slope.
+
+At this Pew saw his error, turned with a scream, and ran straight for
+the ditch, into which he rolled. But he was on his feet again in a
+second and made another dash, now utterly bewildered, right under the
+nearest of the coming horses.
+
+The rider tried to save him, but in vain. Down went Pew with a cry that
+rang high into the night; and the four hoofs trampled and spurned him
+and passed by. He fell on his side, then gently collapsed upon his face
+and moved no more.
+
+I leaped to my feet and hailed the riders. They were pulling up, at any
+rate, horrified at the accident; and I soon saw what they were. One,
+tailing out behind the rest, was a lad that had gone from the hamlet to
+Dr. Livesey’s; the rest were revenue officers, whom he had met by the
+way, and with whom he had had the intelligence to return at once. Some
+news of the lugger in Kitt’s Hole had found its way to Supervisor Dance
+and set him forth that night in our direction, and to that circumstance
+my mother and I owed our preservation from death.
+
+Pew was dead, stone dead. As for my mother, when we had carried her up
+to the hamlet, a little cold water and salts and that soon brought her
+back again, and she was none the worse for her terror, though she still
+continued to deplore the balance of the money. In the meantime the
+supervisor rode on, as fast as he could, to Kitt’s Hole; but his men
+had to dismount and grope down the dingle, leading, and sometimes
+supporting, their horses, and in continual fear of ambushes; so it was
+no great matter for surprise that when they got down to the Hole the
+lugger was already under way, though still close in. He hailed her. A
+voice replied, telling him to keep out of the moonlight or he would get
+some lead in him, and at the same time a bullet whistled close by his
+arm. Soon after, the lugger doubled the point and disappeared. Mr. Dance
+stood there, as he said, “like a fish out of water,” and all he could do
+was to dispatch a man to B---- to warn the cutter. “And that,” said he,
+“is just about as good as nothing. They’ve got off clean, and there’s
+an end. Only,” he added, “I’m glad I trod on Master Pew’s corns,” for by
+this time he had heard my story.
+
+I went back with him to the Admiral Benbow, and you cannot imagine a
+house in such a state of smash; the very clock had been thrown down
+by these fellows in their furious hunt after my mother and myself;
+and though nothing had actually been taken away except the captain’s
+money-bag and a little silver from the till, I could see at once that we
+were ruined. Mr. Dance could make nothing of the scene.
+
+“They got the money, you say? Well, then, Hawkins, what in fortune were
+they after? More money, I suppose?”
+
+“No, sir; not money, I think,” replied I. “In fact, sir, I believe I
+have the thing in my breast pocket; and to tell you the truth, I should
+like to get it put in safety.”
+
+“To be sure, boy; quite right,” said he. “I’ll take it, if you like.”
+
+“I thought perhaps Dr. Livesey--” I began.
+
+“Perfectly right,” he interrupted very cheerily, “perfectly right--a
+gentleman and a magistrate. And, now I come to think of it, I might as
+well ride round there myself and report to him or squire. Master Pew’s
+dead, when all’s done; not that I regret it, but he’s dead, you see, and
+people will make it out against an officer of his Majesty’s revenue,
+if make it out they can. Now, I’ll tell you, Hawkins, if you like, I’ll
+take you along.”
+
+I thanked him heartily for the offer, and we walked back to the hamlet
+where the horses were. By the time I had told mother of my purpose they
+were all in the saddle.
+
+“Dogger,” said Mr. Dance, “you have a good horse; take up this lad
+behind you.”
+
+As soon as I was mounted, holding on to Dogger’s belt, the supervisor
+gave the word, and the party struck out at a bouncing trot on the road
+to Dr. Livesey’s house.
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+The Captain’s Papers
+
+WE rode hard all the way till we drew up before Dr. Livesey’s door. The
+house was all dark to the front.
+
+Mr. Dance told me to jump down and knock, and Dogger gave me a stirrup
+to descend by. The door was opened almost at once by the maid.
+
+“Is Dr. Livesey in?” I asked.
+
+No, she said, he had come home in the afternoon but had gone up to the
+hall to dine and pass the evening with the squire.
+
+“So there we go, boys,” said Mr. Dance.
+
+This time, as the distance was short, I did not mount, but ran with
+Dogger’s stirrup-leather to the lodge gates and up the long, leafless,
+moonlit avenue to where the white line of the hall buildings looked on
+either hand on great old gardens. Here Mr. Dance dismounted, and taking
+me along with him, was admitted at a word into the house.
+
+The servant led us down a matted passage and showed us at the end into a
+great library, all lined with bookcases and busts upon the top of them,
+where the squire and Dr. Livesey sat, pipe in hand, on either side of a
+bright fire.
+
+I had never seen the squire so near at hand. He was a tall man, over six
+feet high, and broad in proportion, and he had a bluff, rough-and-ready
+face, all roughened and reddened and lined in his long travels. His
+eyebrows were very black, and moved readily, and this gave him a look of
+some temper, not bad, you would say, but quick and high.
+
+“Come in, Mr. Dance,” says he, very stately and condescending.
+
+“Good evening, Dance,” says the doctor with a nod. “And good evening to
+you, friend Jim. What good wind brings you here?”
+
+The supervisor stood up straight and stiff and told his story like a
+lesson; and you should have seen how the two gentlemen leaned forward
+and looked at each other, and forgot to smoke in their surprise and
+interest. When they heard how my mother went back to the inn, Dr.
+Livesey fairly slapped his thigh, and the squire cried “Bravo!” and
+broke his long pipe against the grate. Long before it was done, Mr.
+Trelawney (that, you will remember, was the squire’s name) had got up
+from his seat and was striding about the room, and the doctor, as if to
+hear the better, had taken off his powdered wig and sat there looking
+very strange indeed with his own close-cropped black poll.
+
+At last Mr. Dance finished the story.
+
+“Mr. Dance,” said the squire, “you are a very noble fellow. And as for
+riding down that black, atrocious miscreant, I regard it as an act of
+virtue, sir, like stamping on a cockroach. This lad Hawkins is a trump,
+I perceive. Hawkins, will you ring that bell? Mr. Dance must have some
+ale.”
+
+“And so, Jim,” said the doctor, “you have the thing that they were
+after, have you?”
+
+“Here it is, sir,” said I, and gave him the oilskin packet.
+
+The doctor looked it all over, as if his fingers were itching to open
+it; but instead of doing that, he put it quietly in the pocket of his
+coat.
+
+“Squire,” said he, “when Dance has had his ale he must, of course, be
+off on his Majesty’s service; but I mean to keep Jim Hawkins here to
+sleep at my house, and with your permission, I propose we should have up
+the cold pie and let him sup.”
+
+“As you will, Livesey,” said the squire; “Hawkins has earned better than
+cold pie.”
+
+So a big pigeon pie was brought in and put on a sidetable, and I made
+a hearty supper, for I was as hungry as a hawk, while Mr. Dance was
+further complimented and at last dismissed.
+
+“And now, squire,” said the doctor.
+
+“And now, Livesey,” said the squire in the same breath.
+
+“One at a time, one at a time,” laughed Dr. Livesey. “You have heard of
+this Flint, I suppose?”
+
+“Heard of him!” cried the squire. “Heard of him, you say! He was the
+bloodthirstiest buccaneer that sailed. Blackbeard was a child to Flint.
+The Spaniards were so prodigiously afraid of him that, I tell you, sir,
+I was sometimes proud he was an Englishman. I’ve seen his top-sails with
+these eyes, off Trinidad, and the cowardly son of a rum-puncheon that I
+sailed with put back--put back, sir, into Port of Spain.”
+
+“Well, I’ve heard of him myself, in England,” said the doctor. “But the
+point is, had he money?”
+
+“Money!” cried the squire. “Have you heard the story? What were these
+villains after but money? What do they care for but money? For what
+would they risk their rascal carcasses but money?”
+
+“That we shall soon know,” replied the doctor. “But you are so
+confoundedly hot-headed and exclamatory that I cannot get a word in.
+What I want to know is this: Supposing that I have here in my pocket
+some clue to where Flint buried his treasure, will that treasure amount
+to much?”
+
+“Amount, sir!” cried the squire. “It will amount to this: If we have the
+clue you talk about, I fit out a ship in Bristol dock, and take you and
+Hawkins here along, and I’ll have that treasure if I search a year.”
+
+“Very well,” said the doctor. “Now, then, if Jim is agreeable, we’ll
+open the packet”; and he laid it before him on the table.
+
+The bundle was sewn together, and the doctor had to get out his
+instrument case and cut the stitches with his medical scissors. It
+contained two things--a book and a sealed paper.
+
+“First of all we’ll try the book,” observed the doctor.
+
+The squire and I were both peering over his shoulder as he opened
+it, for Dr. Livesey had kindly motioned me to come round from the
+side-table, where I had been eating, to enjoy the sport of the search.
+On the first page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a man
+with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or practice. One was the
+same as the tattoo mark, “Billy Bones his fancy”; then there was “Mr. W.
+Bones, mate,” “No more rum,” “Off Palm Key he got itt,” and some other
+snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible. I could not help
+wondering who it was that had “got itt,” and what “itt” was that he got.
+A knife in his back as like as not.
+
+“Not much instruction there,” said Dr. Livesey as he passed on.
+
+The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious series of
+entries. There was a date at one end of the line and at the other a
+sum of money, as in common account-books, but instead of explanatory
+writing, only a varying number of crosses between the two. On the 12th
+of June, 1745, for instance, a sum of seventy pounds had plainly become
+due to someone, and there was nothing but six crosses to explain the
+cause. In a few cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added,
+as “Offe Caraccas,” or a mere entry of latitude and longitude, as “62o
+17′ 20″, 19o 2′ 40″.”
+
+The record lasted over nearly twenty years, the amount of the separate
+entries growing larger as time went on, and at the end a grand total
+had been made out after five or six wrong additions, and these words
+appended, “Bones, his pile.”
+
+“I can’t make head or tail of this,” said Dr. Livesey.
+
+“The thing is as clear as noonday,” cried the squire. “This is the
+black-hearted hound’s account-book. These crosses stand for the names of
+ships or towns that they sank or plundered. The sums are the scoundrel’s
+share, and where he feared an ambiguity, you see he added something
+clearer. ‘Offe Caraccas,’ now; you see, here was some unhappy vessel
+boarded off that coast. God help the poor souls that manned her--coral
+long ago.”
+
+“Right!” said the doctor. “See what it is to be a traveller. Right! And
+the amounts increase, you see, as he rose in rank.”
+
+There was little else in the volume but a few bearings of places noted
+in the blank leaves towards the end and a table for reducing French,
+English, and Spanish moneys to a common value.
+
+“Thrifty man!” cried the doctor. “He wasn’t the one to be cheated.”
+
+“And now,” said the squire, “for the other.”
+
+The paper had been sealed in several places with a thimble by way of
+seal; the very thimble, perhaps, that I had found in the captain’s
+pocket. The doctor opened the seals with great care, and there fell out
+the map of an island, with latitude and longitude, soundings, names of
+hills and bays and inlets, and every particular that would be needed
+to bring a ship to a safe anchorage upon its shores. It was about nine
+miles long and five across, shaped, you might say, like a fat dragon
+standing up, and had two fine land-locked harbours, and a hill in the
+centre part marked “The Spy-glass.” There were several additions of a
+later date, but above all, three crosses of red ink--two on the north
+part of the island, one in the southwest--and beside this last, in
+the same red ink, and in a small, neat hand, very different from the
+captain’s tottery characters, these words: “Bulk of treasure here.”
+
+Over on the back the same hand had written this further information:
+
+     Tall tree, Spy-glass shoulder, bearing a point to
+     the N. of N.N.E.
+
+     Skeleton Island E.S.E. and by E.
+
+     Ten feet.
+
+     The bar silver is in the north cache; you can find
+     it by the trend of the east hummock, ten fathoms
+     south of the black crag with the face on it.
+
+     The arms are easy found, in the sand-hill, N.
+     point of north inlet cape, bearing E. and a
+     quarter N.
+     J.F.
+
+That was all; but brief as it was, and to me incomprehensible, it filled
+the squire and Dr. Livesey with delight.
+
+“Livesey,” said the squire, “you will give up this wretched practice
+at once. Tomorrow I start for Bristol. In three weeks’ time--three
+weeks!--two weeks--ten days--we’ll have the best ship, sir, and the
+choicest crew in England. Hawkins shall come as cabin-boy. You’ll make
+a famous cabin-boy, Hawkins. You, Livesey, are ship’s doctor; I am
+admiral. We’ll take Redruth, Joyce, and Hunter. We’ll have favourable
+winds, a quick passage, and not the least difficulty in finding the
+spot, and money to eat, to roll in, to play duck and drake with ever
+after.”
+
+“Trelawney,” said the doctor, “I’ll go with you; and I’ll go bail for
+it, so will Jim, and be a credit to the undertaking. There’s only one
+man I’m afraid of.”
+
+“And who’s that?” cried the squire. “Name the dog, sir!”
+
+“You,” replied the doctor; “for you cannot hold your tongue. We are not
+the only men who know of this paper. These fellows who attacked the
+inn tonight--bold, desperate blades, for sure--and the rest who stayed
+aboard that lugger, and more, I dare say, not far off, are, one and all,
+through thick and thin, bound that they’ll get that money. We must none
+of us go alone till we get to sea. Jim and I shall stick together in the
+meanwhile; you’ll take Joyce and Hunter when you ride to Bristol, and
+from first to last, not one of us must breathe a word of what we’ve
+found.”
+
+“Livesey,” returned the squire, “you are always in the right of it. I’ll
+be as silent as the grave.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO--The Sea-cook
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+I Go to Bristol
+
+IT was longer than the squire imagined ere we were ready for the sea,
+and none of our first plans--not even Dr. Livesey’s, of keeping me
+beside him--could be carried out as we intended. The doctor had to go
+to London for a physician to take charge of his practice; the squire was
+hard at work at Bristol; and I lived on at the hall under the charge of
+old Redruth, the gamekeeper, almost a prisoner, but full of sea-dreams
+and the most charming anticipations of strange islands and adventures.
+I brooded by the hour together over the map, all the details of which
+I well remembered. Sitting by the fire in the housekeeper’s room, I
+approached that island in my fancy from every possible direction; I
+explored every acre of its surface; I climbed a thousand times to that
+tall hill they call the Spy-glass, and from the top enjoyed the most
+wonderful and changing prospects. Sometimes the isle was thick with
+savages, with whom we fought, sometimes full of dangerous animals that
+hunted us, but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange and
+tragic as our actual adventures.
+
+So the weeks passed on, till one fine day there came a letter addressed
+to Dr. Livesey, with this addition, “To be opened, in the case of his
+absence, by Tom Redruth or young Hawkins.” Obeying this order, we
+found, or rather I found--for the gamekeeper was a poor hand at reading
+anything but print--the following important news:
+
+     Old Anchor Inn, Bristol, March 1, 17--
+
+     Dear Livesey--As I do not know whether you
+     are at the hall or still in London, I send this in
+     double to both places.
+
+     The ship is bought and fitted.  She lies at
+     anchor, ready for sea.  You never imagined a
+     sweeter schooner--a child might sail her--two
+     hundred tons; name, HISPANIOLA.
+
+     I got her through my old friend, Blandly, who
+     has proved himself throughout the most surprising
+     trump.  The admirable fellow literally slaved in
+     my interest, and so, I may say, did everyone in
+     Bristol, as soon as they got wind of the port we
+     sailed for--treasure, I mean.
+
+“Redruth,” said I, interrupting the letter, “Dr. Livesey will not like
+that. The squire has been talking, after all.”
+
+“Well, who’s a better right?” growled the gamekeeper. “A pretty rum go
+if squire ain’t to talk for Dr. Livesey, I should think.”
+
+At that I gave up all attempts at commentary and read straight on:
+
+     Blandly himself found the HISPANIOLA, and
+     by the most admirable management got her for the
+     merest trifle.  There is a class of men in Bristol
+     monstrously prejudiced against Blandly.  They go
+     the length of declaring that this honest creature
+     would do anything for money, that the HISPANIOLA
+     belonged to him, and that he sold it me absurdly
+     high--the most transparent calumnies.  None of them
+     dare, however, to deny the merits of the ship.
+
+     So far there was not a hitch.  The
+     workpeople, to be sure--riggers and what not--were
+     most annoyingly slow; but time cured that.  It was
+     the crew that troubled me.
+
+     I wished a round score of men--in case of
+     natives, buccaneers, or the odious French--and I
+     had the worry of the deuce itself to find so much
+     as half a dozen, till the most remarkable stroke
+     of fortune brought me the very man that I
+     required.
+
+     I was standing on the dock, when, by the
+     merest accident, I fell in talk with him.  I found
+     he was an old sailor, kept a public-house, knew
+     all the seafaring men in Bristol, had lost his
+     health ashore, and wanted a good berth as cook to
+     get to sea again.  He had hobbled down there that
+     morning, he said, to get a smell of the salt.
+
+     I was monstrously touched--so would you have
+     been--and, out of pure pity, I engaged him on the
+     spot to be ship’s cook.  Long John Silver, he is
+     called, and has lost a leg; but that I regarded as
+     a recommendation, since he lost it in his
+     country’s service, under the immortal Hawke.  He
+     has no pension, Livesey.  Imagine the abominable
+     age we live in!
+
+     Well, sir, I thought I had only found a cook,
+     but it was a crew I had discovered.  Between
+     Silver and myself we got together in a few days a
+     company of the toughest old salts imaginable--not
+     pretty to look at, but fellows, by their faces, of
+     the most indomitable spirit.  I declare we could
+     fight a frigate.
+
+     Long John even got rid of two out of the six
+     or seven I had already engaged.  He showed me in a
+     moment that they were just the sort of fresh-water
+     swabs we had to fear in an adventure of
+     importance.
+
+     I am in the most magnificent health and
+     spirits, eating like a bull, sleeping like a tree,
+     yet I shall not enjoy a moment till I hear my old
+     tarpaulins tramping round the capstan.  Seaward,
+     ho!  Hang the treasure!  It’s the glory of the sea
+     that has turned my head.  So now, Livesey, come
+     post; do not lose an hour, if you respect me.
+
+     Let young Hawkins go at once to see his
+     mother, with Redruth for a guard; and then both
+     come full speed to Bristol.
+     John Trelawney
+
+     Postscript--I did not tell you that Blandly,
+     who, by the way, is to send a consort after us if
+     we don’t turn up by the end of August, had found
+     an admirable fellow for sailing master--a stiff
+     man, which I regret, but in all other respects a
+     treasure.  Long John Silver unearthed a very
+     competent man for a mate, a man named Arrow.  I
+     have a boatswain who pipes, Livesey; so things
+     shall go man-o’-war fashion on board the good ship
+     HISPANIOLA.
+
+     I forgot to tell you that Silver is a man of
+     substance; I know of my own knowledge that he has
+     a banker’s account, which has never been
+     overdrawn.  He leaves his wife to manage the inn;
+     and as she is a woman of colour, a pair of old
+     bachelors like you and I may be excused for
+     guessing that it is the wife, quite as much as the
+     health, that sends him back to roving.
+     J. T.
+
+     P.P.S.--Hawkins may stay one night with his
+     mother.
+     J. T.
+
+You can fancy the excitement into which that letter put me. I was half
+beside myself with glee; and if ever I despised a man, it was old
+Tom Redruth, who could do nothing but grumble and lament. Any of the
+under-gamekeepers would gladly have changed places with him; but such
+was not the squire’s pleasure, and the squire’s pleasure was like law
+among them all. Nobody but old Redruth would have dared so much as even
+to grumble.
+
+The next morning he and I set out on foot for the Admiral Benbow, and
+there I found my mother in good health and spirits. The captain, who had
+so long been a cause of so much discomfort, was gone where the wicked
+cease from troubling. The squire had had everything repaired, and the
+public rooms and the sign repainted, and had added some furniture--above
+all a beautiful armchair for mother in the bar. He had found her a boy
+as an apprentice also so that she should not want help while I was gone.
+
+It was on seeing that boy that I understood, for the first time, my
+situation. I had thought up to that moment of the adventures before me,
+not at all of the home that I was leaving; and now, at sight of this
+clumsy stranger, who was to stay here in my place beside my mother, I
+had my first attack of tears. I am afraid I led that boy a dog’s life,
+for as he was new to the work, I had a hundred opportunities of setting
+him right and putting him down, and I was not slow to profit by them.
+
+The night passed, and the next day, after dinner, Redruth and I were
+afoot again and on the road. I said good-bye to Mother and the
+cove where I had lived since I was born, and the dear old Admiral
+Benbow--since he was repainted, no longer quite so dear. One of my last
+thoughts was of the captain, who had so often strode along the beach
+with his cocked hat, his sabre-cut cheek, and his old brass telescope.
+Next moment we had turned the corner and my home was out of sight.
+
+The mail picked us up about dusk at the Royal George on the heath. I was
+wedged in between Redruth and a stout old gentleman, and in spite of the
+swift motion and the cold night air, I must have dozed a great deal from
+the very first, and then slept like a log up hill and down dale through
+stage after stage, for when I was awakened at last it was by a punch
+in the ribs, and I opened my eyes to find that we were standing still
+before a large building in a city street and that the day had already
+broken a long time.
+
+“Where are we?” I asked.
+
+“Bristol,” said Tom. “Get down.”
+
+Mr. Trelawney had taken up his residence at an inn far down the docks to
+superintend the work upon the schooner. Thither we had now to walk, and
+our way, to my great delight, lay along the quays and beside the great
+multitude of ships of all sizes and rigs and nations. In one, sailors
+were singing at their work, in another there were men aloft, high over
+my head, hanging to threads that seemed no thicker than a spider’s.
+Though I had lived by the shore all my life, I seemed never to have been
+near the sea till then. The smell of tar and salt was something new.
+I saw the most wonderful figureheads, that had all been far over the
+ocean. I saw, besides, many old sailors, with rings in their ears, and
+whiskers curled in ringlets, and tarry pigtails, and their swaggering,
+clumsy sea-walk; and if I had seen as many kings or archbishops I could
+not have been more delighted.
+
+And I was going to sea myself, to sea in a schooner, with a piping
+boatswain and pig-tailed singing seamen, to sea, bound for an unknown
+island, and to seek for buried treasure!
+
+While I was still in this delightful dream, we came suddenly in front
+of a large inn and met Squire Trelawney, all dressed out like a
+sea-officer, in stout blue cloth, coming out of the door with a smile on
+his face and a capital imitation of a sailor’s walk.
+
+“Here you are,” he cried, “and the doctor came last night from London.
+Bravo! The ship’s company complete!”
+
+“Oh, sir,” cried I, “when do we sail?”
+
+“Sail!” says he. “We sail tomorrow!”
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+At the Sign of the Spy-glass
+
+WHEN I had done breakfasting the squire gave me a note addressed to John
+Silver, at the sign of the Spy-glass, and told me I should easily
+find the place by following the line of the docks and keeping a bright
+lookout for a little tavern with a large brass telescope for sign. I
+set off, overjoyed at this opportunity to see some more of the ships and
+seamen, and picked my way among a great crowd of people and carts and
+bales, for the dock was now at its busiest, until I found the tavern in
+question.
+
+It was a bright enough little place of entertainment. The sign was
+newly painted; the windows had neat red curtains; the floor was cleanly
+sanded. There was a street on each side and an open door on both, which
+made the large, low room pretty clear to see in, in spite of clouds of
+tobacco smoke.
+
+The customers were mostly seafaring men, and they talked so loudly that
+I hung at the door, almost afraid to enter.
+
+As I was waiting, a man came out of a side room, and at a glance I was
+sure he must be Long John. His left leg was cut off close by the hip,
+and under the left shoulder he carried a crutch, which he managed with
+wonderful dexterity, hopping about upon it like a bird. He was very tall
+and strong, with a face as big as a ham--plain and pale, but intelligent
+and smiling. Indeed, he seemed in the most cheerful spirits, whistling
+as he moved about among the tables, with a merry word or a slap on the
+shoulder for the more favoured of his guests.
+
+Now, to tell you the truth, from the very first mention of Long John in
+Squire Trelawney’s letter I had taken a fear in my mind that he might
+prove to be the very one-legged sailor whom I had watched for so long at
+the old Benbow. But one look at the man before me was enough. I had seen
+the captain, and Black Dog, and the blind man, Pew, and I thought I knew
+what a buccaneer was like--a very different creature, according to me,
+from this clean and pleasant-tempered landlord.
+
+I plucked up courage at once, crossed the threshold, and walked right up
+to the man where he stood, propped on his crutch, talking to a customer.
+
+“Mr. Silver, sir?” I asked, holding out the note.
+
+“Yes, my lad,” said he; “such is my name, to be sure. And who may you
+be?” And then as he saw the squire’s letter, he seemed to me to give
+something almost like a start.
+
+“Oh!” said he, quite loud, and offering his hand. “I see. You are our
+new cabin-boy; pleased I am to see you.”
+
+And he took my hand in his large firm grasp.
+
+Just then one of the customers at the far side rose suddenly and made
+for the door. It was close by him, and he was out in the street in a
+moment. But his hurry had attracted my notice, and I recognized him at
+glance. It was the tallow-faced man, wanting two fingers, who had come
+first to the Admiral Benbow.
+
+“Oh,” I cried, “stop him! It’s Black Dog!”
+
+“I don’t care two coppers who he is,” cried Silver. “But he hasn’t paid
+his score. Harry, run and catch him.”
+
+One of the others who was nearest the door leaped up and started in
+pursuit.
+
+“If he were Admiral Hawke he shall pay his score,” cried Silver; and
+then, relinquishing my hand, “Who did you say he was?” he asked. “Black
+what?”
+
+“Dog, sir,” said I. “Has Mr. Trelawney not told you of the buccaneers?
+He was one of them.”
+
+“So?” cried Silver. “In my house! Ben, run and help Harry. One of those
+swabs, was he? Was that you drinking with him, Morgan? Step up here.”
+
+The man whom he called Morgan--an old, grey-haired, mahogany-faced
+sailor--came forward pretty sheepishly, rolling his quid.
+
+“Now, Morgan,” said Long John very sternly, “you never clapped your eyes
+on that Black--Black Dog before, did you, now?”
+
+“Not I, sir,” said Morgan with a salute.
+
+“You didn’t know his name, did you?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“By the powers, Tom Morgan, it’s as good for you!” exclaimed the
+landlord. “If you had been mixed up with the like of that, you would
+never have put another foot in my house, you may lay to that. And what
+was he saying to you?”
+
+“I don’t rightly know, sir,” answered Morgan.
+
+“Do you call that a head on your shoulders, or a blessed dead-eye?”
+ cried Long John. “Don’t rightly know, don’t you! Perhaps you don’t
+happen to rightly know who you was speaking to, perhaps? Come, now, what
+was he jawing--v’yages, cap’ns, ships? Pipe up! What was it?”
+
+“We was a-talkin’ of keel-hauling,” answered Morgan.
+
+“Keel-hauling, was you? And a mighty suitable thing, too, and you may
+lay to that. Get back to your place for a lubber, Tom.”
+
+And then, as Morgan rolled back to his seat, Silver added to me in a
+confidential whisper that was very flattering, as I thought, “He’s
+quite an honest man, Tom Morgan, on’y stupid. And now,” he ran on again,
+aloud, “let’s see--Black Dog? No, I don’t know the name, not I. Yet I
+kind of think I’ve--yes, I’ve seen the swab. He used to come here with a
+blind beggar, he used.”
+
+“That he did, you may be sure,” said I. “I knew that blind man too. His
+name was Pew.”
+
+“It was!” cried Silver, now quite excited. “Pew! That were his name for
+certain. Ah, he looked a shark, he did! If we run down this Black Dog,
+now, there’ll be news for Cap’n Trelawney! Ben’s a good runner; few
+seamen run better than Ben. He should run him down, hand over hand, by
+the powers! He talked o’ keel-hauling, did he? I’LL keel-haul him!”
+
+All the time he was jerking out these phrases he was stumping up and
+down the tavern on his crutch, slapping tables with his hand, and giving
+such a show of excitement as would have convinced an Old Bailey judge
+or a Bow Street runner. My suspicions had been thoroughly reawakened on
+finding Black Dog at the Spy-glass, and I watched the cook narrowly. But
+he was too deep, and too ready, and too clever for me, and by the time
+the two men had come back out of breath and confessed that they had lost
+the track in a crowd, and been scolded like thieves, I would have gone
+bail for the innocence of Long John Silver.
+
+“See here, now, Hawkins,” said he, “here’s a blessed hard thing on a
+man like me, now, ain’t it? There’s Cap’n Trelawney--what’s he to think?
+Here I have this confounded son of a Dutchman sitting in my own house
+drinking of my own rum! Here you comes and tells me of it plain; and
+here I let him give us all the slip before my blessed deadlights! Now,
+Hawkins, you do me justice with the cap’n. You’re a lad, you are, but
+you’re as smart as paint. I see that when you first come in. Now, here
+it is: What could I do, with this old timber I hobble on? When I was an
+A B master mariner I’d have come up alongside of him, hand over hand,
+and broached him to in a brace of old shakes, I would; but now--”
+
+And then, all of a sudden, he stopped, and his jaw dropped as though he
+had remembered something.
+
+“The score!” he burst out. “Three goes o’ rum! Why, shiver my timbers,
+if I hadn’t forgotten my score!”
+
+And falling on a bench, he laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks.
+I could not help joining, and we laughed together, peal after peal,
+until the tavern rang again.
+
+“Why, what a precious old sea-calf I am!” he said at last, wiping his
+cheeks. “You and me should get on well, Hawkins, for I’ll take my davy
+I should be rated ship’s boy. But come now, stand by to go about. This
+won’t do. Dooty is dooty, messmates. I’ll put on my old cockerel hat,
+and step along of you to Cap’n Trelawney, and report this here affair.
+For mind you, it’s serious, young Hawkins; and neither you nor me’s come
+out of it with what I should make so bold as to call credit. Nor you
+neither, says you; not smart--none of the pair of us smart. But dash my
+buttons! That was a good un about my score.”
+
+And he began to laugh again, and that so heartily, that though I did not
+see the joke as he did, I was again obliged to join him in his mirth.
+
+On our little walk along the quays, he made himself the most interesting
+companion, telling me about the different ships that we passed by,
+their rig, tonnage, and nationality, explaining the work that was going
+forward--how one was discharging, another taking in cargo, and a third
+making ready for sea--and every now and then telling me some little
+anecdote of ships or seamen or repeating a nautical phrase till I had
+learned it perfectly. I began to see that here was one of the best of
+possible shipmates.
+
+When we got to the inn, the squire and Dr. Livesey were seated together,
+finishing a quart of ale with a toast in it, before they should go
+aboard the schooner on a visit of inspection.
+
+Long John told the story from first to last, with a great deal of spirit
+and the most perfect truth. “That was how it were, now, weren’t it,
+Hawkins?” he would say, now and again, and I could always bear him
+entirely out.
+
+The two gentlemen regretted that Black Dog had got away, but we all
+agreed there was nothing to be done, and after he had been complimented,
+Long John took up his crutch and departed.
+
+“All hands aboard by four this afternoon,” shouted the squire after him.
+
+“Aye, aye, sir,” cried the cook, in the passage.
+
+“Well, squire,” said Dr. Livesey, “I don’t put much faith in your
+discoveries, as a general thing; but I will say this, John Silver suits
+me.”
+
+“The man’s a perfect trump,” declared the squire.
+
+“And now,” added the doctor, “Jim may come on board with us, may he
+not?”
+
+“To be sure he may,” says squire. “Take your hat, Hawkins, and we’ll see
+the ship.”
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+Powder and Arms
+
+THE HISPANIOLA lay some way out, and we went under the figureheads and
+round the sterns of many other ships, and their cables sometimes grated
+underneath our keel, and sometimes swung above us. At last, however,
+we got alongside, and were met and saluted as we stepped aboard by the
+mate, Mr. Arrow, a brown old sailor with earrings in his ears and a
+squint. He and the squire were very thick and friendly, but I soon
+observed that things were not the same between Mr. Trelawney and the
+captain.
+
+This last was a sharp-looking man who seemed angry with everything on
+board and was soon to tell us why, for we had hardly got down into the
+cabin when a sailor followed us.
+
+“Captain Smollett, sir, axing to speak with you,” said he.
+
+“I am always at the captain’s orders. Show him in,” said the squire.
+
+The captain, who was close behind his messenger, entered at once and
+shut the door behind him.
+
+“Well, Captain Smollett, what have you to say? All well, I hope; all
+shipshape and seaworthy?”
+
+“Well, sir,” said the captain, “better speak plain, I believe, even at
+the risk of offence. I don’t like this cruise; I don’t like the men; and
+I don’t like my officer. That’s short and sweet.”
+
+“Perhaps, sir, you don’t like the ship?” inquired the squire, very
+angry, as I could see.
+
+“I can’t speak as to that, sir, not having seen her tried,” said the
+captain. “She seems a clever craft; more I can’t say.”
+
+“Possibly, sir, you may not like your employer, either?” says the
+squire.
+
+But here Dr. Livesey cut in.
+
+“Stay a bit,” said he, “stay a bit. No use of such questions as that but
+to produce ill feeling. The captain has said too much or he has said too
+little, and I’m bound to say that I require an explanation of his words.
+You don’t, you say, like this cruise. Now, why?”
+
+“I was engaged, sir, on what we call sealed orders, to sail this ship
+for that gentleman where he should bid me,” said the captain. “So far
+so good. But now I find that every man before the mast knows more than I
+do. I don’t call that fair, now, do you?”
+
+“No,” said Dr. Livesey, “I don’t.”
+
+“Next,” said the captain, “I learn we are going after treasure--hear
+it from my own hands, mind you. Now, treasure is ticklish work; I don’t
+like treasure voyages on any account, and I don’t like them, above all,
+when they are secret and when (begging your pardon, Mr. Trelawney) the
+secret has been told to the parrot.”
+
+“Silver’s parrot?” asked the squire.
+
+“It’s a way of speaking,” said the captain. “Blabbed, I mean. It’s my
+belief neither of you gentlemen know what you are about, but I’ll tell
+you my way of it--life or death, and a close run.”
+
+“That is all clear, and, I dare say, true enough,” replied Dr. Livesey.
+“We take the risk, but we are not so ignorant as you believe us. Next,
+you say you don’t like the crew. Are they not good seamen?”
+
+“I don’t like them, sir,” returned Captain Smollett. “And I think I
+should have had the choosing of my own hands, if you go to that.”
+
+“Perhaps you should,” replied the doctor. “My friend should, perhaps,
+have taken you along with him; but the slight, if there be one, was
+unintentional. And you don’t like Mr. Arrow?”
+
+“I don’t, sir. I believe he’s a good seaman, but he’s too free with
+the crew to be a good officer. A mate should keep himself to
+himself--shouldn’t drink with the men before the mast!”
+
+“Do you mean he drinks?” cried the squire.
+
+“No, sir,” replied the captain, “only that he’s too familiar.”
+
+“Well, now, and the short and long of it, captain?” asked the doctor.
+“Tell us what you want.”
+
+“Well, gentlemen, are you determined to go on this cruise?”
+
+“Like iron,” answered the squire.
+
+“Very good,” said the captain. “Then, as you’ve heard me very patiently,
+saying things that I could not prove, hear me a few words more. They are
+putting the powder and the arms in the fore hold. Now, you have a good
+place under the cabin; why not put them there?--first point. Then, you
+are bringing four of your own people with you, and they tell me some of
+them are to be berthed forward. Why not give them the berths here beside
+the cabin?--second point.”
+
+“Any more?” asked Mr. Trelawney.
+
+“One more,” said the captain. “There’s been too much blabbing already.”
+
+“Far too much,” agreed the doctor.
+
+“I’ll tell you what I’ve heard myself,” continued Captain Smollett:
+“that you have a map of an island, that there’s crosses on the map to
+show where treasure is, and that the island lies--” And then he named
+the latitude and longitude exactly.
+
+“I never told that,” cried the squire, “to a soul!”
+
+“The hands know it, sir,” returned the captain.
+
+“Livesey, that must have been you or Hawkins,” cried the squire.
+
+“It doesn’t much matter who it was,” replied the doctor. And I could
+see that neither he nor the captain paid much regard to Mr. Trelawney’s
+protestations. Neither did I, to be sure, he was so loose a talker; yet
+in this case I believe he was really right and that nobody had told the
+situation of the island.
+
+“Well, gentlemen,” continued the captain, “I don’t know who has this
+map; but I make it a point, it shall be kept secret even from me and Mr.
+Arrow. Otherwise I would ask you to let me resign.”
+
+“I see,” said the doctor. “You wish us to keep this matter dark and to
+make a garrison of the stern part of the ship, manned with my friend’s
+own people, and provided with all the arms and powder on board. In other
+words, you fear a mutiny.”
+
+“Sir,” said Captain Smollett, “with no intention to take offence, I
+deny your right to put words into my mouth. No captain, sir, would be
+justified in going to sea at all if he had ground enough to say that. As
+for Mr. Arrow, I believe him thoroughly honest; some of the men are the
+same; all may be for what I know. But I am responsible for the ship’s
+safety and the life of every man Jack aboard of her. I see things going,
+as I think, not quite right. And I ask you to take certain precautions
+or let me resign my berth. And that’s all.”
+
+“Captain Smollett,” began the doctor with a smile, “did ever you hear
+the fable of the mountain and the mouse? You’ll excuse me, I dare say,
+but you remind me of that fable. When you came in here, I’ll stake my
+wig, you meant more than this.”
+
+“Doctor,” said the captain, “you are smart. When I came in here I meant
+to get discharged. I had no thought that Mr. Trelawney would hear a
+word.”
+
+“No more I would,” cried the squire. “Had Livesey not been here I should
+have seen you to the deuce. As it is, I have heard you. I will do as you
+desire, but I think the worse of you.”
+
+“That’s as you please, sir,” said the captain. “You’ll find I do my
+duty.”
+
+And with that he took his leave.
+
+“Trelawney,” said the doctor, “contrary to all my notions, I believed
+you have managed to get two honest men on board with you--that man and
+John Silver.”
+
+“Silver, if you like,” cried the squire; “but as for that intolerable
+humbug, I declare I think his conduct unmanly, unsailorly, and downright
+un-English.”
+
+“Well,” says the doctor, “we shall see.”
+
+When we came on deck, the men had begun already to take out the arms and
+powder, yo-ho-ing at their work, while the captain and Mr. Arrow stood
+by superintending.
+
+The new arrangement was quite to my liking. The whole schooner had been
+overhauled; six berths had been made astern out of what had been the
+after-part of the main hold; and this set of cabins was only joined to
+the galley and forecastle by a sparred passage on the port side. It had
+been originally meant that the captain, Mr. Arrow, Hunter, Joyce, the
+doctor, and the squire were to occupy these six berths. Now Redruth and
+I were to get two of them and Mr. Arrow and the captain were to sleep
+on deck in the companion, which had been enlarged on each side till you
+might almost have called it a round-house. Very low it was still, of
+course; but there was room to swing two hammocks, and even the mate
+seemed pleased with the arrangement. Even he, perhaps, had been doubtful
+as to the crew, but that is only guess, for as you shall hear, we had
+not long the benefit of his opinion.
+
+We were all hard at work, changing the powder and the berths, when
+the last man or two, and Long John along with them, came off in a
+shore-boat.
+
+The cook came up the side like a monkey for cleverness, and as soon as
+he saw what was doing, “So ho, mates!” says he. “What’s this?”
+
+“We’re a-changing of the powder, Jack,” answers one.
+
+“Why, by the powers,” cried Long John, “if we do, we’ll miss the morning
+tide!”
+
+“My orders!” said the captain shortly. “You may go below, my man. Hands
+will want supper.”
+
+“Aye, aye, sir,” answered the cook, and touching his forelock, he
+disappeared at once in the direction of his galley.
+
+“That’s a good man, captain,” said the doctor.
+
+“Very likely, sir,” replied Captain Smollett. “Easy with that,
+men--easy,” he ran on, to the fellows who were shifting the powder; and
+then suddenly observing me examining the swivel we carried amidships,
+a long brass nine, “Here you, ship’s boy,” he cried, “out o’ that! Off
+with you to the cook and get some work.”
+
+And then as I was hurrying off I heard him say, quite loudly, to the
+doctor, “I’ll have no favourites on my ship.”
+
+I assure you I was quite of the squire’s way of thinking, and hated the
+captain deeply.
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+The Voyage
+
+ALL that night we were in a great bustle getting things stowed in their
+place, and boatfuls of the squire’s friends, Mr. Blandly and the like,
+coming off to wish him a good voyage and a safe return. We never had
+a night at the Admiral Benbow when I had half the work; and I was
+dog-tired when, a little before dawn, the boatswain sounded his pipe
+and the crew began to man the capstan-bars. I might have been twice
+as weary, yet I would not have left the deck, all was so new and
+interesting to me--the brief commands, the shrill note of the whistle,
+the men bustling to their places in the glimmer of the ship’s lanterns.
+
+“Now, Barbecue, tip us a stave,” cried one voice.
+
+“The old one,” cried another.
+
+“Aye, aye, mates,” said Long John, who was standing by, with his crutch
+under his arm, and at once broke out in the air and words I knew so
+well:
+
+“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest--”
+
+And then the whole crew bore chorus:--
+
+“Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
+
+And at the third “Ho!” drove the bars before them with a will.
+
+Even at that exciting moment it carried me back to the old Admiral
+Benbow in a second, and I seemed to hear the voice of the captain piping
+in the chorus. But soon the anchor was short up; soon it was hanging
+dripping at the bows; soon the sails began to draw, and the land and
+shipping to flit by on either side; and before I could lie down to
+snatch an hour of slumber the HISPANIOLA had begun her voyage to the
+Isle of Treasure.
+
+I am not going to relate that voyage in detail. It was fairly
+prosperous. The ship proved to be a good ship, the crew were capable
+seamen, and the captain thoroughly understood his business. But before
+we came the length of Treasure Island, two or three things had happened
+which require to be known.
+
+Mr. Arrow, first of all, turned out even worse than the captain had
+feared. He had no command among the men, and people did what they
+pleased with him. But that was by no means the worst of it, for after a
+day or two at sea he began to appear on deck with hazy eye, red cheeks,
+stuttering tongue, and other marks of drunkenness. Time after time
+he was ordered below in disgrace. Sometimes he fell and cut himself;
+sometimes he lay all day long in his little bunk at one side of the
+companion; sometimes for a day or two he would be almost sober and
+attend to his work at least passably.
+
+In the meantime, we could never make out where he got the drink. That
+was the ship’s mystery. Watch him as we pleased, we could do nothing to
+solve it; and when we asked him to his face, he would only laugh if
+he were drunk, and if he were sober deny solemnly that he ever tasted
+anything but water.
+
+He was not only useless as an officer and a bad influence amongst
+the men, but it was plain that at this rate he must soon kill himself
+outright, so nobody was much surprised, nor very sorry, when one dark
+night, with a head sea, he disappeared entirely and was seen no more.
+
+“Overboard!” said the captain. “Well, gentlemen, that saves the trouble
+of putting him in irons.”
+
+But there we were, without a mate; and it was necessary, of course, to
+advance one of the men. The boatswain, Job Anderson, was the likeliest
+man aboard, and though he kept his old title, he served in a way as
+mate. Mr. Trelawney had followed the sea, and his knowledge made him
+very useful, for he often took a watch himself in easy weather. And the
+coxswain, Israel Hands, was a careful, wily, old, experienced seaman who
+could be trusted at a pinch with almost anything.
+
+He was a great confidant of Long John Silver, and so the mention of
+his name leads me on to speak of our ship’s cook, Barbecue, as the men
+called him.
+
+Aboard ship he carried his crutch by a lanyard round his neck, to have
+both hands as free as possible. It was something to see him wedge the
+foot of the crutch against a bulkhead, and propped against it, yielding
+to every movement of the ship, get on with his cooking like someone safe
+ashore. Still more strange was it to see him in the heaviest of weather
+cross the deck. He had a line or two rigged up to help him across the
+widest spaces--Long John’s earrings, they were called; and he would hand
+himself from one place to another, now using the crutch, now trailing it
+alongside by the lanyard, as quickly as another man could walk. Yet some
+of the men who had sailed with him before expressed their pity to see
+him so reduced.
+
+“He’s no common man, Barbecue,” said the coxswain to me. “He had good
+schooling in his young days and can speak like a book when so minded;
+and brave--a lion’s nothing alongside of Long John! I seen him grapple
+four and knock their heads together--him unarmed.”
+
+All the crew respected and even obeyed him. He had a way of talking
+to each and doing everybody some particular service. To me he was
+unweariedly kind, and always glad to see me in the galley, which he kept
+as clean as a new pin, the dishes hanging up burnished and his parrot in
+a cage in one corner.
+
+“Come away, Hawkins,” he would say; “come and have a yarn with John.
+Nobody more welcome than yourself, my son. Sit you down and hear the
+news. Here’s Cap’n Flint--I calls my parrot Cap’n Flint, after the
+famous buccaneer--here’s Cap’n Flint predicting success to our v’yage.
+Wasn’t you, cap’n?”
+
+And the parrot would say, with great rapidity, “Pieces of eight! Pieces
+of eight! Pieces of eight!” till you wondered that it was not out of
+breath, or till John threw his handkerchief over the cage.
+
+“Now, that bird,” he would say, “is, maybe, two hundred years
+old, Hawkins--they live forever mostly; and if anybody’s seen more
+wickedness, it must be the devil himself. She’s sailed with England,
+the great Cap’n England, the pirate. She’s been at Madagascar, and at
+Malabar, and Surinam, and Providence, and Portobello. She was at the
+fishing up of the wrecked plate ships. It’s there she learned ‘Pieces
+of eight,’ and little wonder; three hundred and fifty thousand of ’em,
+Hawkins! She was at the boarding of the viceroy of the Indies out of
+Goa, she was; and to look at her you would think she was a babby. But
+you smelt powder--didn’t you, cap’n?”
+
+“Stand by to go about,” the parrot would scream.
+
+“Ah, she’s a handsome craft, she is,” the cook would say, and give her
+sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and
+swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness. “There,” John would
+add, “you can’t touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. Here’s this poor old
+innocent bird o’ mine swearing blue fire, and none the wiser, you may
+lay to that. She would swear the same, in a manner of speaking, before
+chaplain.” And John would touch his forelock with a solemn way he had
+that made me think he was the best of men.
+
+In the meantime, the squire and Captain Smollett were still on pretty
+distant terms with one another. The squire made no bones about the
+matter; he despised the captain. The captain, on his part, never spoke
+but when he was spoken to, and then sharp and short and dry, and not a
+word wasted. He owned, when driven into a corner, that he seemed to have
+been wrong about the crew, that some of them were as brisk as he wanted
+to see and all had behaved fairly well. As for the ship, he had taken a
+downright fancy to her. “She’ll lie a point nearer the wind than a man
+has a right to expect of his own married wife, sir. But,” he would add,
+“all I say is, we’re not home again, and I don’t like the cruise.”
+
+The squire, at this, would turn away and march up and down the deck,
+chin in air.
+
+“A trifle more of that man,” he would say, “and I shall explode.”
+
+We had some heavy weather, which only proved the qualities of the
+HISPANIOLA. Every man on board seemed well content, and they must have
+been hard to please if they had been otherwise, for it is my belief
+there was never a ship’s company so spoiled since Noah put to sea.
+Double grog was going on the least excuse; there was duff on odd days,
+as, for instance, if the squire heard it was any man’s birthday, and
+always a barrel of apples standing broached in the waist for anyone to
+help himself that had a fancy.
+
+“Never knew good come of it yet,” the captain said to Dr. Livesey.
+“Spoil forecastle hands, make devils. That’s my belief.”
+
+But good did come of the apple barrel, as you shall hear, for if it had
+not been for that, we should have had no note of warning and might all
+have perished by the hand of treachery.
+
+This was how it came about.
+
+We had run up the trades to get the wind of the island we were after--I
+am not allowed to be more plain--and now we were running down for it
+with a bright lookout day and night. It was about the last day of our
+outward voyage by the largest computation; some time that night, or at
+latest before noon of the morrow, we should sight the Treasure Island.
+We were heading S.S.W. and had a steady breeze abeam and a quiet sea.
+The HISPANIOLA rolled steadily, dipping her bowsprit now and then with
+a whiff of spray. All was drawing alow and aloft; everyone was in the
+bravest spirits because we were now so near an end of the first part of
+our adventure.
+
+Now, just after sundown, when all my work was over and I was on my way
+to my berth, it occurred to me that I should like an apple. I ran on
+deck. The watch was all forward looking out for the island. The man at
+the helm was watching the luff of the sail and whistling away gently
+to himself, and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea
+against the bows and around the sides of the ship.
+
+In I got bodily into the apple barrel, and found there was scarce an
+apple left; but sitting down there in the dark, what with the sound of
+the waters and the rocking movement of the ship, I had either fallen
+asleep or was on the point of doing so when a heavy man sat down with
+rather a clash close by. The barrel shook as he leaned his shoulders
+against it, and I was just about to jump up when the man began to speak.
+It was Silver’s voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would
+not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, trembling and
+listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity, for from these dozen
+words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended
+upon me alone.
+
+
+
+
+11
+
+What I Heard in the Apple Barrel
+
+“NO, not I,” said Silver. “Flint was cap’n; I was quartermaster, along
+of my timber leg. The same broadside I lost my leg, old Pew lost his
+deadlights. It was a master surgeon, him that ampytated me--out of
+college and all--Latin by the bucket, and what not; but he was hanged
+like a dog, and sun-dried like the rest, at Corso Castle. That
+was Roberts’ men, that was, and comed of changing names to their
+ships--ROYAL FORTUNE and so on. Now, what a ship was christened, so let
+her stay, I says. So it was with the CASSANDRA, as brought us all safe
+home from Malabar, after England took the viceroy of the Indies; so it
+was with the old WALRUS, Flint’s old ship, as I’ve seen amuck with the
+red blood and fit to sink with gold.”
+
+“Ah!” cried another voice, that of the youngest hand on board, and
+evidently full of admiration. “He was the flower of the flock, was
+Flint!”
+
+“Davis was a man too, by all accounts,” said Silver. “I never sailed
+along of him; first with England, then with Flint, that’s my story;
+and now here on my own account, in a manner of speaking. I laid by nine
+hundred safe, from England, and two thousand after Flint. That ain’t bad
+for a man before the mast--all safe in bank. ’Tain’t earning now, it’s
+saving does it, you may lay to that. Where’s all England’s men now? I
+dunno. Where’s Flint’s? Why, most on ’em aboard here, and glad to get
+the duff--been begging before that, some on ’em. Old Pew, as had lost
+his sight, and might have thought shame, spends twelve hundred pound in
+a year, like a lord in Parliament. Where is he now? Well, he’s dead now
+and under hatches; but for two year before that, shiver my timbers,
+the man was starving! He begged, and he stole, and he cut throats, and
+starved at that, by the powers!”
+
+“Well, it ain’t much use, after all,” said the young seaman.
+
+“’Tain’t much use for fools, you may lay to it--that, nor nothing,”
+ cried Silver. “But now, you look here: you’re young, you are, but you’re
+as smart as paint. I see that when I set my eyes on you, and I’ll talk
+to you like a man.”
+
+You may imagine how I felt when I heard this abominable old rogue
+addressing another in the very same words of flattery as he had used
+to myself. I think, if I had been able, that I would have killed
+him through the barrel. Meantime, he ran on, little supposing he was
+overheard.
+
+“Here it is about gentlemen of fortune. They lives rough, and they risk
+swinging, but they eat and drink like fighting-cocks, and when a cruise
+is done, why, it’s hundreds of pounds instead of hundreds of farthings
+in their pockets. Now, the most goes for rum and a good fling, and to
+sea again in their shirts. But that’s not the course I lay. I puts it
+all away, some here, some there, and none too much anywheres, by reason
+of suspicion. I’m fifty, mark you; once back from this cruise, I set up
+gentleman in earnest. Time enough too, says you. Ah, but I’ve lived easy
+in the meantime, never denied myself o’ nothing heart desires, and slep’
+soft and ate dainty all my days but when at sea. And how did I begin?
+Before the mast, like you!”
+
+“Well,” said the other, “but all the other money’s gone now, ain’t it?
+You daren’t show face in Bristol after this.”
+
+“Why, where might you suppose it was?” asked Silver derisively.
+
+“At Bristol, in banks and places,” answered his companion.
+
+“It were,” said the cook; “it were when we weighed anchor. But my old
+missis has it all by now. And the Spy-glass is sold, lease and goodwill
+and rigging; and the old girl’s off to meet me. I would tell you where,
+for I trust you, but it’d make jealousy among the mates.”
+
+“And can you trust your missis?” asked the other.
+
+“Gentlemen of fortune,” returned the cook, “usually trusts little among
+themselves, and right they are, you may lay to it. But I have a way with
+me, I have. When a mate brings a slip on his cable--one as knows me, I
+mean--it won’t be in the same world with old John. There was some that
+was feared of Pew, and some that was feared of Flint; but Flint his own
+self was feared of me. Feared he was, and proud. They was the roughest
+crew afloat, was Flint’s; the devil himself would have been feared to go
+to sea with them. Well now, I tell you, I’m not a boasting man, and you
+seen yourself how easy I keep company, but when I was quartermaster,
+LAMBS wasn’t the word for Flint’s old buccaneers. Ah, you may be sure of
+yourself in old John’s ship.”
+
+“Well, I tell you now,” replied the lad, “I didn’t half a quarter like
+the job till I had this talk with you, John; but there’s my hand on it
+now.”
+
+“And a brave lad you were, and smart too,” answered Silver, shaking
+hands so heartily that all the barrel shook, “and a finer figurehead for
+a gentleman of fortune I never clapped my eyes on.”
+
+By this time I had begun to understand the meaning of their terms. By a
+“gentleman of fortune” they plainly meant neither more nor less than a
+common pirate, and the little scene that I had overheard was the last
+act in the corruption of one of the honest hands--perhaps of the last
+one left aboard. But on this point I was soon to be relieved, for Silver
+giving a little whistle, a third man strolled up and sat down by the
+party.
+
+“Dick’s square,” said Silver.
+
+“Oh, I know’d Dick was square,” returned the voice of the coxswain,
+Israel Hands. “He’s no fool, is Dick.” And he turned his quid and spat.
+“But look here,” he went on, “here’s what I want to know, Barbecue: how
+long are we a-going to stand off and on like a blessed bumboat? I’ve had
+a’most enough o’ Cap’n Smollett; he’s hazed me long enough, by thunder!
+I want to go into that cabin, I do. I want their pickles and wines, and
+that.”
+
+“Israel,” said Silver, “your head ain’t much account, nor ever was. But
+you’re able to hear, I reckon; leastways, your ears is big enough.
+Now, here’s what I say: you’ll berth forward, and you’ll live hard, and
+you’ll speak soft, and you’ll keep sober till I give the word; and you
+may lay to that, my son.”
+
+“Well, I don’t say no, do I?” growled the coxswain. “What I say is,
+when? That’s what I say.”
+
+“When! By the powers!” cried Silver. “Well now, if you want to know,
+I’ll tell you when. The last moment I can manage, and that’s when.
+Here’s a first-rate seaman, Cap’n Smollett, sails the blessed ship for
+us. Here’s this squire and doctor with a map and such--I don’t know
+where it is, do I? No more do you, says you. Well then, I mean this
+squire and doctor shall find the stuff, and help us to get it aboard,
+by the powers. Then we’ll see. If I was sure of you all, sons of double
+Dutchmen, I’d have Cap’n Smollett navigate us half-way back again before
+I struck.”
+
+“Why, we’re all seamen aboard here, I should think,” said the lad Dick.
+
+“We’re all forecastle hands, you mean,” snapped Silver. “We can steer
+a course, but who’s to set one? That’s what all you gentlemen split on,
+first and last. If I had my way, I’d have Cap’n Smollett work us back
+into the trades at least; then we’d have no blessed miscalculations and
+a spoonful of water a day. But I know the sort you are. I’ll finish with
+’em at the island, as soon’s the blunt’s on board, and a pity it is. But
+you’re never happy till you’re drunk. Split my sides, I’ve a sick heart
+to sail with the likes of you!”
+
+“Easy all, Long John,” cried Israel. “Who’s a-crossin’ of you?”
+
+“Why, how many tall ships, think ye, now, have I seen laid aboard? And
+how many brisk lads drying in the sun at Execution Dock?” cried Silver.
+“And all for this same hurry and hurry and hurry. You hear me? I seen
+a thing or two at sea, I have. If you would on’y lay your course, and a
+p’int to windward, you would ride in carriages, you would. But not you!
+I know you. You’ll have your mouthful of rum tomorrow, and go hang.”
+
+“Everybody knowed you was a kind of a chapling, John; but there’s others
+as could hand and steer as well as you,” said Israel. “They liked a bit
+o’ fun, they did. They wasn’t so high and dry, nohow, but took their
+fling, like jolly companions every one.”
+
+“So?” says Silver. “Well, and where are they now? Pew was that sort,
+and he died a beggar-man. Flint was, and he died of rum at Savannah. Ah,
+they was a sweet crew, they was! On’y, where are they?”
+
+“But,” asked Dick, “when we do lay ’em athwart, what are we to do with
+’em, anyhow?”
+
+“There’s the man for me!” cried the cook admiringly. “That’s what I call
+business. Well, what would you think? Put ’em ashore like maroons? That
+would have been England’s way. Or cut ’em down like that much pork? That
+would have been Flint’s, or Billy Bones’s.”
+
+“Billy was the man for that,” said Israel. “‘Dead men don’t bite,’ says
+he. Well, he’s dead now hisself; he knows the long and short on it now;
+and if ever a rough hand come to port, it was Billy.”
+
+“Right you are,” said Silver; “rough and ready. But mark you here,
+I’m an easy man--I’m quite the gentleman, says you; but this time it’s
+serious. Dooty is dooty, mates. I give my vote--death. When I’m in
+Parlyment and riding in my coach, I don’t want none of these sea-lawyers
+in the cabin a-coming home, unlooked for, like the devil at prayers.
+Wait is what I say; but when the time comes, why, let her rip!”
+
+“John,” cries the coxswain, “you’re a man!”
+
+“You’ll say so, Israel when you see,” said Silver. “Only one thing I
+claim--I claim Trelawney. I’ll wring his calf’s head off his body with
+these hands, Dick!” he added, breaking off. “You just jump up, like a
+sweet lad, and get me an apple, to wet my pipe like.”
+
+You may fancy the terror I was in! I should have leaped out and run for
+it if I had found the strength, but my limbs and heart alike misgave me.
+I heard Dick begin to rise, and then someone seemingly stopped him, and
+the voice of Hands exclaimed, “Oh, stow that! Don’t you get sucking of
+that bilge, John. Let’s have a go of the rum.”
+
+“Dick,” said Silver, “I trust you. I’ve a gauge on the keg, mind.
+There’s the key; you fill a pannikin and bring it up.”
+
+Terrified as I was, I could not help thinking to myself that this must
+have been how Mr. Arrow got the strong waters that destroyed him.
+
+Dick was gone but a little while, and during his absence Israel spoke
+straight on in the cook’s ear. It was but a word or two that I could
+catch, and yet I gathered some important news, for besides other scraps
+that tended to the same purpose, this whole clause was audible: “Not
+another man of them’ll jine.” Hence there were still faithful men on
+board.
+
+When Dick returned, one after another of the trio took the pannikin and
+drank--one “To luck,” another with a “Here’s to old Flint,” and Silver
+himself saying, in a kind of song, “Here’s to ourselves, and hold your
+luff, plenty of prizes and plenty of duff.”
+
+Just then a sort of brightness fell upon me in the barrel, and looking
+up, I found the moon had risen and was silvering the mizzen-top and
+shining white on the luff of the fore-sail; and almost at the same time
+the voice of the lookout shouted, “Land ho!”
+
+
+
+
+12
+
+Council of War
+
+THERE was a great rush of feet across the deck. I could hear people
+tumbling up from the cabin and the forecastle, and slipping in an
+instant outside my barrel, I dived behind the fore-sail, made a double
+towards the stern, and came out upon the open deck in time to join
+Hunter and Dr. Livesey in the rush for the weather bow.
+
+There all hands were already congregated. A belt of fog had lifted
+almost simultaneously with the appearance of the moon. Away to the
+south-west of us we saw two low hills, about a couple of miles apart,
+and rising behind one of them a third and higher hill, whose peak was
+still buried in the fog. All three seemed sharp and conical in figure.
+
+So much I saw, almost in a dream, for I had not yet recovered from my
+horrid fear of a minute or two before. And then I heard the voice of
+Captain Smollett issuing orders. The HISPANIOLA was laid a couple of
+points nearer the wind and now sailed a course that would just clear the
+island on the east.
+
+“And now, men,” said the captain, when all was sheeted home, “has any
+one of you ever seen that land ahead?”
+
+“I have, sir,” said Silver. “I’ve watered there with a trader I was cook
+in.”
+
+“The anchorage is on the south, behind an islet, I fancy?” asked the
+captain.
+
+“Yes, sir; Skeleton Island they calls it. It were a main place for
+pirates once, and a hand we had on board knowed all their names for it.
+That hill to the nor’ard they calls the Fore-mast Hill; there are three
+hills in a row running south’ard--fore, main, and mizzen, sir. But the
+main--that’s the big un, with the cloud on it--they usually calls
+the Spy-glass, by reason of a lookout they kept when they was in the
+anchorage cleaning, for it’s there they cleaned their ships, sir, asking
+your pardon.”
+
+“I have a chart here,” says Captain Smollett. “See if that’s the place.”
+
+Long John’s eyes burned in his head as he took the chart, but by the
+fresh look of the paper I knew he was doomed to disappointment. This
+was not the map we found in Billy Bones’s chest, but an accurate copy,
+complete in all things--names and heights and soundings--with the single
+exception of the red crosses and the written notes. Sharp as must have
+been his annoyance, Silver had the strength of mind to hide it.
+
+“Yes, sir,” said he, “this is the spot, to be sure, and very prettily
+drawed out. Who might have done that, I wonder? The pirates were too
+ignorant, I reckon. Aye, here it is: ‘Capt. Kidd’s Anchorage’--just
+the name my shipmate called it. There’s a strong current runs along the
+south, and then away nor’ard up the west coast. Right you was, sir,”
+ says he, “to haul your wind and keep the weather of the island.
+Leastways, if such was your intention as to enter and careen, and there
+ain’t no better place for that in these waters.”
+
+“Thank you, my man,” says Captain Smollett. “I’ll ask you later on to
+give us a help. You may go.”
+
+I was surprised at the coolness with which John avowed his knowledge
+of the island, and I own I was half-frightened when I saw him drawing
+nearer to myself. He did not know, to be sure, that I had overheard his
+council from the apple barrel, and yet I had by this time taken such a
+horror of his cruelty, duplicity, and power that I could scarce conceal
+a shudder when he laid his hand upon my arm.
+
+“Ah,” says he, “this here is a sweet spot, this island--a sweet spot for
+a lad to get ashore on. You’ll bathe, and you’ll climb trees, and you’ll
+hunt goats, you will; and you’ll get aloft on them hills like a goat
+yourself. Why, it makes me young again. I was going to forget my timber
+leg, I was. It’s a pleasant thing to be young and have ten toes, and you
+may lay to that. When you want to go a bit of exploring, you just ask
+old John, and he’ll put up a snack for you to take along.”
+
+And clapping me in the friendliest way upon the shoulder, he hobbled off
+forward and went below.
+
+Captain Smollett, the squire, and Dr. Livesey were talking together on
+the quarter-deck, and anxious as I was to tell them my story, I durst
+not interrupt them openly. While I was still casting about in my
+thoughts to find some probable excuse, Dr. Livesey called me to his
+side. He had left his pipe below, and being a slave to tobacco, had
+meant that I should fetch it; but as soon as I was near enough to speak
+and not to be overheard, I broke immediately, “Doctor, let me speak. Get
+the captain and squire down to the cabin, and then make some pretence to
+send for me. I have terrible news.”
+
+The doctor changed countenance a little, but next moment he was master
+of himself.
+
+“Thank you, Jim,” said he quite loudly, “that was all I wanted to know,”
+ as if he had asked me a question.
+
+And with that he turned on his heel and rejoined the other two. They
+spoke together for a little, and though none of them started, or raised
+his voice, or so much as whistled, it was plain enough that Dr. Livesey
+had communicated my request, for the next thing that I heard was the
+captain giving an order to Job Anderson, and all hands were piped on
+deck.
+
+“My lads,” said Captain Smollett, “I’ve a word to say to you. This
+land that we have sighted is the place we have been sailing for. Mr.
+Trelawney, being a very open-handed gentleman, as we all know, has just
+asked me a word or two, and as I was able to tell him that every man on
+board had done his duty, alow and aloft, as I never ask to see it done
+better, why, he and I and the doctor are going below to the cabin to
+drink YOUR health and luck, and you’ll have grog served out for you to
+drink OUR health and luck. I’ll tell you what I think of this: I think
+it handsome. And if you think as I do, you’ll give a good sea-cheer for
+the gentleman that does it.”
+
+The cheer followed--that was a matter of course; but it rang out so full
+and hearty that I confess I could hardly believe these same men were
+plotting for our blood.
+
+“One more cheer for Cap’n Smollett,” cried Long John when the first had
+subsided.
+
+And this also was given with a will.
+
+On the top of that the three gentlemen went below, and not long after,
+word was sent forward that Jim Hawkins was wanted in the cabin.
+
+I found them all three seated round the table, a bottle of Spanish wine
+and some raisins before them, and the doctor smoking away, with his wig
+on his lap, and that, I knew, was a sign that he was agitated. The stern
+window was open, for it was a warm night, and you could see the moon
+shining behind on the ship’s wake.
+
+“Now, Hawkins,” said the squire, “you have something to say. Speak up.”
+
+I did as I was bid, and as short as I could make it, told the whole
+details of Silver’s conversation. Nobody interrupted me till I was done,
+nor did any one of the three of them make so much as a movement, but
+they kept their eyes upon my face from first to last.
+
+“Jim,” said Dr. Livesey, “take a seat.”
+
+And they made me sit down at table beside them, poured me out a glass of
+wine, filled my hands with raisins, and all three, one after the other,
+and each with a bow, drank my good health, and their service to me, for
+my luck and courage.
+
+“Now, captain,” said the squire, “you were right, and I was wrong. I own
+myself an ass, and I await your orders.”
+
+“No more an ass than I, sir,” returned the captain. “I never heard of a
+crew that meant to mutiny but what showed signs before, for any man that
+had an eye in his head to see the mischief and take steps according. But
+this crew,” he added, “beats me.”
+
+“Captain,” said the doctor, “with your permission, that’s Silver. A very
+remarkable man.”
+
+“He’d look remarkably well from a yard-arm, sir,” returned the captain.
+“But this is talk; this don’t lead to anything. I see three or four
+points, and with Mr. Trelawney’s permission, I’ll name them.”
+
+“You, sir, are the captain. It is for you to speak,” says Mr. Trelawney
+grandly.
+
+“First point,” began Mr. Smollett. “We must go on, because we can’t turn
+back. If I gave the word to go about, they would rise at once. Second
+point, we have time before us--at least until this treasure’s found.
+Third point, there are faithful hands. Now, sir, it’s got to come
+to blows sooner or later, and what I propose is to take time by the
+forelock, as the saying is, and come to blows some fine day when they
+least expect it. We can count, I take it, on your own home servants, Mr.
+Trelawney?”
+
+“As upon myself,” declared the squire.
+
+“Three,” reckoned the captain; “ourselves make seven, counting Hawkins
+here. Now, about the honest hands?”
+
+“Most likely Trelawney’s own men,” said the doctor; “those he had picked
+up for himself before he lit on Silver.”
+
+“Nay,” replied the squire. “Hands was one of mine.”
+
+“I did think I could have trusted Hands,” added the captain.
+
+“And to think that they’re all Englishmen!” broke out the squire. “Sir,
+I could find it in my heart to blow the ship up.”
+
+“Well, gentlemen,” said the captain, “the best that I can say is not
+much. We must lay to, if you please, and keep a bright lookout. It’s
+trying on a man, I know. It would be pleasanter to come to blows. But
+there’s no help for it till we know our men. Lay to, and whistle for a
+wind, that’s my view.”
+
+“Jim here,” said the doctor, “can help us more than anyone. The men are
+not shy with him, and Jim is a noticing lad.”
+
+“Hawkins, I put prodigious faith in you,” added the squire.
+
+I began to feel pretty desperate at this, for I felt altogether
+helpless; and yet, by an odd train of circumstances, it was indeed
+through me that safety came. In the meantime, talk as we pleased, there
+were only seven out of the twenty-six on whom we knew we could rely; and
+out of these seven one was a boy, so that the grown men on our side were
+six to their nineteen.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE--My Shore Adventure
+
+
+
+
+13
+
+How My Shore Adventure Began
+
+THE appearance of the island when I came on deck next morning was
+altogether changed. Although the breeze had now utterly ceased, we had
+made a great deal of way during the night and were now lying becalmed
+about half a mile to the south-east of the low eastern coast.
+Grey-coloured woods covered a large part of the surface. This even tint
+was indeed broken up by streaks of yellow sand-break in the lower lands,
+and by many tall trees of the pine family, out-topping the others--some
+singly, some in clumps; but the general colouring was uniform and sad.
+The hills ran up clear above the vegetation in spires of naked rock.
+All were strangely shaped, and the Spy-glass, which was by three or four
+hundred feet the tallest on the island, was likewise the strangest in
+configuration, running up sheer from almost every side and then suddenly
+cut off at the top like a pedestal to put a statue on.
+
+The HISPANIOLA was rolling scuppers under in the ocean swell. The booms
+were tearing at the blocks, the rudder was banging to and fro, and the
+whole ship creaking, groaning, and jumping like a manufactory. I had
+to cling tight to the backstay, and the world turned giddily before my
+eyes, for though I was a good enough sailor when there was way on, this
+standing still and being rolled about like a bottle was a thing I never
+learned to stand without a qualm or so, above all in the morning, on an
+empty stomach.
+
+Perhaps it was this--perhaps it was the look of the island, with its
+grey, melancholy woods, and wild stone spires, and the surf that we
+could both see and hear foaming and thundering on the steep beach--at
+least, although the sun shone bright and hot, and the shore birds were
+fishing and crying all around us, and you would have thought anyone
+would have been glad to get to land after being so long at sea, my heart
+sank, as the saying is, into my boots; and from the first look onward, I
+hated the very thought of Treasure Island.
+
+We had a dreary morning’s work before us, for there was no sign of any
+wind, and the boats had to be got out and manned, and the ship warped
+three or four miles round the corner of the island and up the narrow
+passage to the haven behind Skeleton Island. I volunteered for one of
+the boats, where I had, of course, no business. The heat was sweltering,
+and the men grumbled fiercely over their work. Anderson was in command
+of my boat, and instead of keeping the crew in order, he grumbled as
+loud as the worst.
+
+“Well,” he said with an oath, “it’s not forever.”
+
+I thought this was a very bad sign, for up to that day the men had gone
+briskly and willingly about their business; but the very sight of the
+island had relaxed the cords of discipline.
+
+All the way in, Long John stood by the steersman and conned the ship.
+He knew the passage like the palm of his hand, and though the man in the
+chains got everywhere more water than was down in the chart, John never
+hesitated once.
+
+“There’s a strong scour with the ebb,” he said, “and this here passage
+has been dug out, in a manner of speaking, with a spade.”
+
+We brought up just where the anchor was in the chart, about a third of
+a mile from each shore, the mainland on one side and Skeleton Island on
+the other. The bottom was clean sand. The plunge of our anchor sent up
+clouds of birds wheeling and crying over the woods, but in less than a
+minute they were down again and all was once more silent.
+
+The place was entirely land-locked, buried in woods, the trees coming
+right down to high-water mark, the shores mostly flat, and the hilltops
+standing round at a distance in a sort of amphitheatre, one here, one
+there. Two little rivers, or rather two swamps, emptied out into this
+pond, as you might call it; and the foliage round that part of the shore
+had a kind of poisonous brightness. From the ship we could see nothing
+of the house or stockade, for they were quite buried among trees; and if
+it had not been for the chart on the companion, we might have been the
+first that had ever anchored there since the island arose out of the
+seas.
+
+There was not a breath of air moving, nor a sound but that of the
+surf booming half a mile away along the beaches and against the rocks
+outside. A peculiar stagnant smell hung over the anchorage--a smell of
+sodden leaves and rotting tree trunks. I observed the doctor sniffing
+and sniffing, like someone tasting a bad egg.
+
+“I don’t know about treasure,” he said, “but I’ll stake my wig there’s
+fever here.”
+
+If the conduct of the men had been alarming in the boat, it became truly
+threatening when they had come aboard. They lay about the deck growling
+together in talk. The slightest order was received with a black look and
+grudgingly and carelessly obeyed. Even the honest hands must have caught
+the infection, for there was not one man aboard to mend another. Mutiny,
+it was plain, hung over us like a thunder-cloud.
+
+And it was not only we of the cabin party who perceived the danger. Long
+John was hard at work going from group to group, spending himself in
+good advice, and as for example no man could have shown a better. He
+fairly outstripped himself in willingness and civility; he was all
+smiles to everyone. If an order were given, John would be on his crutch
+in an instant, with the cheeriest “Aye, aye, sir!” in the world; and
+when there was nothing else to do, he kept up one song after another, as
+if to conceal the discontent of the rest.
+
+Of all the gloomy features of that gloomy afternoon, this obvious
+anxiety on the part of Long John appeared the worst.
+
+We held a council in the cabin.
+
+“Sir,” said the captain, “if I risk another order, the whole ship’ll
+come about our ears by the run. You see, sir, here it is. I get a rough
+answer, do I not? Well, if I speak back, pikes will be going in two
+shakes; if I don’t, Silver will see there’s something under that, and
+the game’s up. Now, we’ve only one man to rely on.”
+
+“And who is that?” asked the squire.
+
+“Silver, sir,” returned the captain; “he’s as anxious as you and I to
+smother things up. This is a tiff; he’d soon talk ’em out of it if he
+had the chance, and what I propose to do is to give him the chance.
+Let’s allow the men an afternoon ashore. If they all go, why we’ll fight
+the ship. If they none of them go, well then, we hold the cabin, and God
+defend the right. If some go, you mark my words, sir, Silver’ll bring
+’em aboard again as mild as lambs.”
+
+It was so decided; loaded pistols were served out to all the sure men;
+Hunter, Joyce, and Redruth were taken into our confidence and received
+the news with less surprise and a better spirit than we had looked for,
+and then the captain went on deck and addressed the crew.
+
+“My lads,” said he, “we’ve had a hot day and are all tired and out of
+sorts. A turn ashore’ll hurt nobody--the boats are still in the water;
+you can take the gigs, and as many as please may go ashore for the
+afternoon. I’ll fire a gun half an hour before sundown.”
+
+I believe the silly fellows must have thought they would break their
+shins over treasure as soon as they were landed, for they all came out
+of their sulks in a moment and gave a cheer that started the echo in a
+faraway hill and sent the birds once more flying and squalling round the
+anchorage.
+
+The captain was too bright to be in the way. He whipped out of sight
+in a moment, leaving Silver to arrange the party, and I fancy it was as
+well he did so. Had he been on deck, he could no longer so much as
+have pretended not to understand the situation. It was as plain as day.
+Silver was the captain, and a mighty rebellious crew he had of it. The
+honest hands--and I was soon to see it proved that there were such on
+board--must have been very stupid fellows. Or rather, I suppose the
+truth was this, that all hands were disaffected by the example of the
+ringleaders--only some more, some less; and a few, being good fellows in
+the main, could neither be led nor driven any further. It is one thing
+to be idle and skulk and quite another to take a ship and murder a
+number of innocent men.
+
+At last, however, the party was made up. Six fellows were to stay on
+board, and the remaining thirteen, including Silver, began to embark.
+
+Then it was that there came into my head the first of the mad notions
+that contributed so much to save our lives. If six men were left by
+Silver, it was plain our party could not take and fight the ship; and
+since only six were left, it was equally plain that the cabin party
+had no present need of my assistance. It occurred to me at once to go
+ashore. In a jiffy I had slipped over the side and curled up in the
+fore-sheets of the nearest boat, and almost at the same moment she
+shoved off.
+
+No one took notice of me, only the bow oar saying, “Is that you, Jim?
+Keep your head down.” But Silver, from the other boat, looked sharply
+over and called out to know if that were me; and from that moment I
+began to regret what I had done.
+
+The crews raced for the beach, but the boat I was in, having some start
+and being at once the lighter and the better manned, shot far ahead of
+her consort, and the bow had struck among the shore-side trees and I
+had caught a branch and swung myself out and plunged into the nearest
+thicket while Silver and the rest were still a hundred yards behind.
+
+“Jim, Jim!” I heard him shouting.
+
+But you may suppose I paid no heed; jumping, ducking, and breaking
+through, I ran straight before my nose till I could run no longer.
+
+
+
+
+14
+
+The First Blow
+
+I WAS so pleased at having given the slip to Long John that I began to
+enjoy myself and look around me with some interest on the strange land
+that I was in.
+
+I had crossed a marshy tract full of willows, bulrushes, and odd,
+outlandish, swampy trees; and I had now come out upon the skirts of an
+open piece of undulating, sandy country, about a mile long, dotted with
+a few pines and a great number of contorted trees, not unlike the oak
+in growth, but pale in the foliage, like willows. On the far side of
+the open stood one of the hills, with two quaint, craggy peaks shining
+vividly in the sun.
+
+I now felt for the first time the joy of exploration. The isle was
+uninhabited; my shipmates I had left behind, and nothing lived in front
+of me but dumb brutes and fowls. I turned hither and thither among the
+trees. Here and there were flowering plants, unknown to me; here and
+there I saw snakes, and one raised his head from a ledge of rock and
+hissed at me with a noise not unlike the spinning of a top. Little did
+I suppose that he was a deadly enemy and that the noise was the famous
+rattle.
+
+Then I came to a long thicket of these oaklike trees--live, or
+evergreen, oaks, I heard afterwards they should be called--which grew
+low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the
+foliage compact, like thatch. The thicket stretched down from the top of
+one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until
+it reached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest
+of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh was
+steaming in the strong sun, and the outline of the Spy-glass trembled
+through the haze.
+
+All at once there began to go a sort of bustle among the bulrushes;
+a wild duck flew up with a quack, another followed, and soon over the
+whole surface of the marsh a great cloud of birds hung screaming and
+circling in the air. I judged at once that some of my shipmates must be
+drawing near along the borders of the fen. Nor was I deceived, for soon
+I heard the very distant and low tones of a human voice, which, as I
+continued to give ear, grew steadily louder and nearer.
+
+This put me in a great fear, and I crawled under cover of the nearest
+live-oak and squatted there, hearkening, as silent as a mouse.
+
+Another voice answered, and then the first voice, which I now recognized
+to be Silver’s, once more took up the story and ran on for a long while
+in a stream, only now and again interrupted by the other. By the sound
+they must have been talking earnestly, and almost fiercely; but no
+distinct word came to my hearing.
+
+At last the speakers seemed to have paused and perhaps to have sat down,
+for not only did they cease to draw any nearer, but the birds themselves
+began to grow more quiet and to settle again to their places in the
+swamp.
+
+And now I began to feel that I was neglecting my business, that since
+I had been so foolhardy as to come ashore with these desperadoes, the
+least I could do was to overhear them at their councils, and that my
+plain and obvious duty was to draw as close as I could manage, under the
+favourable ambush of the crouching trees.
+
+I could tell the direction of the speakers pretty exactly, not only by
+the sound of their voices but by the behaviour of the few birds that
+still hung in alarm above the heads of the intruders.
+
+Crawling on all fours, I made steadily but slowly towards them, till at
+last, raising my head to an aperture among the leaves, I could see clear
+down into a little green dell beside the marsh, and closely set about
+with trees, where Long John Silver and another of the crew stood face to
+face in conversation.
+
+The sun beat full upon them. Silver had thrown his hat beside him on the
+ground, and his great, smooth, blond face, all shining with heat, was
+lifted to the other man’s in a kind of appeal.
+
+“Mate,” he was saying, “it’s because I thinks gold dust of you--gold
+dust, and you may lay to that! If I hadn’t took to you like pitch, do
+you think I’d have been here a-warning of you? All’s up--you can’t make
+nor mend; it’s to save your neck that I’m a-speaking, and if one of the
+wild uns knew it, where’d I be, Tom--now, tell me, where’d I be?”
+
+“Silver,” said the other man--and I observed he was not only red in the
+face, but spoke as hoarse as a crow, and his voice shook too, like a
+taut rope--“Silver,” says he, “you’re old, and you’re honest, or has the
+name for it; and you’ve money too, which lots of poor sailors hasn’t;
+and you’re brave, or I’m mistook. And will you tell me you’ll let
+yourself be led away with that kind of a mess of swabs? Not you! As sure
+as God sees me, I’d sooner lose my hand. If I turn agin my dooty--”
+
+And then all of a sudden he was interrupted by a noise. I had found
+one of the honest hands--well, here, at that same moment, came news of
+another. Far away out in the marsh there arose, all of a sudden, a sound
+like the cry of anger, then another on the back of it; and then one
+horrid, long-drawn scream. The rocks of the Spy-glass re-echoed it a
+score of times; the whole troop of marsh-birds rose again, darkening
+heaven, with a simultaneous whirr; and long after that death yell was
+still ringing in my brain, silence had re-established its empire, and
+only the rustle of the redescending birds and the boom of the distant
+surges disturbed the languor of the afternoon.
+
+Tom had leaped at the sound, like a horse at the spur, but Silver had
+not winked an eye. He stood where he was, resting lightly on his crutch,
+watching his companion like a snake about to spring.
+
+“John!” said the sailor, stretching out his hand.
+
+“Hands off!” cried Silver, leaping back a yard, as it seemed to me, with
+the speed and security of a trained gymnast.
+
+“Hands off, if you like, John Silver,” said the other. “It’s a black
+conscience that can make you feared of me. But in heaven’s name, tell
+me, what was that?”
+
+“That?” returned Silver, smiling away, but warier than ever, his eye
+a mere pin-point in his big face, but gleaming like a crumb of glass.
+“That? Oh, I reckon that’ll be Alan.”
+
+And at this point Tom flashed out like a hero.
+
+“Alan!” he cried. “Then rest his soul for a true seaman! And as for you,
+John Silver, long you’ve been a mate of mine, but you’re mate of mine
+no more. If I die like a dog, I’ll die in my dooty. You’ve killed Alan,
+have you? Kill me too, if you can. But I defies you.”
+
+And with that, this brave fellow turned his back directly on the cook
+and set off walking for the beach. But he was not destined to go far.
+With a cry John seized the branch of a tree, whipped the crutch out of
+his armpit, and sent that uncouth missile hurtling through the air.
+It struck poor Tom, point foremost, and with stunning violence, right
+between the shoulders in the middle of his back. His hands flew up, he
+gave a sort of gasp, and fell.
+
+Whether he were injured much or little, none could ever tell. Like
+enough, to judge from the sound, his back was broken on the spot. But he
+had no time given him to recover. Silver, agile as a monkey even without
+leg or crutch, was on the top of him next moment and had twice buried
+his knife up to the hilt in that defenceless body. From my place of
+ambush, I could hear him pant aloud as he struck the blows.
+
+I do not know what it rightly is to faint, but I do know that for the
+next little while the whole world swam away from before me in a whirling
+mist; Silver and the birds, and the tall Spy-glass hilltop, going
+round and round and topsy-turvy before my eyes, and all manner of bells
+ringing and distant voices shouting in my ear.
+
+When I came again to myself the monster had pulled himself together,
+his crutch under his arm, his hat upon his head. Just before him Tom
+lay motionless upon the sward; but the murderer minded him not a whit,
+cleansing his blood-stained knife the while upon a wisp of grass.
+Everything else was unchanged, the sun still shining mercilessly on the
+steaming marsh and the tall pinnacle of the mountain, and I could scarce
+persuade myself that murder had been actually done and a human life
+cruelly cut short a moment since before my eyes.
+
+But now John put his hand into his pocket, brought out a whistle, and
+blew upon it several modulated blasts that rang far across the heated
+air. I could not tell, of course, the meaning of the signal, but
+it instantly awoke my fears. More men would be coming. I might be
+discovered. They had already slain two of the honest people; after Tom
+and Alan, might not I come next?
+
+Instantly I began to extricate myself and crawl back again, with what
+speed and silence I could manage, to the more open portion of the
+wood. As I did so, I could hear hails coming and going between the old
+buccaneer and his comrades, and this sound of danger lent me wings. As
+soon as I was clear of the thicket, I ran as I never ran before, scarce
+minding the direction of my flight, so long as it led me from the
+murderers; and as I ran, fear grew and grew upon me until it turned into
+a kind of frenzy.
+
+Indeed, could anyone be more entirely lost than I? When the gun fired,
+how should I dare to go down to the boats among those fiends, still
+smoking from their crime? Would not the first of them who saw me wring
+my neck like a snipe’s? Would not my absence itself be an evidence to
+them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? It was all over,
+I thought. Good-bye to the HISPANIOLA; good-bye to the squire, the
+doctor, and the captain! There was nothing left for me but death by
+starvation or death by the hands of the mutineers.
+
+All this while, as I say, I was still running, and without taking any
+notice, I had drawn near to the foot of the little hill with the two
+peaks and had got into a part of the island where the live-oaks grew
+more widely apart and seemed more like forest trees in their bearing and
+dimensions. Mingled with these were a few scattered pines, some fifty,
+some nearer seventy, feet high. The air too smelt more freshly than down
+beside the marsh.
+
+And here a fresh alarm brought me to a standstill with a thumping heart.
+
+
+
+
+15
+
+The Man of the Island
+
+FROM the side of the hill, which was here steep and stony, a spout of
+gravel was dislodged and fell rattling and bounding through the trees.
+My eyes turned instinctively in that direction, and I saw a figure leap
+with great rapidity behind the trunk of a pine. What it was, whether
+bear or man or monkey, I could in no wise tell. It seemed dark and
+shaggy; more I knew not. But the terror of this new apparition brought
+me to a stand.
+
+I was now, it seemed, cut off upon both sides; behind me the murderers,
+before me this lurking nondescript. And immediately I began to prefer
+the dangers that I knew to those I knew not. Silver himself appeared
+less terrible in contrast with this creature of the woods, and I turned
+on my heel, and looking sharply behind me over my shoulder, began to
+retrace my steps in the direction of the boats.
+
+Instantly the figure reappeared, and making a wide circuit, began to
+head me off. I was tired, at any rate; but had I been as fresh as when I
+rose, I could see it was in vain for me to contend in speed with such an
+adversary. From trunk to trunk the creature flitted like a deer, running
+manlike on two legs, but unlike any man that I had ever seen, stooping
+almost double as it ran. Yet a man it was, I could no longer be in doubt
+about that.
+
+I began to recall what I had heard of cannibals. I was within an ace of
+calling for help. But the mere fact that he was a man, however wild,
+had somewhat reassured me, and my fear of Silver began to revive in
+proportion. I stood still, therefore, and cast about for some method of
+escape; and as I was so thinking, the recollection of my pistol flashed
+into my mind. As soon as I remembered I was not defenceless, courage
+glowed again in my heart and I set my face resolutely for this man of
+the island and walked briskly towards him.
+
+He was concealed by this time behind another tree trunk; but he must
+have been watching me closely, for as soon as I began to move in his
+direction he reappeared and took a step to meet me. Then he hesitated,
+drew back, came forward again, and at last, to my wonder and
+confusion, threw himself on his knees and held out his clasped hands in
+supplication.
+
+At that I once more stopped.
+
+“Who are you?” I asked.
+
+“Ben Gunn,” he answered, and his voice sounded hoarse and awkward,
+like a rusty lock. “I’m poor Ben Gunn, I am; and I haven’t spoke with a
+Christian these three years.”
+
+I could now see that he was a white man like myself and that his
+features were even pleasing. His skin, wherever it was exposed, was
+burnt by the sun; even his lips were black, and his fair eyes looked
+quite startling in so dark a face. Of all the beggar-men that I had seen
+or fancied, he was the chief for raggedness. He was clothed with tatters
+of old ship’s canvas and old sea-cloth, and this extraordinary patchwork
+was all held together by a system of the most various and incongruous
+fastenings, brass buttons, bits of stick, and loops of tarry gaskin.
+About his waist he wore an old brass-buckled leather belt, which was the
+one thing solid in his whole accoutrement.
+
+“Three years!” I cried. “Were you shipwrecked?”
+
+“Nay, mate,” said he; “marooned.”
+
+I had heard the word, and I knew it stood for a horrible kind of
+punishment common enough among the buccaneers, in which the offender
+is put ashore with a little powder and shot and left behind on some
+desolate and distant island.
+
+“Marooned three years agone,” he continued, “and lived on goats since
+then, and berries, and oysters. Wherever a man is, says I, a man can
+do for himself. But, mate, my heart is sore for Christian diet. You
+mightn’t happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well,
+many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese--toasted, mostly--and woke
+up again, and here I were.”
+
+“If ever I can get aboard again,” said I, “you shall have cheese by the
+stone.”
+
+All this time he had been feeling the stuff of my jacket, smoothing
+my hands, looking at my boots, and generally, in the intervals of
+his speech, showing a childish pleasure in the presence of a fellow
+creature. But at my last words he perked up into a kind of startled
+slyness.
+
+“If ever you can get aboard again, says you?” he repeated. “Why, now,
+who’s to hinder you?”
+
+“Not you, I know,” was my reply.
+
+“And right you was,” he cried. “Now you--what do you call yourself,
+mate?”
+
+“Jim,” I told him.
+
+“Jim, Jim,” says he, quite pleased apparently. “Well, now, Jim, I’ve
+lived that rough as you’d be ashamed to hear of. Now, for instance, you
+wouldn’t think I had had a pious mother--to look at me?” he asked.
+
+“Why, no, not in particular,” I answered.
+
+“Ah, well,” said he, “but I had--remarkable pious. And I was a civil,
+pious boy, and could rattle off my catechism that fast, as you couldn’t
+tell one word from another. And here’s what it come to, Jim, and it
+begun with chuck-farthen on the blessed grave-stones! That’s what it
+begun with, but it went further’n that; and so my mother told me, and
+predicked the whole, she did, the pious woman! But it were Providence
+that put me here. I’ve thought it all out in this here lonely island,
+and I’m back on piety. You don’t catch me tasting rum so much, but just
+a thimbleful for luck, of course, the first chance I have. I’m bound
+I’ll be good, and I see the way to. And, Jim”--looking all round him and
+lowering his voice to a whisper--“I’m rich.”
+
+I now felt sure that the poor fellow had gone crazy in his solitude, and
+I suppose I must have shown the feeling in my face, for he repeated the
+statement hotly: “Rich! Rich! I says. And I’ll tell you what: I’ll make
+a man of you, Jim. Ah, Jim, you’ll bless your stars, you will, you was
+the first that found me!”
+
+And at this there came suddenly a lowering shadow over his face, and he
+tightened his grasp upon my hand and raised a forefinger threateningly
+before my eyes.
+
+“Now, Jim, you tell me true: that ain’t Flint’s ship?” he asked.
+
+At this I had a happy inspiration. I began to believe that I had found
+an ally, and I answered him at once.
+
+“It’s not Flint’s ship, and Flint is dead; but I’ll tell you true, as
+you ask me--there are some of Flint’s hands aboard; worse luck for the
+rest of us.”
+
+“Not a man--with one--leg?” he gasped.
+
+“Silver?” I asked.
+
+“Ah, Silver!” says he. “That were his name.”
+
+“He’s the cook, and the ringleader too.”
+
+He was still holding me by the wrist, and at that he give it quite a
+wring.
+
+“If you was sent by Long John,” he said, “I’m as good as pork, and I
+know it. But where was you, do you suppose?”
+
+I had made my mind up in a moment, and by way of answer told him
+the whole story of our voyage and the predicament in which we found
+ourselves. He heard me with the keenest interest, and when I had done he
+patted me on the head.
+
+“You’re a good lad, Jim,” he said; “and you’re all in a clove hitch,
+ain’t you? Well, you just put your trust in Ben Gunn--Ben Gunn’s the man
+to do it. Would you think it likely, now, that your squire would prove
+a liberal-minded one in case of help--him being in a clove hitch, as you
+remark?”
+
+I told him the squire was the most liberal of men.
+
+“Aye, but you see,” returned Ben Gunn, “I didn’t mean giving me a gate
+to keep, and a suit of livery clothes, and such; that’s not my mark,
+Jim. What I mean is, would he be likely to come down to the toon of, say
+one thousand pounds out of money that’s as good as a man’s own already?”
+
+“I am sure he would,” said I. “As it was, all hands were to share.”
+
+“AND a passage home?” he added with a look of great shrewdness.
+
+“Why,” I cried, “the squire’s a gentleman. And besides, if we got rid of
+the others, we should want you to help work the vessel home.”
+
+“Ah,” said he, “so you would.” And he seemed very much relieved.
+
+“Now, I’ll tell you what,” he went on. “So much I’ll tell you, and no
+more. I were in Flint’s ship when he buried the treasure; he and
+six along--six strong seamen. They was ashore nigh on a week, and us
+standing off and on in the old WALRUS. One fine day up went the signal,
+and here come Flint by himself in a little boat, and his head done up in
+a blue scarf. The sun was getting up, and mortal white he looked about
+the cutwater. But, there he was, you mind, and the six all dead--dead
+and buried. How he done it, not a man aboard us could make out. It was
+battle, murder, and sudden death, leastways--him against six. Billy
+Bones was the mate; Long John, he was quartermaster; and they asked him
+where the treasure was. ‘Ah,’ says he, ‘you can go ashore, if you like,
+and stay,’ he says; ‘but as for the ship, she’ll beat up for more, by
+thunder!’ That’s what he said.
+
+“Well, I was in another ship three years back, and we sighted this
+island. ‘Boys,’ said I, ‘here’s Flint’s treasure; let’s land and find
+it.’ The cap’n was displeased at that, but my messmates were all of a
+mind and landed. Twelve days they looked for it, and every day they had
+the worse word for me, until one fine morning all hands went aboard. ‘As
+for you, Benjamin Gunn,’ says they, ‘here’s a musket,’ they says, ‘and
+a spade, and pick-axe. You can stay here and find Flint’s money for
+yourself,’ they says.
+
+“Well, Jim, three years have I been here, and not a bite of Christian
+diet from that day to this. But now, you look here; look at me. Do I
+look like a man before the mast? No, says you. Nor I weren’t, neither, I
+says.”
+
+And with that he winked and pinched me hard.
+
+“Just you mention them words to your squire, Jim,” he went on. “Nor he
+weren’t, neither--that’s the words. Three years he were the man of this
+island, light and dark, fair and rain; and sometimes he would maybe
+think upon a prayer (says you), and sometimes he would maybe think of
+his old mother, so be as she’s alive (you’ll say); but the most part
+of Gunn’s time (this is what you’ll say)--the most part of his time was
+took up with another matter. And then you’ll give him a nip, like I do.”
+
+And he pinched me again in the most confidential manner.
+
+“Then,” he continued, “then you’ll up, and you’ll say this: Gunn is a
+good man (you’ll say), and he puts a precious sight more confidence--a
+precious sight, mind that--in a gen’leman born than in these gen’leman
+of fortune, having been one hisself.”
+
+“Well,” I said, “I don’t understand one word that you’ve been saying.
+But that’s neither here nor there; for how am I to get on board?”
+
+“Ah,” said he, “that’s the hitch, for sure. Well, there’s my boat, that
+I made with my two hands. I keep her under the white rock. If the worst
+come to the worst, we might try that after dark. Hi!” he broke out.
+“What’s that?”
+
+For just then, although the sun had still an hour or two to run, all the
+echoes of the island awoke and bellowed to the thunder of a cannon.
+
+“They have begun to fight!” I cried. “Follow me.”
+
+And I began to run towards the anchorage, my terrors all forgotten,
+while close at my side the marooned man in his goatskins trotted easily
+and lightly.
+
+“Left, left,” says he; “keep to your left hand, mate Jim! Under the
+trees with you! Theer’s where I killed my first goat. They don’t come
+down here now; they’re all mastheaded on them mountings for the fear
+of Benjamin Gunn. Ah! And there’s the cetemery”--cemetery, he must have
+meant. “You see the mounds? I come here and prayed, nows and thens, when
+I thought maybe a Sunday would be about doo. It weren’t quite a chapel,
+but it seemed more solemn like; and then, says you, Ben Gunn was
+short-handed--no chapling, nor so much as a Bible and a flag, you says.”
+
+So he kept talking as I ran, neither expecting nor receiving any answer.
+
+The cannon-shot was followed after a considerable interval by a volley
+of small arms.
+
+Another pause, and then, not a quarter of a mile in front of me, I
+beheld the Union Jack flutter in the air above a wood.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART FOUR--The Stockade
+
+
+
+
+16
+
+Narrative Continued by the Doctor: How the Ship Was Abandoned
+
+IT was about half past one--three bells in the sea phrase--that the two
+boats went ashore from the HISPANIOLA. The captain, the squire, and I
+were talking matters over in the cabin. Had there been a breath of wind,
+we should have fallen on the six mutineers who were left aboard with
+us, slipped our cable, and away to sea. But the wind was wanting; and
+to complete our helplessness, down came Hunter with the news that Jim
+Hawkins had slipped into a boat and was gone ashore with the rest.
+
+It never occurred to us to doubt Jim Hawkins, but we were alarmed for
+his safety. With the men in the temper they were in, it seemed an even
+chance if we should see the lad again. We ran on deck. The pitch was
+bubbling in the seams; the nasty stench of the place turned me sick;
+if ever a man smelt fever and dysentery, it was in that abominable
+anchorage. The six scoundrels were sitting grumbling under a sail in the
+forecastle; ashore we could see the gigs made fast and a man sitting
+in each, hard by where the river runs in. One of them was whistling
+“Lillibullero.”
+
+Waiting was a strain, and it was decided that Hunter and I should go
+ashore with the jolly-boat in quest of information.
+
+The gigs had leaned to their right, but Hunter and I pulled straight in,
+in the direction of the stockade upon the chart. The two who were
+left guarding their boats seemed in a bustle at our appearance;
+“Lillibullero” stopped off, and I could see the pair discussing what
+they ought to do. Had they gone and told Silver, all might have turned
+out differently; but they had their orders, I suppose, and decided to
+sit quietly where they were and hark back again to “Lillibullero.”
+
+There was a slight bend in the coast, and I steered so as to put it
+between us; even before we landed we had thus lost sight of the gigs.
+I jumped out and came as near running as I durst, with a big silk
+handkerchief under my hat for coolness’ sake and a brace of pistols
+ready primed for safety.
+
+I had not gone a hundred yards when I reached the stockade.
+
+This was how it was: a spring of clear water rose almost at the top of a
+knoll. Well, on the knoll, and enclosing the spring, they had clapped a
+stout loghouse fit to hold two score of people on a pinch and loopholed
+for musketry on either side. All round this they had cleared a wide
+space, and then the thing was completed by a paling six feet high,
+without door or opening, too strong to pull down without time and labour
+and too open to shelter the besiegers. The people in the log-house had
+them in every way; they stood quiet in shelter and shot the others like
+partridges. All they wanted was a good watch and food; for, short of a
+complete surprise, they might have held the place against a regiment.
+
+What particularly took my fancy was the spring. For though we had a good
+enough place of it in the cabin of the HISPANIOLA, with plenty of arms
+and ammunition, and things to eat, and excellent wines, there had been
+one thing overlooked--we had no water. I was thinking this over when
+there came ringing over the island the cry of a man at the point of
+death. I was not new to violent death--I have served his Royal Highness
+the Duke of Cumberland, and got a wound myself at Fontenoy--but I know
+my pulse went dot and carry one. “Jim Hawkins is gone,” was my first
+thought.
+
+It is something to have been an old soldier, but more still to have been
+a doctor. There is no time to dilly-dally in our work. And so now I made
+up my mind instantly, and with no time lost returned to the shore and
+jumped on board the jolly-boat.
+
+By good fortune Hunter pulled a good oar. We made the water fly, and the
+boat was soon alongside and I aboard the schooner.
+
+I found them all shaken, as was natural. The squire was sitting down, as
+white as a sheet, thinking of the harm he had led us to, the good soul!
+And one of the six forecastle hands was little better.
+
+“There’s a man,” says Captain Smollett, nodding towards him, “new to
+this work. He came nigh-hand fainting, doctor, when he heard the cry.
+Another touch of the rudder and that man would join us.”
+
+I told my plan to the captain, and between us we settled on the details
+of its accomplishment.
+
+We put old Redruth in the gallery between the cabin and the forecastle,
+with three or four loaded muskets and a mattress for protection. Hunter
+brought the boat round under the stern-port, and Joyce and I set to work
+loading her with powder tins, muskets, bags of biscuits, kegs of pork, a
+cask of cognac, and my invaluable medicine chest.
+
+In the meantime, the squire and the captain stayed on deck, and the
+latter hailed the coxswain, who was the principal man aboard.
+
+“Mr. Hands,” he said, “here are two of us with a brace of pistols each.
+If any one of you six make a signal of any description, that man’s
+dead.”
+
+They were a good deal taken aback, and after a little consultation one
+and all tumbled down the fore companion, thinking no doubt to take us
+on the rear. But when they saw Redruth waiting for them in the sparred
+galley, they went about ship at once, and a head popped out again on
+deck.
+
+“Down, dog!” cries the captain.
+
+And the head popped back again; and we heard no more, for the time, of
+these six very faint-hearted seamen.
+
+By this time, tumbling things in as they came, we had the jolly-boat
+loaded as much as we dared. Joyce and I got out through the stern-port,
+and we made for shore again as fast as oars could take us.
+
+This second trip fairly aroused the watchers along shore. “Lillibullero”
+ was dropped again; and just before we lost sight of them behind the
+little point, one of them whipped ashore and disappeared. I had half a
+mind to change my plan and destroy their boats, but I feared that Silver
+and the others might be close at hand, and all might very well be lost
+by trying for too much.
+
+We had soon touched land in the same place as before and set to
+provision the block house. All three made the first journey, heavily
+laden, and tossed our stores over the palisade. Then, leaving Joyce to
+guard them--one man, to be sure, but with half a dozen muskets--Hunter
+and I returned to the jolly-boat and loaded ourselves once more. So
+we proceeded without pausing to take breath, till the whole cargo was
+bestowed, when the two servants took up their position in the block
+house, and I, with all my power, sculled back to the HISPANIOLA.
+
+That we should have risked a second boat load seems more daring than it
+really was. They had the advantage of numbers, of course, but we had the
+advantage of arms. Not one of the men ashore had a musket, and before
+they could get within range for pistol shooting, we flattered ourselves
+we should be able to give a good account of a half-dozen at least.
+
+The squire was waiting for me at the stern window, all his faintness
+gone from him. He caught the painter and made it fast, and we fell to
+loading the boat for our very lives. Pork, powder, and biscuit was the
+cargo, with only a musket and a cutlass apiece for the squire and me
+and Redruth and the captain. The rest of the arms and powder we dropped
+overboard in two fathoms and a half of water, so that we could see
+the bright steel shining far below us in the sun, on the clean, sandy
+bottom.
+
+By this time the tide was beginning to ebb, and the ship was swinging
+round to her anchor. Voices were heard faintly halloaing in the
+direction of the two gigs; and though this reassured us for Joyce and
+Hunter, who were well to the eastward, it warned our party to be off.
+
+Redruth retreated from his place in the gallery and dropped into the
+boat, which we then brought round to the ship’s counter, to be handier
+for Captain Smollett.
+
+“Now, men,” said he, “do you hear me?”
+
+There was no answer from the forecastle.
+
+“It’s to you, Abraham Gray--it’s to you I am speaking.”
+
+Still no reply.
+
+“Gray,” resumed Mr. Smollett, a little louder, “I am leaving this ship,
+and I order you to follow your captain. I know you are a good man at
+bottom, and I dare say not one of the lot of you’s as bad as he makes
+out. I have my watch here in my hand; I give you thirty seconds to join
+me in.”
+
+There was a pause.
+
+“Come, my fine fellow,” continued the captain; “don’t hang so long in
+stays. I’m risking my life and the lives of these good gentlemen every
+second.”
+
+There was a sudden scuffle, a sound of blows, and out burst Abraham
+Gray with a knife cut on the side of the cheek, and came running to the
+captain like a dog to the whistle.
+
+“I’m with you, sir,” said he.
+
+And the next moment he and the captain had dropped aboard of us, and we
+had shoved off and given way.
+
+We were clear out of the ship, but not yet ashore in our stockade.
+
+
+
+
+17
+
+Narrative Continued by the Doctor: The Jolly-boat’s Last Trip
+
+THIS fifth trip was quite different from any of the others. In the
+first place, the little gallipot of a boat that we were in was gravely
+overloaded. Five grown men, and three of them--Trelawney, Redruth, and
+the captain--over six feet high, was already more than she was meant
+to carry. Add to that the powder, pork, and bread-bags. The gunwale was
+lipping astern. Several times we shipped a little water, and my breeches
+and the tails of my coat were all soaking wet before we had gone a
+hundred yards.
+
+The captain made us trim the boat, and we got her to lie a little more
+evenly. All the same, we were afraid to breathe.
+
+In the second place, the ebb was now making--a strong rippling current
+running westward through the basin, and then south’ard and seaward down
+the straits by which we had entered in the morning. Even the ripples
+were a danger to our overloaded craft, but the worst of it was that we
+were swept out of our true course and away from our proper landing-place
+behind the point. If we let the current have its way we should come
+ashore beside the gigs, where the pirates might appear at any moment.
+
+“I cannot keep her head for the stockade, sir,” said I to the captain.
+I was steering, while he and Redruth, two fresh men, were at the oars.
+“The tide keeps washing her down. Could you pull a little stronger?”
+
+“Not without swamping the boat,” said he. “You must bear up, sir, if you
+please--bear up until you see you’re gaining.”
+
+I tried and found by experiment that the tide kept sweeping us westward
+until I had laid her head due east, or just about right angles to the
+way we ought to go.
+
+“We’ll never get ashore at this rate,” said I.
+
+“If it’s the only course that we can lie, sir, we must even lie it,”
+ returned the captain. “We must keep upstream. You see, sir,” he went on,
+“if once we dropped to leeward of the landing-place, it’s hard to say
+where we should get ashore, besides the chance of being boarded by the
+gigs; whereas, the way we go the current must slacken, and then we can
+dodge back along the shore.”
+
+“The current’s less a’ready, sir,” said the man Gray, who was sitting in
+the fore-sheets; “you can ease her off a bit.”
+
+“Thank you, my man,” said I, quite as if nothing had happened, for we
+had all quietly made up our minds to treat him like one of ourselves.
+
+Suddenly the captain spoke up again, and I thought his voice was a
+little changed.
+
+“The gun!” said he.
+
+“I have thought of that,” said I, for I made sure he was thinking of a
+bombardment of the fort. “They could never get the gun ashore, and if
+they did, they could never haul it through the woods.”
+
+“Look astern, doctor,” replied the captain.
+
+We had entirely forgotten the long nine; and there, to our horror, were
+the five rogues busy about her, getting off her jacket, as they called
+the stout tarpaulin cover under which she sailed. Not only that, but
+it flashed into my mind at the same moment that the round-shot and the
+powder for the gun had been left behind, and a stroke with an axe would
+put it all into the possession of the evil ones abroad.
+
+“Israel was Flint’s gunner,” said Gray hoarsely.
+
+At any risk, we put the boat’s head direct for the landing-place. By
+this time we had got so far out of the run of the current that we kept
+steerage way even at our necessarily gentle rate of rowing, and I could
+keep her steady for the goal. But the worst of it was that with the
+course I now held we turned our broadside instead of our stern to the
+HISPANIOLA and offered a target like a barn door.
+
+I could hear as well as see that brandy-faced rascal Israel Hands
+plumping down a round-shot on the deck.
+
+“Who’s the best shot?” asked the captain.
+
+“Mr. Trelawney, out and away,” said I.
+
+“Mr. Trelawney, will you please pick me off one of these men, sir?
+Hands, if possible,” said the captain.
+
+Trelawney was as cool as steel. He looked to the priming of his gun.
+
+“Now,” cried the captain, “easy with that gun, sir, or you’ll swamp the
+boat. All hands stand by to trim her when he aims.”
+
+The squire raised his gun, the rowing ceased, and we leaned over to the
+other side to keep the balance, and all was so nicely contrived that we
+did not ship a drop.
+
+They had the gun, by this time, slewed round upon the swivel, and Hands,
+who was at the muzzle with the rammer, was in consequence the most
+exposed. However, we had no luck, for just as Trelawney fired, down he
+stooped, the ball whistled over him, and it was one of the other four
+who fell.
+
+The cry he gave was echoed not only by his companions on board but by a
+great number of voices from the shore, and looking in that direction
+I saw the other pirates trooping out from among the trees and tumbling
+into their places in the boats.
+
+“Here come the gigs, sir,” said I.
+
+“Give way, then,” cried the captain. “We mustn’t mind if we swamp her
+now. If we can’t get ashore, all’s up.”
+
+“Only one of the gigs is being manned, sir,” I added; “the crew of the
+other most likely going round by shore to cut us off.”
+
+“They’ll have a hot run, sir,” returned the captain. “Jack ashore, you
+know. It’s not them I mind; it’s the round-shot. Carpet bowls! My lady’s
+maid couldn’t miss. Tell us, squire, when you see the match, and we’ll
+hold water.”
+
+In the meanwhile we had been making headway at a good pace for a boat so
+overloaded, and we had shipped but little water in the process. We were
+now close in; thirty or forty strokes and we should beach her, for the
+ebb had already disclosed a narrow belt of sand below the clustering
+trees. The gig was no longer to be feared; the little point had already
+concealed it from our eyes. The ebb-tide, which had so cruelly delayed
+us, was now making reparation and delaying our assailants. The one
+source of danger was the gun.
+
+“If I durst,” said the captain, “I’d stop and pick off another man.”
+
+But it was plain that they meant nothing should delay their shot. They
+had never so much as looked at their fallen comrade, though he was not
+dead, and I could see him trying to crawl away.
+
+“Ready!” cried the squire.
+
+“Hold!” cried the captain, quick as an echo.
+
+And he and Redruth backed with a great heave that sent her stern bodily
+under water. The report fell in at the same instant of time. This was
+the first that Jim heard, the sound of the squire’s shot not having
+reached him. Where the ball passed, not one of us precisely knew, but I
+fancy it must have been over our heads and that the wind of it may have
+contributed to our disaster.
+
+At any rate, the boat sank by the stern, quite gently, in three feet of
+water, leaving the captain and myself, facing each other, on our feet.
+The other three took complete headers, and came up again drenched and
+bubbling.
+
+So far there was no great harm. No lives were lost, and we could wade
+ashore in safety. But there were all our stores at the bottom, and to
+make things worse, only two guns out of five remained in a state for
+service. Mine I had snatched from my knees and held over my head, by
+a sort of instinct. As for the captain, he had carried his over his
+shoulder by a bandoleer, and like a wise man, lock uppermost. The other
+three had gone down with the boat.
+
+To add to our concern, we heard voices already drawing near us in the
+woods along shore, and we had not only the danger of being cut off from
+the stockade in our half-crippled state but the fear before us whether,
+if Hunter and Joyce were attacked by half a dozen, they would have the
+sense and conduct to stand firm. Hunter was steady, that we knew; Joyce
+was a doubtful case--a pleasant, polite man for a valet and to brush
+one’s clothes, but not entirely fitted for a man of war.
+
+With all this in our minds, we waded ashore as fast as we could, leaving
+behind us the poor jolly-boat and a good half of all our powder and
+provisions.
+
+
+
+
+18
+
+Narrative Continued by the Doctor: End of the First Day’s Fighting
+
+WE made our best speed across the strip of wood that now divided us from
+the stockade, and at every step we took the voices of the buccaneers
+rang nearer. Soon we could hear their footfalls as they ran and the
+cracking of the branches as they breasted across a bit of thicket.
+
+I began to see we should have a brush for it in earnest and looked to my
+priming.
+
+“Captain,” said I, “Trelawney is the dead shot. Give him your gun; his
+own is useless.”
+
+They exchanged guns, and Trelawney, silent and cool as he had been since
+the beginning of the bustle, hung a moment on his heel to see that all
+was fit for service. At the same time, observing Gray to be unarmed, I
+handed him my cutlass. It did all our hearts good to see him spit in his
+hand, knit his brows, and make the blade sing through the air. It was
+plain from every line of his body that our new hand was worth his salt.
+
+Forty paces farther we came to the edge of the wood and saw the stockade
+in front of us. We struck the enclosure about the middle of the south
+side, and almost at the same time, seven mutineers--Job Anderson, the
+boatswain, at their head--appeared in full cry at the southwestern
+corner.
+
+They paused as if taken aback, and before they recovered, not only the
+squire and I, but Hunter and Joyce from the block house, had time to
+fire. The four shots came in rather a scattering volley, but they did
+the business: one of the enemy actually fell, and the rest, without
+hesitation, turned and plunged into the trees.
+
+After reloading, we walked down the outside of the palisade to see to
+the fallen enemy. He was stone dead--shot through the heart.
+
+We began to rejoice over our good success when just at that moment a
+pistol cracked in the bush, a ball whistled close past my ear, and poor
+Tom Redruth stumbled and fell his length on the ground. Both the squire
+and I returned the shot, but as we had nothing to aim at, it is probable
+we only wasted powder. Then we reloaded and turned our attention to poor
+Tom.
+
+The captain and Gray were already examining him, and I saw with half an
+eye that all was over.
+
+I believe the readiness of our return volley had scattered the mutineers
+once more, for we were suffered without further molestation to get the
+poor old gamekeeper hoisted over the stockade and carried, groaning and
+bleeding, into the log-house.
+
+Poor old fellow, he had not uttered one word of surprise, complaint,
+fear, or even acquiescence from the very beginning of our troubles till
+now, when we had laid him down in the log-house to die. He had lain like
+a Trojan behind his mattress in the gallery; he had followed every order
+silently, doggedly, and well; he was the oldest of our party by a score
+of years; and now, sullen, old, serviceable servant, it was he that was
+to die.
+
+The squire dropped down beside him on his knees and kissed his hand,
+crying like a child.
+
+“Be I going, doctor?” he asked.
+
+“Tom, my man,” said I, “you’re going home.”
+
+“I wish I had had a lick at them with the gun first,” he replied.
+
+“Tom,” said the squire, “say you forgive me, won’t you?”
+
+“Would that be respectful like, from me to you, squire?” was the answer.
+“Howsoever, so be it, amen!”
+
+After a little while of silence, he said he thought somebody might read
+a prayer. “It’s the custom, sir,” he added apologetically. And not long
+after, without another word, he passed away.
+
+In the meantime the captain, whom I had observed to be wonderfully
+swollen about the chest and pockets, had turned out a great many various
+stores--the British colours, a Bible, a coil of stoutish rope, pen, ink,
+the log-book, and pounds of tobacco. He had found a longish fir-tree
+lying felled and trimmed in the enclosure, and with the help of Hunter
+he had set it up at the corner of the log-house where the trunks crossed
+and made an angle. Then, climbing on the roof, he had with his own hand
+bent and run up the colours.
+
+This seemed mightily to relieve him. He re-entered the log-house and set
+about counting up the stores as if nothing else existed. But he had an
+eye on Tom’s passage for all that, and as soon as all was over, came
+forward with another flag and reverently spread it on the body.
+
+“Don’t you take on, sir,” he said, shaking the squire’s hand. “All’s
+well with him; no fear for a hand that’s been shot down in his duty to
+captain and owner. It mayn’t be good divinity, but it’s a fact.”
+
+Then he pulled me aside.
+
+“Dr. Livesey,” he said, “in how many weeks do you and squire expect the
+consort?”
+
+I told him it was a question not of weeks but of months, that if we
+were not back by the end of August Blandly was to send to find us, but
+neither sooner nor later. “You can calculate for yourself,” I said.
+
+“Why, yes,” returned the captain, scratching his head; “and making a
+large allowance, sir, for all the gifts of Providence, I should say we
+were pretty close hauled.”
+
+“How do you mean?” I asked.
+
+“It’s a pity, sir, we lost that second load. That’s what I mean,”
+ replied the captain. “As for powder and shot, we’ll do. But the rations
+are short, very short--so short, Dr. Livesey, that we’re perhaps as well
+without that extra mouth.”
+
+And he pointed to the dead body under the flag.
+
+Just then, with a roar and a whistle, a round-shot passed high above the
+roof of the log-house and plumped far beyond us in the wood.
+
+“Oho!” said the captain. “Blaze away! You’ve little enough powder
+already, my lads.”
+
+At the second trial, the aim was better, and the ball descended inside
+the stockade, scattering a cloud of sand but doing no further damage.
+
+“Captain,” said the squire, “the house is quite invisible from the ship.
+It must be the flag they are aiming at. Would it not be wiser to take it
+in?”
+
+“Strike my colours!” cried the captain. “No, sir, not I”; and as soon
+as he had said the words, I think we all agreed with him. For it was
+not only a piece of stout, seamanly, good feeling; it was good policy
+besides and showed our enemies that we despised their cannonade.
+
+All through the evening they kept thundering away. Ball after ball flew
+over or fell short or kicked up the sand in the enclosure, but they had
+to fire so high that the shot fell dead and buried itself in the soft
+sand. We had no ricochet to fear, and though one popped in through the
+roof of the log-house and out again through the floor, we soon got used
+to that sort of horse-play and minded it no more than cricket.
+
+“There is one good thing about all this,” observed the captain; “the
+wood in front of us is likely clear. The ebb has made a good while; our
+stores should be uncovered. Volunteers to go and bring in pork.”
+
+Gray and Hunter were the first to come forward. Well armed, they stole
+out of the stockade, but it proved a useless mission. The mutineers were
+bolder than we fancied or they put more trust in Israel’s gunnery. For
+four or five of them were busy carrying off our stores and wading out
+with them to one of the gigs that lay close by, pulling an oar or so to
+hold her steady against the current. Silver was in the stern-sheets in
+command; and every man of them was now provided with a musket from some
+secret magazine of their own.
+
+The captain sat down to his log, and here is the beginning of the entry:
+
+     Alexander Smollett, master; David Livesey, ship’s
+     doctor; Abraham Gray, carpenter’s mate; John
+     Trelawney, owner; John Hunter and Richard Joyce,
+     owner’s servants, landsmen--being all that is left
+     faithful of the ship’s company--with stores for ten
+     days at short rations, came ashore this day and flew
+     British colours on the log-house in Treasure Island.
+     Thomas Redruth, owner’s servant, landsman, shot by the
+     mutineers; James Hawkins, cabin-boy--
+
+And at the same time, I was wondering over poor Jim Hawkins’ fate.
+
+A hail on the land side.
+
+“Somebody hailing us,” said Hunter, who was on guard.
+
+“Doctor! Squire! Captain! Hullo, Hunter, is that you?” came the cries.
+
+And I ran to the door in time to see Jim Hawkins, safe and sound, come
+climbing over the stockade.
+
+
+
+
+19
+
+Narrative Resumed by Jim Hawkins: The Garrison in the Stockade
+
+AS soon as Ben Gunn saw the colours he came to a halt, stopped me by the
+arm, and sat down.
+
+“Now,” said he, “there’s your friends, sure enough.”
+
+“Far more likely it’s the mutineers,” I answered.
+
+“That!” he cried. “Why, in a place like this, where nobody puts in but
+gen’lemen of fortune, Silver would fly the Jolly Roger, you don’t make
+no doubt of that. No, that’s your friends. There’s been blows too, and I
+reckon your friends has had the best of it; and here they are ashore in
+the old stockade, as was made years and years ago by Flint. Ah, he was
+the man to have a headpiece, was Flint! Barring rum, his match were
+never seen. He were afraid of none, not he; on’y Silver--Silver was that
+genteel.”
+
+“Well,” said I, “that may be so, and so be it; all the more reason that
+I should hurry on and join my friends.”
+
+“Nay, mate,” returned Ben, “not you. You’re a good boy, or I’m mistook;
+but you’re on’y a boy, all told. Now, Ben Gunn is fly. Rum wouldn’t
+bring me there, where you’re going--not rum wouldn’t, till I see your
+born gen’leman and gets it on his word of honour. And you won’t forget
+my words; ‘A precious sight (that’s what you’ll say), a precious sight
+more confidence’--and then nips him.”
+
+And he pinched me the third time with the same air of cleverness.
+
+“And when Ben Gunn is wanted, you know where to find him, Jim. Just
+wheer you found him today. And him that comes is to have a white thing
+in his hand, and he’s to come alone. Oh! And you’ll say this: ‘Ben
+Gunn,’ says you, ‘has reasons of his own.’”
+
+“Well,” said I, “I believe I understand. You have something to propose,
+and you wish to see the squire or the doctor, and you’re to be found
+where I found you. Is that all?”
+
+“And when? says you,” he added. “Why, from about noon observation to
+about six bells.”
+
+“Good,” said I, “and now may I go?”
+
+“You won’t forget?” he inquired anxiously. “Precious sight, and reasons
+of his own, says you. Reasons of his own; that’s the mainstay; as
+between man and man. Well, then”--still holding me--“I reckon you can
+go, Jim. And, Jim, if you was to see Silver, you wouldn’t go for to sell
+Ben Gunn? Wild horses wouldn’t draw it from you? No, says you. And if
+them pirates camp ashore, Jim, what would you say but there’d be widders
+in the morning?”
+
+Here he was interrupted by a loud report, and a cannonball came tearing
+through the trees and pitched in the sand not a hundred yards from where
+we two were talking. The next moment each of us had taken to his heels
+in a different direction.
+
+For a good hour to come frequent reports shook the island, and
+balls kept crashing through the woods. I moved from hiding-place to
+hiding-place, always pursued, or so it seemed to me, by these terrifying
+missiles. But towards the end of the bombardment, though still I durst
+not venture in the direction of the stockade, where the balls fell
+oftenest, I had begun, in a manner, to pluck up my heart again, and
+after a long detour to the east, crept down among the shore-side trees.
+
+The sun had just set, the sea breeze was rustling and tumbling in the
+woods and ruffling the grey surface of the anchorage; the tide, too, was
+far out, and great tracts of sand lay uncovered; the air, after the heat
+of the day, chilled me through my jacket.
+
+The HISPANIOLA still lay where she had anchored; but, sure enough, there
+was the Jolly Roger--the black flag of piracy--flying from her peak.
+Even as I looked, there came another red flash and another report that
+sent the echoes clattering, and one more round-shot whistled through the
+air. It was the last of the cannonade.
+
+I lay for some time watching the bustle which succeeded the attack. Men
+were demolishing something with axes on the beach near the stockade--the
+poor jolly-boat, I afterwards discovered. Away, near the mouth of the
+river, a great fire was glowing among the trees, and between that point
+and the ship one of the gigs kept coming and going, the men, whom I
+had seen so gloomy, shouting at the oars like children. But there was a
+sound in their voices which suggested rum.
+
+At length I thought I might return towards the stockade. I was pretty
+far down on the low, sandy spit that encloses the anchorage to the east,
+and is joined at half-water to Skeleton Island; and now, as I rose to my
+feet, I saw, some distance further down the spit and rising from among
+low bushes, an isolated rock, pretty high, and peculiarly white in
+colour. It occurred to me that this might be the white rock of which Ben
+Gunn had spoken and that some day or other a boat might be wanted and I
+should know where to look for one.
+
+Then I skirted among the woods until I had regained the rear, or
+shoreward side, of the stockade, and was soon warmly welcomed by the
+faithful party.
+
+I had soon told my story and began to look about me. The log-house was
+made of unsquared trunks of pine--roof, walls, and floor. The latter
+stood in several places as much as a foot or a foot and a half above the
+surface of the sand. There was a porch at the door, and under this porch
+the little spring welled up into an artificial basin of a rather odd
+kind--no other than a great ship’s kettle of iron, with the bottom
+knocked out, and sunk “to her bearings,” as the captain said, among the
+sand.
+
+Little had been left besides the framework of the house, but in one
+corner there was a stone slab laid down by way of hearth and an old
+rusty iron basket to contain the fire.
+
+The slopes of the knoll and all the inside of the stockade had been
+cleared of timber to build the house, and we could see by the stumps
+what a fine and lofty grove had been destroyed. Most of the soil had
+been washed away or buried in drift after the removal of the trees; only
+where the streamlet ran down from the kettle a thick bed of moss and
+some ferns and little creeping bushes were still green among the sand.
+Very close around the stockade--too close for defence, they said--the
+wood still flourished high and dense, all of fir on the land side, but
+towards the sea with a large admixture of live-oaks.
+
+The cold evening breeze, of which I have spoken, whistled through every
+chink of the rude building and sprinkled the floor with a continual rain
+of fine sand. There was sand in our eyes, sand in our teeth, sand in our
+suppers, sand dancing in the spring at the bottom of the kettle, for all
+the world like porridge beginning to boil. Our chimney was a square hole
+in the roof; it was but a little part of the smoke that found its way
+out, and the rest eddied about the house and kept us coughing and piping
+the eye.
+
+Add to this that Gray, the new man, had his face tied up in a bandage
+for a cut he had got in breaking away from the mutineers and that poor
+old Tom Redruth, still unburied, lay along the wall, stiff and stark,
+under the Union Jack.
+
+If we had been allowed to sit idle, we should all have fallen in the
+blues, but Captain Smollett was never the man for that. All hands were
+called up before him, and he divided us into watches. The doctor and
+Gray and I for one; the squire, Hunter, and Joyce upon the other. Tired
+though we all were, two were sent out for firewood; two more were set to
+dig a grave for Redruth; the doctor was named cook; I was put sentry at
+the door; and the captain himself went from one to another, keeping up
+our spirits and lending a hand wherever it was wanted.
+
+From time to time the doctor came to the door for a little air and to
+rest his eyes, which were almost smoked out of his head, and whenever he
+did so, he had a word for me.
+
+“That man Smollett,” he said once, “is a better man than I am. And when
+I say that it means a deal, Jim.”
+
+Another time he came and was silent for a while. Then he put his head on
+one side, and looked at me.
+
+“Is this Ben Gunn a man?” he asked.
+
+“I do not know, sir,” said I. “I am not very sure whether he’s sane.”
+
+“If there’s any doubt about the matter, he is,” returned the doctor. “A
+man who has been three years biting his nails on a desert island, Jim,
+can’t expect to appear as sane as you or me. It doesn’t lie in human
+nature. Was it cheese you said he had a fancy for?”
+
+“Yes, sir, cheese,” I answered.
+
+“Well, Jim,” says he, “just see the good that comes of being dainty in
+your food. You’ve seen my snuff-box, haven’t you? And you never saw me
+take snuff, the reason being that in my snuff-box I carry a piece of
+Parmesan cheese--a cheese made in Italy, very nutritious. Well, that’s
+for Ben Gunn!”
+
+Before supper was eaten we buried old Tom in the sand and stood round
+him for a while bare-headed in the breeze. A good deal of firewood had
+been got in, but not enough for the captain’s fancy, and he shook his
+head over it and told us we “must get back to this tomorrow rather
+livelier.” Then, when we had eaten our pork and each had a good stiff
+glass of brandy grog, the three chiefs got together in a corner to
+discuss our prospects.
+
+It appears they were at their wits’ end what to do, the stores being so
+low that we must have been starved into surrender long before help came.
+But our best hope, it was decided, was to kill off the buccaneers until
+they either hauled down their flag or ran away with the HISPANIOLA. From
+nineteen they were already reduced to fifteen, two others were wounded,
+and one at least--the man shot beside the gun--severely wounded, if he
+were not dead. Every time we had a crack at them, we were to take it,
+saving our own lives, with the extremest care. And besides that, we had
+two able allies--rum and the climate.
+
+As for the first, though we were about half a mile away, we could hear
+them roaring and singing late into the night; and as for the second,
+the doctor staked his wig that, camped where they were in the marsh
+and unprovided with remedies, the half of them would be on their backs
+before a week.
+
+“So,” he added, “if we are not all shot down first they’ll be glad to
+be packing in the schooner. It’s always a ship, and they can get to
+buccaneering again, I suppose.”
+
+“First ship that ever I lost,” said Captain Smollett.
+
+I was dead tired, as you may fancy; and when I got to sleep, which was
+not till after a great deal of tossing, I slept like a log of wood.
+
+The rest had long been up and had already breakfasted and increased the
+pile of firewood by about half as much again when I was wakened by a
+bustle and the sound of voices.
+
+“Flag of truce!” I heard someone say; and then, immediately after, with
+a cry of surprise, “Silver himself!”
+
+And at that, up I jumped, and rubbing my eyes, ran to a loophole in the
+wall.
+
+
+
+
+20
+
+Silver’s Embassy
+
+SURE enough, there were two men just outside the stockade, one of them
+waving a white cloth, the other, no less a person than Silver himself,
+standing placidly by.
+
+It was still quite early, and the coldest morning that I think I ever
+was abroad in--a chill that pierced into the marrow. The sky was bright
+and cloudless overhead, and the tops of the trees shone rosily in
+the sun. But where Silver stood with his lieutenant, all was still in
+shadow, and they waded knee-deep in a low white vapour that had crawled
+during the night out of the morass. The chill and the vapour taken
+together told a poor tale of the island. It was plainly a damp,
+feverish, unhealthy spot.
+
+“Keep indoors, men,” said the captain. “Ten to one this is a trick.”
+
+Then he hailed the buccaneer.
+
+“Who goes? Stand, or we fire.”
+
+“Flag of truce,” cried Silver.
+
+The captain was in the porch, keeping himself carefully out of the way
+of a treacherous shot, should any be intended. He turned and spoke to
+us, “Doctor’s watch on the lookout. Dr. Livesey take the north side,
+if you please; Jim, the east; Gray, west. The watch below, all hands to
+load muskets. Lively, men, and careful.”
+
+And then he turned again to the mutineers.
+
+“And what do you want with your flag of truce?” he cried.
+
+This time it was the other man who replied.
+
+“Cap’n Silver, sir, to come on board and make terms,” he shouted.
+
+“Cap’n Silver! Don’t know him. Who’s he?” cried the captain. And we
+could hear him adding to himself, “Cap’n, is it? My heart, and here’s
+promotion!”
+
+Long John answered for himself. “Me, sir. These poor lads have chosen me
+cap’n, after your desertion, sir”--laying a particular emphasis upon the
+word “desertion.” “We’re willing to submit, if we can come to terms,
+and no bones about it. All I ask is your word, Cap’n Smollett, to let me
+safe and sound out of this here stockade, and one minute to get out o’
+shot before a gun is fired.”
+
+“My man,” said Captain Smollett, “I have not the slightest desire to
+talk to you. If you wish to talk to me, you can come, that’s all. If
+there’s any treachery, it’ll be on your side, and the Lord help you.”
+
+“That’s enough, cap’n,” shouted Long John cheerily. “A word from you’s
+enough. I know a gentleman, and you may lay to that.”
+
+We could see the man who carried the flag of truce attempting to hold
+Silver back. Nor was that wonderful, seeing how cavalier had been the
+captain’s answer. But Silver laughed at him aloud and slapped him on the
+back as if the idea of alarm had been absurd. Then he advanced to the
+stockade, threw over his crutch, got a leg up, and with great vigour
+and skill succeeded in surmounting the fence and dropping safely to the
+other side.
+
+I will confess that I was far too much taken up with what was going on
+to be of the slightest use as sentry; indeed, I had already deserted
+my eastern loophole and crept up behind the captain, who had now seated
+himself on the threshold, with his elbows on his knees, his head in his
+hands, and his eyes fixed on the water as it bubbled out of the old iron
+kettle in the sand. He was whistling “Come, Lasses and Lads.”
+
+Silver had terrible hard work getting up the knoll. What with the
+steepness of the incline, the thick tree stumps, and the soft sand, he
+and his crutch were as helpless as a ship in stays. But he stuck to it
+like a man in silence, and at last arrived before the captain, whom
+he saluted in the handsomest style. He was tricked out in his best;
+an immense blue coat, thick with brass buttons, hung as low as to his
+knees, and a fine laced hat was set on the back of his head.
+
+“Here you are, my man,” said the captain, raising his head. “You had
+better sit down.”
+
+“You ain’t a-going to let me inside, cap’n?” complained Long John. “It’s
+a main cold morning, to be sure, sir, to sit outside upon the sand.”
+
+“Why, Silver,” said the captain, “if you had pleased to be an honest
+man, you might have been sitting in your galley. It’s your own doing.
+You’re either my ship’s cook--and then you were treated handsome--or
+Cap’n Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!”
+
+“Well, well, cap’n,” returned the sea-cook, sitting down as he was
+bidden on the sand, “you’ll have to give me a hand up again, that’s all.
+A sweet pretty place you have of it here. Ah, there’s Jim! The top of
+the morning to you, Jim. Doctor, here’s my service. Why, there you all
+are together like a happy family, in a manner of speaking.”
+
+“If you have anything to say, my man, better say it,” said the captain.
+
+“Right you were, Cap’n Smollett,” replied Silver. “Dooty is dooty, to be
+sure. Well now, you look here, that was a good lay of yours last
+night. I don’t deny it was a good lay. Some of you pretty handy with a
+handspike-end. And I’ll not deny neither but what some of my people was
+shook--maybe all was shook; maybe I was shook myself; maybe that’s
+why I’m here for terms. But you mark me, cap’n, it won’t do twice, by
+thunder! We’ll have to do sentry-go and ease off a point or so on the
+rum. Maybe you think we were all a sheet in the wind’s eye. But I’ll
+tell you I was sober; I was on’y dog tired; and if I’d awoke a second
+sooner, I’d ’a caught you at the act, I would. He wasn’t dead when I got
+round to him, not he.”
+
+“Well?” says Captain Smollett as cool as can be.
+
+All that Silver said was a riddle to him, but you would never have
+guessed it from his tone. As for me, I began to have an inkling. Ben
+Gunn’s last words came back to my mind. I began to suppose that he had
+paid the buccaneers a visit while they all lay drunk together round
+their fire, and I reckoned up with glee that we had only fourteen
+enemies to deal with.
+
+“Well, here it is,” said Silver. “We want that treasure, and we’ll have
+it--that’s our point! You would just as soon save your lives, I reckon;
+and that’s yours. You have a chart, haven’t you?”
+
+“That’s as may be,” replied the captain.
+
+“Oh, well, you have, I know that,” returned Long John. “You needn’t be
+so husky with a man; there ain’t a particle of service in that, and you
+may lay to it. What I mean is, we want your chart. Now, I never meant
+you no harm, myself.”
+
+“That won’t do with me, my man,” interrupted the captain. “We know
+exactly what you meant to do, and we don’t care, for now, you see, you
+can’t do it.”
+
+And the captain looked at him calmly and proceeded to fill a pipe.
+
+“If Abe Gray--” Silver broke out.
+
+“Avast there!” cried Mr. Smollett. “Gray told me nothing, and I asked
+him nothing; and what’s more, I would see you and him and this whole
+island blown clean out of the water into blazes first. So there’s my
+mind for you, my man, on that.”
+
+This little whiff of temper seemed to cool Silver down. He had been
+growing nettled before, but now he pulled himself together.
+
+“Like enough,” said he. “I would set no limits to what gentlemen might
+consider shipshape, or might not, as the case were. And seein’ as how
+you are about to take a pipe, cap’n, I’ll make so free as do likewise.”
+
+And he filled a pipe and lighted it; and the two men sat silently
+smoking for quite a while, now looking each other in the face, now
+stopping their tobacco, now leaning forward to spit. It was as good as
+the play to see them.
+
+“Now,” resumed Silver, “here it is. You give us the chart to get the
+treasure by, and drop shooting poor seamen and stoving of their heads in
+while asleep. You do that, and we’ll offer you a choice. Either you come
+aboard along of us, once the treasure shipped, and then I’ll give you my
+affy-davy, upon my word of honour, to clap you somewhere safe ashore. Or
+if that ain’t to your fancy, some of my hands being rough and having
+old scores on account of hazing, then you can stay here, you can. We’ll
+divide stores with you, man for man; and I’ll give my affy-davy, as
+before to speak the first ship I sight, and send ’em here to pick you
+up. Now, you’ll own that’s talking. Handsomer you couldn’t look to get,
+now you. And I hope”--raising his voice--“that all hands in this here
+block house will overhaul my words, for what is spoke to one is spoke to
+all.”
+
+Captain Smollett rose from his seat and knocked out the ashes of his
+pipe in the palm of his left hand.
+
+“Is that all?” he asked.
+
+“Every last word, by thunder!” answered John. “Refuse that, and you’ve
+seen the last of me but musket-balls.”
+
+“Very good,” said the captain. “Now you’ll hear me. If you’ll come up
+one by one, unarmed, I’ll engage to clap you all in irons and take you
+home to a fair trial in England. If you won’t, my name is Alexander
+Smollett, I’ve flown my sovereign’s colours, and I’ll see you all
+to Davy Jones. You can’t find the treasure. You can’t sail the
+ship--there’s not a man among you fit to sail the ship. You can’t fight
+us--Gray, there, got away from five of you. Your ship’s in irons, Master
+Silver; you’re on a lee shore, and so you’ll find. I stand here and tell
+you so; and they’re the last good words you’ll get from me, for in the
+name of heaven, I’ll put a bullet in your back when next I meet you.
+Tramp, my lad. Bundle out of this, please, hand over hand, and double
+quick.”
+
+Silver’s face was a picture; his eyes started in his head with wrath. He
+shook the fire out of his pipe.
+
+“Give me a hand up!” he cried.
+
+“Not I,” returned the captain.
+
+“Who’ll give me a hand up?” he roared.
+
+Not a man among us moved. Growling the foulest imprecations, he crawled
+along the sand till he got hold of the porch and could hoist himself
+again upon his crutch. Then he spat into the spring.
+
+“There!” he cried. “That’s what I think of ye. Before an hour’s out,
+I’ll stove in your old block house like a rum puncheon. Laugh, by
+thunder, laugh! Before an hour’s out, ye’ll laugh upon the other side.
+Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.”
+
+And with a dreadful oath he stumbled off, ploughed down the sand, was
+helped across the stockade, after four or five failures, by the man with
+the flag of truce, and disappeared in an instant afterwards among the
+trees.
+
+
+
+
+21
+
+The Attack
+
+AS soon as Silver disappeared, the captain, who had been closely
+watching him, turned towards the interior of the house and found not a
+man of us at his post but Gray. It was the first time we had ever seen
+him angry.
+
+“Quarters!” he roared. And then, as we all slunk back to our places,
+“Gray,” he said, “I’ll put your name in the log; you’ve stood by your
+duty like a seaman. Mr. Trelawney, I’m surprised at you, sir. Doctor,
+I thought you had worn the king’s coat! If that was how you served at
+Fontenoy, sir, you’d have been better in your berth.”
+
+The doctor’s watch were all back at their loopholes, the rest were busy
+loading the spare muskets, and everyone with a red face, you may be
+certain, and a flea in his ear, as the saying is.
+
+The captain looked on for a while in silence. Then he spoke.
+
+“My lads,” said he, “I’ve given Silver a broadside. I pitched it in
+red-hot on purpose; and before the hour’s out, as he said, we shall be
+boarded. We’re outnumbered, I needn’t tell you that, but we fight in
+shelter; and a minute ago I should have said we fought with discipline.
+I’ve no manner of doubt that we can drub them, if you choose.”
+
+Then he went the rounds and saw, as he said, that all was clear.
+
+On the two short sides of the house, east and west, there were only two
+loopholes; on the south side where the porch was, two again; and on the
+north side, five. There was a round score of muskets for the seven
+of us; the firewood had been built into four piles--tables, you might
+say--one about the middle of each side, and on each of these tables some
+ammunition and four loaded muskets were laid ready to the hand of the
+defenders. In the middle, the cutlasses lay ranged.
+
+“Toss out the fire,” said the captain; “the chill is past, and we
+mustn’t have smoke in our eyes.”
+
+The iron fire-basket was carried bodily out by Mr. Trelawney, and the
+embers smothered among sand.
+
+“Hawkins hasn’t had his breakfast. Hawkins, help yourself, and back to
+your post to eat it,” continued Captain Smollett. “Lively, now, my lad;
+you’ll want it before you’ve done. Hunter, serve out a round of brandy
+to all hands.”
+
+And while this was going on, the captain completed, in his own mind, the
+plan of the defence.
+
+“Doctor, you will take the door,” he resumed. “See, and don’t expose
+yourself; keep within, and fire through the porch. Hunter, take the east
+side, there. Joyce, you stand by the west, my man. Mr. Trelawney, you
+are the best shot--you and Gray will take this long north side, with the
+five loopholes; it’s there the danger is. If they can get up to it and
+fire in upon us through our own ports, things would begin to look dirty.
+Hawkins, neither you nor I are much account at the shooting; we’ll stand
+by to load and bear a hand.”
+
+As the captain had said, the chill was past. As soon as the sun had
+climbed above our girdle of trees, it fell with all its force upon the
+clearing and drank up the vapours at a draught. Soon the sand was baking
+and the resin melting in the logs of the block house. Jackets and coats
+were flung aside, shirts thrown open at the neck and rolled up to the
+shoulders; and we stood there, each at his post, in a fever of heat and
+anxiety.
+
+An hour passed away.
+
+“Hang them!” said the captain. “This is as dull as the doldrums. Gray,
+whistle for a wind.”
+
+And just at that moment came the first news of the attack.
+
+“If you please, sir,” said Joyce, “if I see anyone, am I to fire?”
+
+“I told you so!” cried the captain.
+
+“Thank you, sir,” returned Joyce with the same quiet civility.
+
+Nothing followed for a time, but the remark had set us all on the alert,
+straining ears and eyes--the musketeers with their pieces balanced in
+their hands, the captain out in the middle of the block house with his
+mouth very tight and a frown on his face.
+
+So some seconds passed, till suddenly Joyce whipped up his musket
+and fired. The report had scarcely died away ere it was repeated and
+repeated from without in a scattering volley, shot behind shot, like
+a string of geese, from every side of the enclosure. Several bullets
+struck the log-house, but not one entered; and as the smoke cleared away
+and vanished, the stockade and the woods around it looked as quiet and
+empty as before. Not a bough waved, not the gleam of a musket-barrel
+betrayed the presence of our foes.
+
+“Did you hit your man?” asked the captain.
+
+“No, sir,” replied Joyce. “I believe not, sir.”
+
+“Next best thing to tell the truth,” muttered Captain Smollett. “Load
+his gun, Hawkins. How many should say there were on your side, doctor?”
+
+“I know precisely,” said Dr. Livesey. “Three shots were fired on this
+side. I saw the three flashes--two close together--one farther to the
+west.”
+
+“Three!” repeated the captain. “And how many on yours, Mr. Trelawney?”
+
+But this was not so easily answered. There had come many from the
+north--seven by the squire’s computation, eight or nine according to
+Gray. From the east and west only a single shot had been fired. It was
+plain, therefore, that the attack would be developed from the north and
+that on the other three sides we were only to be annoyed by a show of
+hostilities. But Captain Smollett made no change in his arrangements. If
+the mutineers succeeded in crossing the stockade, he argued, they would
+take possession of any unprotected loophole and shoot us down like rats
+in our own stronghold.
+
+Nor had we much time left to us for thought. Suddenly, with a loud
+huzza, a little cloud of pirates leaped from the woods on the north side
+and ran straight on the stockade. At the same moment, the fire was once
+more opened from the woods, and a rifle ball sang through the doorway
+and knocked the doctor’s musket into bits.
+
+The boarders swarmed over the fence like monkeys. Squire and Gray fired
+again and yet again; three men fell, one forwards into the enclosure,
+two back on the outside. But of these, one was evidently more frightened
+than hurt, for he was on his feet again in a crack and instantly
+disappeared among the trees.
+
+Two had bit the dust, one had fled, four had made good their footing
+inside our defences, while from the shelter of the woods seven or eight
+men, each evidently supplied with several muskets, kept up a hot though
+useless fire on the log-house.
+
+The four who had boarded made straight before them for the building,
+shouting as they ran, and the men among the trees shouted back to
+encourage them. Several shots were fired, but such was the hurry of the
+marksmen that not one appears to have taken effect. In a moment, the
+four pirates had swarmed up the mound and were upon us.
+
+The head of Job Anderson, the boatswain, appeared at the middle
+loophole.
+
+“At ’em, all hands--all hands!” he roared in a voice of thunder.
+
+At the same moment, another pirate grasped Hunter’s musket by the
+muzzle, wrenched it from his hands, plucked it through the loophole,
+and with one stunning blow, laid the poor fellow senseless on the floor.
+Meanwhile a third, running unharmed all around the house, appeared
+suddenly in the doorway and fell with his cutlass on the doctor.
+
+Our position was utterly reversed. A moment since we were firing, under
+cover, at an exposed enemy; now it was we who lay uncovered and could
+not return a blow.
+
+The log-house was full of smoke, to which we owed our comparative
+safety. Cries and confusion, the flashes and reports of pistol-shots,
+and one loud groan rang in my ears.
+
+“Out, lads, out, and fight ’em in the open! Cutlasses!” cried the
+captain.
+
+I snatched a cutlass from the pile, and someone, at the same time
+snatching another, gave me a cut across the knuckles which I hardly
+felt. I dashed out of the door into the clear sunlight. Someone was
+close behind, I knew not whom. Right in front, the doctor was pursuing
+his assailant down the hill, and just as my eyes fell upon him, beat
+down his guard and sent him sprawling on his back with a great slash
+across the face.
+
+“Round the house, lads! Round the house!” cried the captain; and even in
+the hurly-burly, I perceived a change in his voice.
+
+Mechanically, I obeyed, turned eastwards, and with my cutlass raised,
+ran round the corner of the house. Next moment I was face to face
+with Anderson. He roared aloud, and his hanger went up above his head,
+flashing in the sunlight. I had not time to be afraid, but as the blow
+still hung impending, leaped in a trice upon one side, and missing my
+foot in the soft sand, rolled headlong down the slope.
+
+When I had first sallied from the door, the other mutineers had been
+already swarming up the palisade to make an end of us. One man, in a red
+night-cap, with his cutlass in his mouth, had even got upon the top and
+thrown a leg across. Well, so short had been the interval that when I
+found my feet again all was in the same posture, the fellow with the red
+night-cap still half-way over, another still just showing his head above
+the top of the stockade. And yet, in this breath of time, the fight was
+over and the victory was ours.
+
+Gray, following close behind me, had cut down the big boatswain ere
+he had time to recover from his last blow. Another had been shot at a
+loophole in the very act of firing into the house and now lay in agony,
+the pistol still smoking in his hand. A third, as I had seen, the doctor
+had disposed of at a blow. Of the four who had scaled the palisade, one
+only remained unaccounted for, and he, having left his cutlass on the
+field, was now clambering out again with the fear of death upon him.
+
+“Fire--fire from the house!” cried the doctor. “And you, lads, back into
+cover.”
+
+But his words were unheeded, no shot was fired, and the last boarder
+made good his escape and disappeared with the rest into the wood. In
+three seconds nothing remained of the attacking party but the five who
+had fallen, four on the inside and one on the outside of the palisade.
+
+The doctor and Gray and I ran full speed for shelter. The survivors
+would soon be back where they had left their muskets, and at any moment
+the fire might recommence.
+
+The house was by this time somewhat cleared of smoke, and we saw at
+a glance the price we had paid for victory. Hunter lay beside his
+loophole, stunned; Joyce by his, shot through the head, never to move
+again; while right in the centre, the squire was supporting the captain,
+one as pale as the other.
+
+“The captain’s wounded,” said Mr. Trelawney.
+
+“Have they run?” asked Mr. Smollett.
+
+“All that could, you may be bound,” returned the doctor; “but there’s
+five of them will never run again.”
+
+“Five!” cried the captain. “Come, that’s better. Five against three
+leaves us four to nine. That’s better odds than we had at starting. We
+were seven to nineteen then, or thought we were, and that’s as bad to
+bear.” *
+
+*The mutineers were soon only eight in number, for the man shot by Mr.
+Trelawney on board the schooner died that same evening of his wound. But
+this was, of course, not known till after by the faithful party.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART FIVE--My Sea Adventure
+
+
+
+
+22
+
+How My Sea Adventure Began
+
+THERE was no return of the mutineers--not so much as another shot out of
+the woods. They had “got their rations for that day,” as the captain put
+it, and we had the place to ourselves and a quiet time to overhaul the
+wounded and get dinner. Squire and I cooked outside in spite of the
+danger, and even outside we could hardly tell what we were at, for
+horror of the loud groans that reached us from the doctor’s patients.
+
+Out of the eight men who had fallen in the action, only three still
+breathed--that one of the pirates who had been shot at the loophole,
+Hunter, and Captain Smollett; and of these, the first two were as good
+as dead; the mutineer indeed died under the doctor’s knife, and Hunter,
+do what we could, never recovered consciousness in this world. He
+lingered all day, breathing loudly like the old buccaneer at home in his
+apoplectic fit, but the bones of his chest had been crushed by the
+blow and his skull fractured in falling, and some time in the following
+night, without sign or sound, he went to his Maker.
+
+As for the captain, his wounds were grievous indeed, but not dangerous.
+No organ was fatally injured. Anderson’s ball--for it was Job that
+shot him first--had broken his shoulder-blade and touched the lung, not
+badly; the second had only torn and displaced some muscles in the calf.
+He was sure to recover, the doctor said, but in the meantime, and for
+weeks to come, he must not walk nor move his arm, nor so much as speak
+when he could help it.
+
+My own accidental cut across the knuckles was a flea-bite. Doctor
+Livesey patched it up with plaster and pulled my ears for me into the
+bargain.
+
+After dinner the squire and the doctor sat by the captain’s side awhile
+in consultation; and when they had talked to their hearts’ content, it
+being then a little past noon, the doctor took up his hat and pistols,
+girt on a cutlass, put the chart in his pocket, and with a musket over
+his shoulder crossed the palisade on the north side and set off briskly
+through the trees.
+
+Gray and I were sitting together at the far end of the block house, to
+be out of earshot of our officers consulting; and Gray took his pipe out
+of his mouth and fairly forgot to put it back again, so thunder-struck
+he was at this occurrence.
+
+“Why, in the name of Davy Jones,” said he, “is Dr. Livesey mad?”
+
+“Why no,” says I. “He’s about the last of this crew for that, I take
+it.”
+
+“Well, shipmate,” said Gray, “mad he may not be; but if HE’S not, you
+mark my words, I am.”
+
+“I take it,” replied I, “the doctor has his idea; and if I am right,
+he’s going now to see Ben Gunn.”
+
+I was right, as appeared later; but in the meantime, the house being
+stifling hot and the little patch of sand inside the palisade ablaze
+with midday sun, I began to get another thought into my head, which was
+not by any means so right. What I began to do was to envy the doctor
+walking in the cool shadow of the woods with the birds about him and the
+pleasant smell of the pines, while I sat grilling, with my clothes
+stuck to the hot resin, and so much blood about me and so many poor
+dead bodies lying all around that I took a disgust of the place that was
+almost as strong as fear.
+
+All the time I was washing out the block house, and then washing up
+the things from dinner, this disgust and envy kept growing stronger
+and stronger, till at last, being near a bread-bag, and no one then
+observing me, I took the first step towards my escapade and filled both
+pockets of my coat with biscuit.
+
+I was a fool, if you like, and certainly I was going to do a foolish,
+over-bold act; but I was determined to do it with all the precautions in
+my power. These biscuits, should anything befall me, would keep me, at
+least, from starving till far on in the next day.
+
+The next thing I laid hold of was a brace of pistols, and as I already
+had a powder-horn and bullets, I felt myself well supplied with arms.
+
+As for the scheme I had in my head, it was not a bad one in itself. I
+was to go down the sandy spit that divides the anchorage on the east
+from the open sea, find the white rock I had observed last evening, and
+ascertain whether it was there or not that Ben Gunn had hidden his boat,
+a thing quite worth doing, as I still believe. But as I was certain I
+should not be allowed to leave the enclosure, my only plan was to take
+French leave and slip out when nobody was watching, and that was so bad
+a way of doing it as made the thing itself wrong. But I was only a boy,
+and I had made my mind up.
+
+Well, as things at last fell out, I found an admirable opportunity. The
+squire and Gray were busy helping the captain with his bandages, the
+coast was clear, I made a bolt for it over the stockade and into the
+thickest of the trees, and before my absence was observed I was out of
+cry of my companions.
+
+This was my second folly, far worse than the first, as I left but two
+sound men to guard the house; but like the first, it was a help towards
+saving all of us.
+
+I took my way straight for the east coast of the island, for I was
+determined to go down the sea side of the spit to avoid all chance of
+observation from the anchorage. It was already late in the afternoon,
+although still warm and sunny. As I continued to thread the tall woods,
+I could hear from far before me not only the continuous thunder of the
+surf, but a certain tossing of foliage and grinding of boughs which
+showed me the sea breeze had set in higher than usual. Soon cool
+draughts of air began to reach me, and a few steps farther I came forth
+into the open borders of the grove, and saw the sea lying blue and sunny
+to the horizon and the surf tumbling and tossing its foam along the
+beach.
+
+I have never seen the sea quiet round Treasure Island. The sun might
+blaze overhead, the air be without a breath, the surface smooth and
+blue, but still these great rollers would be running along all the
+external coast, thundering and thundering by day and night; and I scarce
+believe there is one spot in the island where a man would be out of
+earshot of their noise.
+
+I walked along beside the surf with great enjoyment, till, thinking
+I was now got far enough to the south, I took the cover of some thick
+bushes and crept warily up to the ridge of the spit.
+
+Behind me was the sea, in front the anchorage. The sea breeze, as though
+it had the sooner blown itself out by its unusual violence, was already
+at an end; it had been succeeded by light, variable airs from the south
+and south-east, carrying great banks of fog; and the anchorage, under
+lee of Skeleton Island, lay still and leaden as when first we entered
+it. The HISPANIOLA, in that unbroken mirror, was exactly portrayed from
+the truck to the waterline, the Jolly Roger hanging from her peak.
+
+Alongside lay one of the gigs, Silver in the stern-sheets--him I could
+always recognize--while a couple of men were leaning over the stern
+bulwarks, one of them with a red cap--the very rogue that I had seen
+some hours before stride-legs upon the palisade. Apparently they were
+talking and laughing, though at that distance--upwards of a mile--I
+could, of course, hear no word of what was said. All at once there began
+the most horrid, unearthly screaming, which at first startled me badly,
+though I had soon remembered the voice of Captain Flint and even thought
+I could make out the bird by her bright plumage as she sat perched upon
+her master’s wrist.
+
+Soon after, the jolly-boat shoved off and pulled for shore, and the man
+with the red cap and his comrade went below by the cabin companion.
+
+Just about the same time, the sun had gone down behind the Spy-glass,
+and as the fog was collecting rapidly, it began to grow dark in earnest.
+I saw I must lose no time if I were to find the boat that evening.
+
+The white rock, visible enough above the brush, was still some eighth of
+a mile further down the spit, and it took me a goodish while to get up
+with it, crawling, often on all fours, among the scrub. Night had almost
+come when I laid my hand on its rough sides. Right below it there was
+an exceedingly small hollow of green turf, hidden by banks and a thick
+underwood about knee-deep, that grew there very plentifully; and in the
+centre of the dell, sure enough, a little tent of goat-skins, like what
+the gipsies carry about with them in England.
+
+I dropped into the hollow, lifted the side of the tent, and there was
+Ben Gunn’s boat--home-made if ever anything was home-made; a rude,
+lop-sided framework of tough wood, and stretched upon that a covering of
+goat-skin, with the hair inside. The thing was extremely small, even
+for me, and I can hardly imagine that it could have floated with a
+full-sized man. There was one thwart set as low as possible, a kind of
+stretcher in the bows, and a double paddle for propulsion.
+
+I had not then seen a coracle, such as the ancient Britons made, but
+I have seen one since, and I can give you no fairer idea of Ben Gunn’s
+boat than by saying it was like the first and the worst coracle ever
+made by man. But the great advantage of the coracle it certainly
+possessed, for it was exceedingly light and portable.
+
+Well, now that I had found the boat, you would have thought I had had
+enough of truantry for once, but in the meantime I had taken another
+notion and become so obstinately fond of it that I would have carried
+it out, I believe, in the teeth of Captain Smollett himself. This was
+to slip out under cover of the night, cut the HISPANIOLA adrift, and let
+her go ashore where she fancied. I had quite made up my mind that the
+mutineers, after their repulse of the morning, had nothing nearer their
+hearts than to up anchor and away to sea; this, I thought, it would be
+a fine thing to prevent, and now that I had seen how they left their
+watchmen unprovided with a boat, I thought it might be done with little
+risk.
+
+Down I sat to wait for darkness, and made a hearty meal of biscuit. It
+was a night out of ten thousand for my purpose. The fog had now buried
+all heaven. As the last rays of daylight dwindled and disappeared,
+absolute blackness settled down on Treasure Island. And when, at last,
+I shouldered the coracle and groped my way stumblingly out of the hollow
+where I had supped, there were but two points visible on the whole
+anchorage.
+
+One was the great fire on shore, by which the defeated pirates lay
+carousing in the swamp. The other, a mere blur of light upon the
+darkness, indicated the position of the anchored ship. She had swung
+round to the ebb--her bow was now towards me--the only lights on board
+were in the cabin, and what I saw was merely a reflection on the fog of
+the strong rays that flowed from the stern window.
+
+The ebb had already run some time, and I had to wade through a long belt
+of swampy sand, where I sank several times above the ankle, before I
+came to the edge of the retreating water, and wading a little way in,
+with some strength and dexterity, set my coracle, keel downwards, on the
+surface.
+
+
+
+
+23
+
+The Ebb-tide Runs
+
+THE coracle--as I had ample reason to know before I was done with
+her--was a very safe boat for a person of my height and weight, both
+buoyant and clever in a seaway; but she was the most cross-grained,
+lop-sided craft to manage. Do as you pleased, she always made more
+leeway than anything else, and turning round and round was the manoeuvre
+she was best at. Even Ben Gunn himself has admitted that she was “queer
+to handle till you knew her way.”
+
+Certainly I did not know her way. She turned in every direction but the
+one I was bound to go; the most part of the time we were broadside on,
+and I am very sure I never should have made the ship at all but for the
+tide. By good fortune, paddle as I pleased, the tide was still sweeping
+me down; and there lay the HISPANIOLA right in the fairway, hardly to be
+missed.
+
+First she loomed before me like a blot of something yet blacker than
+darkness, then her spars and hull began to take shape, and the next
+moment, as it seemed (for, the farther I went, the brisker grew the
+current of the ebb), I was alongside of her hawser and had laid hold.
+
+The hawser was as taut as a bowstring, and the current so strong she
+pulled upon her anchor. All round the hull, in the blackness, the
+rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream.
+One cut with my sea-gully and the HISPANIOLA would go humming down the
+tide.
+
+So far so good, but it next occurred to my recollection that a taut
+hawser, suddenly cut, is a thing as dangerous as a kicking horse. Ten to
+one, if I were so foolhardy as to cut the HISPANIOLA from her anchor, I
+and the coracle would be knocked clean out of the water.
+
+This brought me to a full stop, and if fortune had not again
+particularly favoured me, I should have had to abandon my design. But
+the light airs which had begun blowing from the south-east and south
+had hauled round after nightfall into the south-west. Just while I was
+meditating, a puff came, caught the HISPANIOLA, and forced her up into
+the current; and to my great joy, I felt the hawser slacken in my grasp,
+and the hand by which I held it dip for a second under water.
+
+With that I made my mind up, took out my gully, opened it with my teeth,
+and cut one strand after another, till the vessel swung only by two.
+Then I lay quiet, waiting to sever these last when the strain should be
+once more lightened by a breath of wind.
+
+All this time I had heard the sound of loud voices from the cabin, but
+to say truth, my mind had been so entirely taken up with other thoughts
+that I had scarcely given ear. Now, however, when I had nothing else to
+do, I began to pay more heed.
+
+One I recognized for the coxswain’s, Israel Hands, that had been Flint’s
+gunner in former days. The other was, of course, my friend of the red
+night-cap. Both men were plainly the worse of drink, and they were still
+drinking, for even while I was listening, one of them, with a drunken
+cry, opened the stern window and threw out something, which I divined to
+be an empty bottle. But they were not only tipsy; it was plain that they
+were furiously angry. Oaths flew like hailstones, and every now and
+then there came forth such an explosion as I thought was sure to end
+in blows. But each time the quarrel passed off and the voices grumbled
+lower for a while, until the next crisis came and in its turn passed
+away without result.
+
+On shore, I could see the glow of the great camp-fire burning warmly
+through the shore-side trees. Someone was singing, a dull, old, droning
+sailor’s song, with a droop and a quaver at the end of every verse,
+and seemingly no end to it at all but the patience of the singer. I had
+heard it on the voyage more than once and remembered these words:
+
+     “But one man of her crew alive,
+     What put to sea with seventy-five.”
+
+And I thought it was a ditty rather too dolefully appropriate for a
+company that had met such cruel losses in the morning. But, indeed, from
+what I saw, all these buccaneers were as callous as the sea they sailed
+on.
+
+At last the breeze came; the schooner sidled and drew nearer in the
+dark; I felt the hawser slacken once more, and with a good, tough
+effort, cut the last fibres through.
+
+The breeze had but little action on the coracle, and I was almost
+instantly swept against the bows of the HISPANIOLA. At the same time,
+the schooner began to turn upon her heel, spinning slowly, end for end,
+across the current.
+
+I wrought like a fiend, for I expected every moment to be swamped; and
+since I found I could not push the coracle directly off, I now shoved
+straight astern. At length I was clear of my dangerous neighbour, and
+just as I gave the last impulsion, my hands came across a light cord
+that was trailing overboard across the stern bulwarks. Instantly I
+grasped it.
+
+Why I should have done so I can hardly say. It was at first mere
+instinct, but once I had it in my hands and found it fast, curiosity
+began to get the upper hand, and I determined I should have one look
+through the cabin window.
+
+I pulled in hand over hand on the cord, and when I judged myself near
+enough, rose at infinite risk to about half my height and thus commanded
+the roof and a slice of the interior of the cabin.
+
+By this time the schooner and her little consort were gliding pretty
+swiftly through the water; indeed, we had already fetched up level with
+the camp-fire. The ship was talking, as sailors say, loudly, treading
+the innumerable ripples with an incessant weltering splash; and until I
+got my eye above the window-sill I could not comprehend why the watchmen
+had taken no alarm. One glance, however, was sufficient; and it was
+only one glance that I durst take from that unsteady skiff. It showed me
+Hands and his companion locked together in deadly wrestle, each with a
+hand upon the other’s throat.
+
+I dropped upon the thwart again, none too soon, for I was near
+overboard. I could see nothing for the moment but these two furious,
+encrimsoned faces swaying together under the smoky lamp, and I shut my
+eyes to let them grow once more familiar with the darkness.
+
+The endless ballad had come to an end at last, and the whole diminished
+company about the camp-fire had broken into the chorus I had heard so
+often:
+
+          “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest--
+              Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
+           Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
+              Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
+
+I was just thinking how busy drink and the devil were at that very
+moment in the cabin of the HISPANIOLA, when I was surprised by a sudden
+lurch of the coracle. At the same moment, she yawed sharply and seemed
+to change her course. The speed in the meantime had strangely increased.
+
+I opened my eyes at once. All round me were little ripples, combing
+over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The
+HISPANIOLA herself, a few yards in whose wake I was still being whirled
+along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars toss a
+little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, I
+made sure she also was wheeling to the southward.
+
+I glanced over my shoulder, and my heart jumped against my ribs. There,
+right behind me, was the glow of the camp-fire. The current had turned
+at right angles, sweeping round along with it the tall schooner and
+the little dancing coracle; ever quickening, ever bubbling higher, ever
+muttering louder, it went spinning through the narrows for the open sea.
+
+Suddenly the schooner in front of me gave a violent yaw, turning,
+perhaps, through twenty degrees; and almost at the same moment one
+shout followed another from on board; I could hear feet pounding on
+the companion ladder and I knew that the two drunkards had at last been
+interrupted in their quarrel and awakened to a sense of their disaster.
+
+I lay down flat in the bottom of that wretched skiff and devoutly
+recommended my spirit to its Maker. At the end of the straits, I
+made sure we must fall into some bar of raging breakers, where all my
+troubles would be ended speedily; and though I could, perhaps, bear to
+die, I could not bear to look upon my fate as it approached.
+
+So I must have lain for hours, continually beaten to and fro upon the
+billows, now and again wetted with flying sprays, and never ceasing to
+expect death at the next plunge. Gradually weariness grew upon me; a
+numbness, an occasional stupor, fell upon my mind even in the midst of
+my terrors, until sleep at last supervened and in my sea-tossed coracle
+I lay and dreamed of home and the old Admiral Benbow.
+
+
+
+
+24
+
+The Cruise of the Coracle
+
+IT was broad day when I awoke and found myself tossing at the south-west
+end of Treasure Island. The sun was up but was still hid from me behind
+the great bulk of the Spy-glass, which on this side descended almost to
+the sea in formidable cliffs.
+
+Haulbowline Head and Mizzen-mast Hill were at my elbow, the hill bare
+and dark, the head bound with cliffs forty or fifty feet high and
+fringed with great masses of fallen rock. I was scarce a quarter of a
+mile to seaward, and it was my first thought to paddle in and land.
+
+That notion was soon given over. Among the fallen rocks the breakers
+spouted and bellowed; loud reverberations, heavy sprays flying and
+falling, succeeded one another from second to second; and I saw myself,
+if I ventured nearer, dashed to death upon the rough shore or spending
+my strength in vain to scale the beetling crags.
+
+Nor was that all, for crawling together on flat tables of rock or
+letting themselves drop into the sea with loud reports I beheld huge
+slimy monsters--soft snails, as it were, of incredible bigness--two
+or three score of them together, making the rocks to echo with their
+barkings.
+
+I have understood since that they were sea lions, and entirely harmless.
+But the look of them, added to the difficulty of the shore and the
+high running of the surf, was more than enough to disgust me of that
+landing-place. I felt willing rather to starve at sea than to confront
+such perils.
+
+In the meantime I had a better chance, as I supposed, before me. North
+of Haulbowline Head, the land runs in a long way, leaving at low tide
+a long stretch of yellow sand. To the north of that, again, there comes
+another cape--Cape of the Woods, as it was marked upon the chart--buried
+in tall green pines, which descended to the margin of the sea.
+
+I remembered what Silver had said about the current that sets northward
+along the whole west coast of Treasure Island, and seeing from my
+position that I was already under its influence, I preferred to leave
+Haulbowline Head behind me and reserve my strength for an attempt to
+land upon the kindlier-looking Cape of the Woods.
+
+There was a great, smooth swell upon the sea. The wind blowing steady
+and gentle from the south, there was no contrariety between that and the
+current, and the billows rose and fell unbroken.
+
+Had it been otherwise, I must long ago have perished; but as it was,
+it is surprising how easily and securely my little and light boat could
+ride. Often, as I still lay at the bottom and kept no more than an eye
+above the gunwale, I would see a big blue summit heaving close above me;
+yet the coracle would but bounce a little, dance as if on springs, and
+subside on the other side into the trough as lightly as a bird.
+
+I began after a little to grow very bold and sat up to try my skill at
+paddling. But even a small change in the disposition of the weight will
+produce violent changes in the behaviour of a coracle. And I had hardly
+moved before the boat, giving up at once her gentle dancing movement,
+ran straight down a slope of water so steep that it made me giddy, and
+struck her nose, with a spout of spray, deep into the side of the next
+wave.
+
+I was drenched and terrified, and fell instantly back into my old
+position, whereupon the coracle seemed to find her head again and led
+me as softly as before among the billows. It was plain she was not to be
+interfered with, and at that rate, since I could in no way influence her
+course, what hope had I left of reaching land?
+
+I began to be horribly frightened, but I kept my head, for all that.
+First, moving with all care, I gradually baled out the coracle with my
+sea-cap; then, getting my eye once more above the gunwale, I set myself
+to study how it was she managed to slip so quietly through the rollers.
+
+I found each wave, instead of the big, smooth glossy mountain it looks
+from shore or from a vessel’s deck, was for all the world like any range
+of hills on dry land, full of peaks and smooth places and valleys. The
+coracle, left to herself, turning from side to side, threaded, so to
+speak, her way through these lower parts and avoided the steep slopes
+and higher, toppling summits of the wave.
+
+“Well, now,” thought I to myself, “it is plain I must lie where I am and
+not disturb the balance; but it is plain also that I can put the paddle
+over the side and from time to time, in smooth places, give her a shove
+or two towards land.” No sooner thought upon than done. There I lay on
+my elbows in the most trying attitude, and every now and again gave a
+weak stroke or two to turn her head to shore.
+
+It was very tiring and slow work, yet I did visibly gain ground; and as
+we drew near the Cape of the Woods, though I saw I must infallibly
+miss that point, I had still made some hundred yards of easting. I was,
+indeed, close in. I could see the cool green tree-tops swaying together
+in the breeze, and I felt sure I should make the next promontory without
+fail.
+
+It was high time, for I now began to be tortured with thirst. The glow
+of the sun from above, its thousandfold reflection from the waves, the
+sea-water that fell and dried upon me, caking my very lips with salt,
+combined to make my throat burn and my brain ache. The sight of the
+trees so near at hand had almost made me sick with longing, but the
+current had soon carried me past the point, and as the next reach of sea
+opened out, I beheld a sight that changed the nature of my thoughts.
+
+Right in front of me, not half a mile away, I beheld the HISPANIOLA
+under sail. I made sure, of course, that I should be taken; but I was
+so distressed for want of water that I scarce knew whether to be glad
+or sorry at the thought, and long before I had come to a conclusion,
+surprise had taken entire possession of my mind and I could do nothing
+but stare and wonder.
+
+The HISPANIOLA was under her main-sail and two jibs, and the beautiful
+white canvas shone in the sun like snow or silver. When I first
+sighted her, all her sails were drawing; she was lying a course about
+north-west, and I presumed the men on board were going round the island
+on their way back to the anchorage. Presently she began to fetch more
+and more to the westward, so that I thought they had sighted me and were
+going about in chase. At last, however, she fell right into the wind’s
+eye, was taken dead aback, and stood there awhile helpless, with her
+sails shivering.
+
+“Clumsy fellows,” said I; “they must still be drunk as owls.” And I
+thought how Captain Smollett would have set them skipping.
+
+Meanwhile the schooner gradually fell off and filled again upon another
+tack, sailed swiftly for a minute or so, and brought up once more dead
+in the wind’s eye. Again and again was this repeated. To and fro, up and
+down, north, south, east, and west, the HISPANIOLA sailed by swoops
+and dashes, and at each repetition ended as she had begun, with idly
+flapping canvas. It became plain to me that nobody was steering. And if
+so, where were the men? Either they were dead drunk or had deserted her,
+I thought, and perhaps if I could get on board I might return the vessel
+to her captain.
+
+The current was bearing coracle and schooner southward at an equal rate.
+As for the latter’s sailing, it was so wild and intermittent, and she
+hung each time so long in irons, that she certainly gained nothing, if
+she did not even lose. If only I dared to sit up and paddle, I made
+sure that I could overhaul her. The scheme had an air of adventure
+that inspired me, and the thought of the water breaker beside the fore
+companion doubled my growing courage.
+
+Up I got, was welcomed almost instantly by another cloud of spray, but
+this time stuck to my purpose and set myself, with all my strength and
+caution, to paddle after the unsteered HISPANIOLA. Once I shipped a sea
+so heavy that I had to stop and bail, with my heart fluttering like
+a bird, but gradually I got into the way of the thing and guided my
+coracle among the waves, with only now and then a blow upon her bows and
+a dash of foam in my face.
+
+I was now gaining rapidly on the schooner; I could see the brass glisten
+on the tiller as it banged about, and still no soul appeared upon her
+decks. I could not choose but suppose she was deserted. If not, the men
+were lying drunk below, where I might batten them down, perhaps, and do
+what I chose with the ship.
+
+For some time she had been doing the worse thing possible for
+me--standing still. She headed nearly due south, yawing, of course, all
+the time. Each time she fell off, her sails partly filled, and these
+brought her in a moment right to the wind again. I have said this was
+the worst thing possible for me, for helpless as she looked in this
+situation, with the canvas cracking like cannon and the blocks trundling
+and banging on the deck, she still continued to run away from me, not
+only with the speed of the current, but by the whole amount of her
+leeway, which was naturally great.
+
+But now, at last, I had my chance. The breeze fell for some seconds,
+very low, and the current gradually turning her, the HISPANIOLA revolved
+slowly round her centre and at last presented me her stern, with the
+cabin window still gaping open and the lamp over the table still burning
+on into the day. The main-sail hung drooped like a banner. She was
+stock-still but for the current.
+
+For the last little while I had even lost, but now redoubling my
+efforts, I began once more to overhaul the chase.
+
+I was not a hundred yards from her when the wind came again in a clap;
+she filled on the port tack and was off again, stooping and skimming
+like a swallow.
+
+My first impulse was one of despair, but my second was towards joy.
+Round she came, till she was broadside on to me--round still till she
+had covered a half and then two thirds and then three quarters of the
+distance that separated us. I could see the waves boiling white under
+her forefoot. Immensely tall she looked to me from my low station in the
+coracle.
+
+And then, of a sudden, I began to comprehend. I had scarce time to
+think--scarce time to act and save myself. I was on the summit of one
+swell when the schooner came stooping over the next. The bowsprit was
+over my head. I sprang to my feet and leaped, stamping the coracle under
+water. With one hand I caught the jib-boom, while my foot was lodged
+between the stay and the brace; and as I still clung there panting, a
+dull blow told me that the schooner had charged down upon and struck the
+coracle and that I was left without retreat on the HISPANIOLA.
+
+
+
+
+25
+
+I Strike the Jolly Roger
+
+I HAD scarce gained a position on the bowsprit when the flying jib
+flapped and filled upon the other tack, with a report like a gun. The
+schooner trembled to her keel under the reverse, but next moment, the
+other sails still drawing, the jib flapped back again and hung idle.
+
+This had nearly tossed me off into the sea; and now I lost no time,
+crawled back along the bowsprit, and tumbled head foremost on the deck.
+
+I was on the lee side of the forecastle, and the mainsail, which was
+still drawing, concealed from me a certain portion of the after-deck.
+Not a soul was to be seen. The planks, which had not been swabbed since
+the mutiny, bore the print of many feet, and an empty bottle, broken by
+the neck, tumbled to and fro like a live thing in the scuppers.
+
+Suddenly the HISPANIOLA came right into the wind. The jibs behind me
+cracked aloud, the rudder slammed to, the whole ship gave a sickening
+heave and shudder, and at the same moment the main-boom swung inboard,
+the sheet groaning in the blocks, and showed me the lee after-deck.
+
+There were the two watchmen, sure enough: red-cap on his back, as stiff
+as a handspike, with his arms stretched out like those of a crucifix and
+his teeth showing through his open lips; Israel Hands propped against
+the bulwarks, his chin on his chest, his hands lying open before him on
+the deck, his face as white, under its tan, as a tallow candle.
+
+For a while the ship kept bucking and sidling like a vicious horse, the
+sails filling, now on one tack, now on another, and the boom swinging to
+and fro till the mast groaned aloud under the strain. Now and again too
+there would come a cloud of light sprays over the bulwark and a heavy
+blow of the ship’s bows against the swell; so much heavier weather was
+made of it by this great rigged ship than by my home-made, lop-sided
+coracle, now gone to the bottom of the sea.
+
+At every jump of the schooner, red-cap slipped to and fro, but--what was
+ghastly to behold--neither his attitude nor his fixed teeth-disclosing
+grin was anyway disturbed by this rough usage. At every jump too, Hands
+appeared still more to sink into himself and settle down upon the
+deck, his feet sliding ever the farther out, and the whole body canting
+towards the stern, so that his face became, little by little, hid
+from me; and at last I could see nothing beyond his ear and the frayed
+ringlet of one whisker.
+
+At the same time, I observed, around both of them, splashes of dark
+blood upon the planks and began to feel sure that they had killed each
+other in their drunken wrath.
+
+While I was thus looking and wondering, in a calm moment, when the ship
+was still, Israel Hands turned partly round and with a low moan writhed
+himself back to the position in which I had seen him first. The moan,
+which told of pain and deadly weakness, and the way in which his jaw
+hung open went right to my heart. But when I remembered the talk I had
+overheard from the apple barrel, all pity left me.
+
+I walked aft until I reached the main-mast.
+
+“Come aboard, Mr. Hands,” I said ironically.
+
+He rolled his eyes round heavily, but he was too far gone to express
+surprise. All he could do was to utter one word, “Brandy.”
+
+It occurred to me there was no time to lose, and dodging the boom as it
+once more lurched across the deck, I slipped aft and down the companion
+stairs into the cabin.
+
+It was such a scene of confusion as you can hardly fancy. All the
+lockfast places had been broken open in quest of the chart. The floor
+was thick with mud where ruffians had sat down to drink or consult after
+wading in the marshes round their camp. The bulkheads, all painted in
+clear white and beaded round with gilt, bore a pattern of dirty hands.
+Dozens of empty bottles clinked together in corners to the rolling of
+the ship. One of the doctor’s medical books lay open on the table, half
+of the leaves gutted out, I suppose, for pipelights. In the midst of all
+this the lamp still cast a smoky glow, obscure and brown as umber.
+
+I went into the cellar; all the barrels were gone, and of the bottles
+a most surprising number had been drunk out and thrown away. Certainly,
+since the mutiny began, not a man of them could ever have been sober.
+
+Foraging about, I found a bottle with some brandy left, for Hands; and
+for myself I routed out some biscuit, some pickled fruits, a great bunch
+of raisins, and a piece of cheese. With these I came on deck, put down
+my own stock behind the rudder head and well out of the coxswain’s
+reach, went forward to the water-breaker, and had a good deep drink of
+water, and then, and not till then, gave Hands the brandy.
+
+He must have drunk a gill before he took the bottle from his mouth.
+
+“Aye,” said he, “by thunder, but I wanted some o’ that!”
+
+I had sat down already in my own corner and begun to eat.
+
+“Much hurt?” I asked him.
+
+He grunted, or rather, I might say, he barked.
+
+“If that doctor was aboard,” he said, “I’d be right enough in a couple
+of turns, but I don’t have no manner of luck, you see, and that’s what’s
+the matter with me. As for that swab, he’s good and dead, he is,” he
+added, indicating the man with the red cap. “He warn’t no seaman anyhow.
+And where mought you have come from?”
+
+“Well,” said I, “I’ve come aboard to take possession of this ship,
+Mr. Hands; and you’ll please regard me as your captain until further
+notice.”
+
+He looked at me sourly enough but said nothing. Some of the colour had
+come back into his cheeks, though he still looked very sick and still
+continued to slip out and settle down as the ship banged about.
+
+“By the by,” I continued, “I can’t have these colours, Mr. Hands; and by
+your leave, I’ll strike ’em. Better none than these.”
+
+And again dodging the boom, I ran to the colour lines, handed down their
+cursed black flag, and chucked it overboard.
+
+“God save the king!” said I, waving my cap. “And there’s an end to
+Captain Silver!”
+
+He watched me keenly and slyly, his chin all the while on his breast.
+
+“I reckon,” he said at last, “I reckon, Cap’n Hawkins, you’ll kind of
+want to get ashore now. S’pose we talks.”
+
+“Why, yes,” says I, “with all my heart, Mr. Hands. Say on.” And I went
+back to my meal with a good appetite.
+
+“This man,” he began, nodding feebly at the corpse “--O’Brien were his
+name, a rank Irelander--this man and me got the canvas on her, meaning
+for to sail her back. Well, HE’S dead now, he is--as dead as bilge; and
+who’s to sail this ship, I don’t see. Without I gives you a hint, you
+ain’t that man, as far’s I can tell. Now, look here, you gives me food
+and drink and a old scarf or ankecher to tie my wound up, you do, and
+I’ll tell you how to sail her, and that’s about square all round, I take
+it.”
+
+“I’ll tell you one thing,” says I: “I’m not going back to Captain Kidd’s
+anchorage. I mean to get into North Inlet and beach her quietly there.”
+
+“To be sure you did,” he cried. “Why, I ain’t sich an infernal lubber
+after all. I can see, can’t I? I’ve tried my fling, I have, and I’ve
+lost, and it’s you has the wind of me. North Inlet? Why, I haven’t no
+ch’ice, not I! I’d help you sail her up to Execution Dock, by thunder!
+So I would.”
+
+Well, as it seemed to me, there was some sense in this. We struck our
+bargain on the spot. In three minutes I had the HISPANIOLA sailing
+easily before the wind along the coast of Treasure Island, with good
+hopes of turning the northern point ere noon and beating down again as
+far as North Inlet before high water, when we might beach her safely and
+wait till the subsiding tide permitted us to land.
+
+Then I lashed the tiller and went below to my own chest, where I got a
+soft silk handkerchief of my mother’s. With this, and with my aid, Hands
+bound up the great bleeding stab he had received in the thigh, and after
+he had eaten a little and had a swallow or two more of the brandy, he
+began to pick up visibly, sat straighter up, spoke louder and clearer,
+and looked in every way another man.
+
+The breeze served us admirably. We skimmed before it like a bird, the
+coast of the island flashing by and the view changing every minute.
+Soon we were past the high lands and bowling beside low, sandy country,
+sparsely dotted with dwarf pines, and soon we were beyond that again
+and had turned the corner of the rocky hill that ends the island on the
+north.
+
+I was greatly elated with my new command, and pleased with the bright,
+sunshiny weather and these different prospects of the coast. I had now
+plenty of water and good things to eat, and my conscience, which had
+smitten me hard for my desertion, was quieted by the great conquest I
+had made. I should, I think, have had nothing left me to desire but for
+the eyes of the coxswain as they followed me derisively about the deck
+and the odd smile that appeared continually on his face. It was a smile
+that had in it something both of pain and weakness--a haggard old man’s
+smile; but there was, besides that, a grain of derision, a shadow of
+treachery, in his expression as he craftily watched, and watched, and
+watched me at my work.
+
+
+
+
+26
+
+Israel Hands
+
+THE wind, serving us to a desire, now hauled into the west. We could run
+so much the easier from the north-east corner of the island to the mouth
+of the North Inlet. Only, as we had no power to anchor and dared not
+beach her till the tide had flowed a good deal farther, time hung on our
+hands. The coxswain told me how to lay the ship to; after a good many
+trials I succeeded, and we both sat in silence over another meal.
+
+“Cap’n,” said he at length with that same uncomfortable smile, “here’s
+my old shipmate, O’Brien; s’pose you was to heave him overboard. I ain’t
+partic’lar as a rule, and I don’t take no blame for settling his hash,
+but I don’t reckon him ornamental now, do you?”
+
+“I’m not strong enough, and I don’t like the job; and there he lies, for
+me,” said I.
+
+“This here’s an unlucky ship, this HISPANIOLA, Jim,” he went on,
+blinking. “There’s a power of men been killed in this HISPANIOLA--a
+sight o’ poor seamen dead and gone since you and me took ship to
+Bristol. I never seen sich dirty luck, not I. There was this here
+O’Brien now--he’s dead, ain’t he? Well now, I’m no scholar, and you’re a
+lad as can read and figure, and to put it straight, do you take it as a
+dead man is dead for good, or do he come alive again?”
+
+“You can kill the body, Mr. Hands, but not the spirit; you must know
+that already,” I replied. “O’Brien there is in another world, and may be
+watching us.”
+
+“Ah!” says he. “Well, that’s unfort’nate--appears as if killing parties
+was a waste of time. Howsomever, sperrits don’t reckon for much, by what
+I’ve seen. I’ll chance it with the sperrits, Jim. And now, you’ve spoke
+up free, and I’ll take it kind if you’d step down into that there cabin
+and get me a--well, a--shiver my timbers! I can’t hit the name on ’t;
+well, you get me a bottle of wine, Jim--this here brandy’s too strong
+for my head.”
+
+Now, the coxswain’s hesitation seemed to be unnatural, and as for the
+notion of his preferring wine to brandy, I entirely disbelieved it. The
+whole story was a pretext. He wanted me to leave the deck--so much was
+plain; but with what purpose I could in no way imagine. His eyes never
+met mine; they kept wandering to and fro, up and down, now with a look
+to the sky, now with a flitting glance upon the dead O’Brien. All the
+time he kept smiling and putting his tongue out in the most guilty,
+embarrassed manner, so that a child could have told that he was bent on
+some deception. I was prompt with my answer, however, for I saw where
+my advantage lay and that with a fellow so densely stupid I could easily
+conceal my suspicions to the end.
+
+“Some wine?” I said. “Far better. Will you have white or red?”
+
+“Well, I reckon it’s about the blessed same to me, shipmate,” he
+replied; “so it’s strong, and plenty of it, what’s the odds?”
+
+“All right,” I answered. “I’ll bring you port, Mr. Hands. But I’ll have
+to dig for it.”
+
+With that I scuttled down the companion with all the noise I could,
+slipped off my shoes, ran quietly along the sparred gallery, mounted the
+forecastle ladder, and popped my head out of the fore companion. I
+knew he would not expect to see me there, yet I took every precaution
+possible, and certainly the worst of my suspicions proved too true.
+
+He had risen from his position to his hands and knees, and though his
+leg obviously hurt him pretty sharply when he moved--for I could hear
+him stifle a groan--yet it was at a good, rattling rate that he trailed
+himself across the deck. In half a minute he had reached the port
+scuppers and picked, out of a coil of rope, a long knife, or rather a
+short dirk, discoloured to the hilt with blood. He looked upon it for
+a moment, thrusting forth his under jaw, tried the point upon his hand,
+and then, hastily concealing it in the bosom of his jacket, trundled
+back again into his old place against the bulwark.
+
+This was all that I required to know. Israel could move about, he was
+now armed, and if he had been at so much trouble to get rid of me,
+it was plain that I was meant to be the victim. What he would do
+afterwards--whether he would try to crawl right across the island from
+North Inlet to the camp among the swamps or whether he would fire Long
+Tom, trusting that his own comrades might come first to help him--was,
+of course, more than I could say.
+
+Yet I felt sure that I could trust him in one point, since in that
+our interests jumped together, and that was in the disposition of
+the schooner. We both desired to have her stranded safe enough, in a
+sheltered place, and so that, when the time came, she could be got off
+again with as little labour and danger as might be; and until that was
+done I considered that my life would certainly be spared.
+
+While I was thus turning the business over in my mind, I had not been
+idle with my body. I had stolen back to the cabin, slipped once more
+into my shoes, and laid my hand at random on a bottle of wine, and now,
+with this for an excuse, I made my reappearance on the deck.
+
+Hands lay as I had left him, all fallen together in a bundle and with
+his eyelids lowered as though he were too weak to bear the light. He
+looked up, however, at my coming, knocked the neck off the bottle like
+a man who had done the same thing often, and took a good swig, with his
+favourite toast of “Here’s luck!” Then he lay quiet for a little, and
+then, pulling out a stick of tobacco, begged me to cut him a quid.
+
+“Cut me a junk o’ that,” says he, “for I haven’t no knife and hardly
+strength enough, so be as I had. Ah, Jim, Jim, I reckon I’ve missed
+stays! Cut me a quid, as’ll likely be the last, lad, for I’m for my long
+home, and no mistake.”
+
+“Well,” said I, “I’ll cut you some tobacco, but if I was you and thought
+myself so badly, I would go to my prayers like a Christian man.”
+
+“Why?” said he. “Now, you tell me why.”
+
+“Why?” I cried. “You were asking me just now about the dead. You’ve
+broken your trust; you’ve lived in sin and lies and blood; there’s a man
+you killed lying at your feet this moment, and you ask me why! For God’s
+mercy, Mr. Hands, that’s why.”
+
+I spoke with a little heat, thinking of the bloody dirk he had hidden
+in his pocket and designed, in his ill thoughts, to end me with. He,
+for his part, took a great draught of the wine and spoke with the most
+unusual solemnity.
+
+“For thirty years,” he said, “I’ve sailed the seas and seen good and
+bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out,
+knives going, and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come
+o’ goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don’t bite;
+them’s my views--amen, so be it. And now, you look here,” he added,
+suddenly changing his tone, “we’ve had about enough of this foolery. The
+tide’s made good enough by now. You just take my orders, Cap’n Hawkins,
+and we’ll sail slap in and be done with it.”
+
+All told, we had scarce two miles to run; but the navigation was
+delicate, the entrance to this northern anchorage was not only narrow
+and shoal, but lay east and west, so that the schooner must be nicely
+handled to be got in. I think I was a good, prompt subaltern, and I am
+very sure that Hands was an excellent pilot, for we went about and about
+and dodged in, shaving the banks, with a certainty and a neatness that
+were a pleasure to behold.
+
+Scarcely had we passed the heads before the land closed around us. The
+shores of North Inlet were as thickly wooded as those of the southern
+anchorage, but the space was longer and narrower and more like, what in
+truth it was, the estuary of a river. Right before us, at the southern
+end, we saw the wreck of a ship in the last stages of dilapidation. It
+had been a great vessel of three masts but had lain so long exposed to
+the injuries of the weather that it was hung about with great webs of
+dripping seaweed, and on the deck of it shore bushes had taken root and
+now flourished thick with flowers. It was a sad sight, but it showed us
+that the anchorage was calm.
+
+“Now,” said Hands, “look there; there’s a pet bit for to beach a ship
+in. Fine flat sand, never a cat’s paw, trees all around of it, and
+flowers a-blowing like a garding on that old ship.”
+
+“And once beached,” I inquired, “how shall we get her off again?”
+
+“Why, so,” he replied: “you take a line ashore there on the other side
+at low water, take a turn about one of them big pines; bring it back,
+take a turn around the capstan, and lie to for the tide. Come high
+water, all hands take a pull upon the line, and off she comes as sweet
+as natur’. And now, boy, you stand by. We’re near the bit now, and she’s
+too much way on her. Starboard a little--so--steady--starboard--larboard
+a little--steady--steady!”
+
+So he issued his commands, which I breathlessly obeyed, till, all of a
+sudden, he cried, “Now, my hearty, luff!” And I put the helm hard up,
+and the HISPANIOLA swung round rapidly and ran stem on for the low,
+wooded shore.
+
+The excitement of these last manoeuvres had somewhat interfered with the
+watch I had kept hitherto, sharply enough, upon the coxswain. Even then
+I was still so much interested, waiting for the ship to touch, that I
+had quite forgot the peril that hung over my head and stood craning over
+the starboard bulwarks and watching the ripples spreading wide before
+the bows. I might have fallen without a struggle for my life had not a
+sudden disquietude seized upon me and made me turn my head. Perhaps I
+had heard a creak or seen his shadow moving with the tail of my eye;
+perhaps it was an instinct like a cat’s; but, sure enough, when I looked
+round, there was Hands, already half-way towards me, with the dirk in
+his right hand.
+
+We must both have cried out aloud when our eyes met, but while mine
+was the shrill cry of terror, his was a roar of fury like a charging
+bully’s. At the same instant, he threw himself forward and I leapt
+sideways towards the bows. As I did so, I let go of the tiller, which
+sprang sharp to leeward, and I think this saved my life, for it struck
+Hands across the chest and stopped him, for the moment, dead.
+
+Before he could recover, I was safe out of the corner where he had me
+trapped, with all the deck to dodge about. Just forward of the main-mast
+I stopped, drew a pistol from my pocket, took a cool aim, though he had
+already turned and was once more coming directly after me, and drew the
+trigger. The hammer fell, but there followed neither flash nor sound;
+the priming was useless with sea-water. I cursed myself for my neglect.
+Why had not I, long before, reprimed and reloaded my only weapons? Then
+I should not have been as now, a mere fleeing sheep before this butcher.
+
+Wounded as he was, it was wonderful how fast he could move, his grizzled
+hair tumbling over his face, and his face itself as red as a red ensign
+with his haste and fury. I had no time to try my other pistol, nor
+indeed much inclination, for I was sure it would be useless. One thing I
+saw plainly: I must not simply retreat before him, or he would speedily
+hold me boxed into the bows, as a moment since he had so nearly boxed
+me in the stern. Once so caught, and nine or ten inches of the
+blood-stained dirk would be my last experience on this side of eternity.
+I placed my palms against the main-mast, which was of a goodish bigness,
+and waited, every nerve upon the stretch.
+
+Seeing that I meant to dodge, he also paused; and a moment or two passed
+in feints on his part and corresponding movements upon mine. It was such
+a game as I had often played at home about the rocks of Black Hill Cove,
+but never before, you may be sure, with such a wildly beating heart as
+now. Still, as I say, it was a boy’s game, and I thought I could hold
+my own at it against an elderly seaman with a wounded thigh. Indeed my
+courage had begun to rise so high that I allowed myself a few darting
+thoughts on what would be the end of the affair, and while I saw
+certainly that I could spin it out for long, I saw no hope of any
+ultimate escape.
+
+Well, while things stood thus, suddenly the HISPANIOLA struck,
+staggered, ground for an instant in the sand, and then, swift as a
+blow, canted over to the port side till the deck stood at an angle
+of forty-five degrees and about a puncheon of water splashed into the
+scupper holes and lay, in a pool, between the deck and bulwark.
+
+We were both of us capsized in a second, and both of us rolled, almost
+together, into the scuppers, the dead red-cap, with his arms still
+spread out, tumbling stiffly after us. So near were we, indeed, that my
+head came against the coxswain’s foot with a crack that made my teeth
+rattle. Blow and all, I was the first afoot again, for Hands had got
+involved with the dead body. The sudden canting of the ship had made the
+deck no place for running on; I had to find some new way of escape,
+and that upon the instant, for my foe was almost touching me. Quick as
+thought, I sprang into the mizzen shrouds, rattled up hand over hand,
+and did not draw a breath till I was seated on the cross-trees.
+
+I had been saved by being prompt; the dirk had struck not half a foot
+below me as I pursued my upward flight; and there stood Israel Hands
+with his mouth open and his face upturned to mine, a perfect statue of
+surprise and disappointment.
+
+Now that I had a moment to myself, I lost no time in changing the
+priming of my pistol, and then, having one ready for service, and to
+make assurance doubly sure, I proceeded to draw the load of the other
+and recharge it afresh from the beginning.
+
+My new employment struck Hands all of a heap; he began to see the dice
+going against him, and after an obvious hesitation, he also hauled
+himself heavily into the shrouds, and with the dirk in his teeth, began
+slowly and painfully to mount. It cost him no end of time and groans
+to haul his wounded leg behind him, and I had quietly finished my
+arrangements before he was much more than a third of the way up. Then,
+with a pistol in either hand, I addressed him.
+
+“One more step, Mr. Hands,” said I, “and I’ll blow your brains out! Dead
+men don’t bite, you know,” I added with a chuckle.
+
+He stopped instantly. I could see by the working of his face that he was
+trying to think, and the process was so slow and laborious that, in my
+new-found security, I laughed aloud. At last, with a swallow or two, he
+spoke, his face still wearing the same expression of extreme perplexity.
+In order to speak he had to take the dagger from his mouth, but in all
+else he remained unmoved.
+
+“Jim,” says he, “I reckon we’re fouled, you and me, and we’ll have to
+sign articles. I’d have had you but for that there lurch, but I don’t
+have no luck, not I; and I reckon I’ll have to strike, which comes hard,
+you see, for a master mariner to a ship’s younker like you, Jim.”
+
+I was drinking in his words and smiling away, as conceited as a cock
+upon a wall, when, all in a breath, back went his right hand over his
+shoulder. Something sang like an arrow through the air; I felt a blow
+and then a sharp pang, and there I was pinned by the shoulder to the
+mast. In the horrid pain and surprise of the moment--I scarce can say
+it was by my own volition, and I am sure it was without a conscious
+aim--both my pistols went off, and both escaped out of my hands. They
+did not fall alone; with a choked cry, the coxswain loosed his grasp
+upon the shrouds and plunged head first into the water.
+
+
+
+
+27
+
+“Pieces of Eight”
+
+OWING to the cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water,
+and from my perch on the cross-trees I had nothing below me but the
+surface of the bay. Hands, who was not so far up, was in consequence
+nearer to the ship and fell between me and the bulwarks. He rose once to
+the surface in a lather of foam and blood and then sank again for good.
+As the water settled, I could see him lying huddled together on the
+clean, bright sand in the shadow of the vessel’s sides. A fish or two
+whipped past his body. Sometimes, by the quivering of the water, he
+appeared to move a little, as if he were trying to rise. But he was dead
+enough, for all that, being both shot and drowned, and was food for fish
+in the very place where he had designed my slaughter.
+
+I was no sooner certain of this than I began to feel sick, faint, and
+terrified. The hot blood was running over my back and chest. The dirk,
+where it had pinned my shoulder to the mast, seemed to burn like a hot
+iron; yet it was not so much these real sufferings that distressed me,
+for these, it seemed to me, I could bear without a murmur; it was the
+horror I had upon my mind of falling from the cross-trees into that
+still green water, beside the body of the coxswain.
+
+I clung with both hands till my nails ached, and I shut my eyes as if to
+cover up the peril. Gradually my mind came back again, my pulses quieted
+down to a more natural time, and I was once more in possession of
+myself.
+
+It was my first thought to pluck forth the dirk, but either it stuck too
+hard or my nerve failed me, and I desisted with a violent shudder. Oddly
+enough, that very shudder did the business. The knife, in fact, had come
+the nearest in the world to missing me altogether; it held me by a mere
+pinch of skin, and this the shudder tore away. The blood ran down the
+faster, to be sure, but I was my own master again and only tacked to the
+mast by my coat and shirt.
+
+These last I broke through with a sudden jerk, and then regained the
+deck by the starboard shrouds. For nothing in the world would I have
+again ventured, shaken as I was, upon the overhanging port shrouds from
+which Israel had so lately fallen.
+
+I went below and did what I could for my wound; it pained me a good deal
+and still bled freely, but it was neither deep nor dangerous, nor did it
+greatly gall me when I used my arm. Then I looked around me, and as the
+ship was now, in a sense, my own, I began to think of clearing it from
+its last passenger--the dead man, O’Brien.
+
+He had pitched, as I have said, against the bulwarks, where he lay
+like some horrible, ungainly sort of puppet, life-size, indeed, but how
+different from life’s colour or life’s comeliness! In that position
+I could easily have my way with him, and as the habit of tragical
+adventures had worn off almost all my terror for the dead, I took him
+by the waist as if he had been a sack of bran and with one good heave,
+tumbled him overboard. He went in with a sounding plunge; the red cap
+came off and remained floating on the surface; and as soon as the splash
+subsided, I could see him and Israel lying side by side, both wavering
+with the tremulous movement of the water. O’Brien, though still quite a
+young man, was very bald. There he lay, with that bald head across the
+knees of the man who had killed him and the quick fishes steering to and
+fro over both.
+
+I was now alone upon the ship; the tide had just turned. The sun was
+within so few degrees of setting that already the shadow of the pines
+upon the western shore began to reach right across the anchorage and
+fall in patterns on the deck. The evening breeze had sprung up, and
+though it was well warded off by the hill with the two peaks upon the
+east, the cordage had begun to sing a little softly to itself and the
+idle sails to rattle to and fro.
+
+I began to see a danger to the ship. The jibs I speedily doused and
+brought tumbling to the deck, but the main-sail was a harder matter. Of
+course, when the schooner canted over, the boom had swung out-board, and
+the cap of it and a foot or two of sail hung even under water. I thought
+this made it still more dangerous; yet the strain was so heavy that I
+half feared to meddle. At last I got my knife and cut the halyards. The
+peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose canvas floated broad upon
+the water, and since, pull as I liked, I could not budge the downhall,
+that was the extent of what I could accomplish. For the rest, the
+HISPANIOLA must trust to luck, like myself.
+
+By this time the whole anchorage had fallen into shadow--the last rays,
+I remember, falling through a glade of the wood and shining bright as
+jewels on the flowery mantle of the wreck. It began to be chill; the
+tide was rapidly fleeting seaward, the schooner settling more and more
+on her beam-ends.
+
+I scrambled forward and looked over. It seemed shallow enough, and
+holding the cut hawser in both hands for a last security, I let myself
+drop softly overboard. The water scarcely reached my waist; the sand was
+firm and covered with ripple marks, and I waded ashore in great spirits,
+leaving the HISPANIOLA on her side, with her main-sail trailing wide
+upon the surface of the bay. About the same time, the sun went fairly
+down and the breeze whistled low in the dusk among the tossing pines.
+
+At least, and at last, I was off the sea, nor had I returned thence
+empty-handed. There lay the schooner, clear at last from buccaneers
+and ready for our own men to board and get to sea again. I had nothing
+nearer my fancy than to get home to the stockade and boast of my
+achievements. Possibly I might be blamed a bit for my truantry, but the
+recapture of the HISPANIOLA was a clenching answer, and I hoped that
+even Captain Smollett would confess I had not lost my time.
+
+So thinking, and in famous spirits, I began to set my face homeward for
+the block house and my companions. I remembered that the most easterly
+of the rivers which drain into Captain Kidd’s anchorage ran from the
+two-peaked hill upon my left, and I bent my course in that direction
+that I might pass the stream while it was small. The wood was pretty
+open, and keeping along the lower spurs, I had soon turned the corner
+of that hill, and not long after waded to the mid-calf across the
+watercourse.
+
+This brought me near to where I had encountered Ben Gunn, the maroon;
+and I walked more circumspectly, keeping an eye on every side. The dusk
+had come nigh hand completely, and as I opened out the cleft between the
+two peaks, I became aware of a wavering glow against the sky, where, as
+I judged, the man of the island was cooking his supper before a roaring
+fire. And yet I wondered, in my heart, that he should show himself so
+careless. For if I could see this radiance, might it not reach the eyes
+of Silver himself where he camped upon the shore among the marshes?
+
+Gradually the night fell blacker; it was all I could do to guide myself
+even roughly towards my destination; the double hill behind me and the
+Spy-glass on my right hand loomed faint and fainter; the stars were few
+and pale; and in the low ground where I wandered I kept tripping among
+bushes and rolling into sandy pits.
+
+Suddenly a kind of brightness fell about me. I looked up; a pale glimmer
+of moonbeams had alighted on the summit of the Spy-glass, and soon after
+I saw something broad and silvery moving low down behind the trees, and
+knew the moon had risen.
+
+With this to help me, I passed rapidly over what remained to me of my
+journey, and sometimes walking, sometimes running, impatiently drew near
+to the stockade. Yet, as I began to thread the grove that lies before
+it, I was not so thoughtless but that I slacked my pace and went a
+trifle warily. It would have been a poor end of my adventures to get
+shot down by my own party in mistake.
+
+The moon was climbing higher and higher, its light began to fall here
+and there in masses through the more open districts of the wood, and
+right in front of me a glow of a different colour appeared among
+the trees. It was red and hot, and now and again it was a little
+darkened--as it were, the embers of a bonfire smouldering.
+
+For the life of me I could not think what it might be.
+
+At last I came right down upon the borders of the clearing. The western
+end was already steeped in moonshine; the rest, and the block house
+itself, still lay in a black shadow chequered with long silvery streaks
+of light. On the other side of the house an immense fire had burned
+itself into clear embers and shed a steady, red reverberation,
+contrasted strongly with the mellow paleness of the moon. There was not
+a soul stirring nor a sound beside the noises of the breeze.
+
+I stopped, with much wonder in my heart, and perhaps a little terror
+also. It had not been our way to build great fires; we were, indeed,
+by the captain’s orders, somewhat niggardly of firewood, and I began to
+fear that something had gone wrong while I was absent.
+
+I stole round by the eastern end, keeping close in shadow, and at a
+convenient place, where the darkness was thickest, crossed the palisade.
+
+To make assurance surer, I got upon my hands and knees and crawled,
+without a sound, towards the corner of the house. As I drew nearer, my
+heart was suddenly and greatly lightened. It is not a pleasant noise in
+itself, and I have often complained of it at other times, but just
+then it was like music to hear my friends snoring together so loud and
+peaceful in their sleep. The sea-cry of the watch, that beautiful “All’s
+well,” never fell more reassuringly on my ear.
+
+In the meantime, there was no doubt of one thing; they kept an infamous
+bad watch. If it had been Silver and his lads that were now creeping
+in on them, not a soul would have seen daybreak. That was what it
+was, thought I, to have the captain wounded; and again I blamed myself
+sharply for leaving them in that danger with so few to mount guard.
+
+By this time I had got to the door and stood up. All was dark within,
+so that I could distinguish nothing by the eye. As for sounds, there
+was the steady drone of the snorers and a small occasional noise, a
+flickering or pecking that I could in no way account for.
+
+With my arms before me I walked steadily in. I should lie down in my own
+place (I thought with a silent chuckle) and enjoy their faces when they
+found me in the morning.
+
+My foot struck something yielding--it was a sleeper’s leg; and he turned
+and groaned, but without awaking.
+
+And then, all of a sudden, a shrill voice broke forth out of the
+darkness:
+
+“Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!
+Pieces of eight!” and so forth, without pause or change, like the
+clacking of a tiny mill.
+
+Silver’s green parrot, Captain Flint! It was she whom I had heard
+pecking at a piece of bark; it was she, keeping better watch than any
+human being, who thus announced my arrival with her wearisome refrain.
+
+I had no time left me to recover. At the sharp, clipping tone of the
+parrot, the sleepers awoke and sprang up; and with a mighty oath, the
+voice of Silver cried, “Who goes?”
+
+I turned to run, struck violently against one person, recoiled, and ran
+full into the arms of a second, who for his part closed upon and held me
+tight.
+
+“Bring a torch, Dick,” said Silver when my capture was thus assured.
+
+And one of the men left the log-house and presently returned with a
+lighted brand.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART SIX--Captain Silver
+
+
+
+
+28
+
+In the Enemy’s Camp
+
+THE red glare of the torch, lighting up the interior of the block house,
+showed me the worst of my apprehensions realized. The pirates were in
+possession of the house and stores: there was the cask of cognac,
+there were the pork and bread, as before, and what tenfold increased
+my horror, not a sign of any prisoner. I could only judge that all had
+perished, and my heart smote me sorely that I had not been there to
+perish with them.
+
+There were six of the buccaneers, all told; not another man was left
+alive. Five of them were on their feet, flushed and swollen, suddenly
+called out of the first sleep of drunkenness. The sixth had only risen
+upon his elbow; he was deadly pale, and the blood-stained bandage round
+his head told that he had recently been wounded, and still more recently
+dressed. I remembered the man who had been shot and had run back among
+the woods in the great attack, and doubted not that this was he.
+
+The parrot sat, preening her plumage, on Long John’s shoulder. He
+himself, I thought, looked somewhat paler and more stern than I was used
+to. He still wore the fine broadcloth suit in which he had fulfilled his
+mission, but it was bitterly the worse for wear, daubed with clay and
+torn with the sharp briers of the wood.
+
+“So,” said he, “here’s Jim Hawkins, shiver my timbers! Dropped in, like,
+eh? Well, come, I take that friendly.”
+
+And thereupon he sat down across the brandy cask and began to fill a
+pipe.
+
+“Give me a loan of the link, Dick,” said he; and then, when he had a
+good light, “That’ll do, lad,” he added; “stick the glim in the wood
+heap; and you, gentlemen, bring yourselves to! You needn’t stand up
+for Mr. Hawkins; HE’LL excuse you, you may lay to that. And so,
+Jim”--stopping the tobacco--“here you were, and quite a pleasant
+surprise for poor old John. I see you were smart when first I set my
+eyes on you, but this here gets away from me clean, it do.”
+
+To all this, as may be well supposed, I made no answer. They had set me
+with my back against the wall, and I stood there, looking Silver in the
+face, pluckily enough, I hope, to all outward appearance, but with black
+despair in my heart.
+
+Silver took a whiff or two of his pipe with great composure and then ran
+on again.
+
+“Now, you see, Jim, so be as you ARE here,” says he, “I’ll give you a
+piece of my mind. I’ve always liked you, I have, for a lad of spirit,
+and the picter of my own self when I was young and handsome. I always
+wanted you to jine and take your share, and die a gentleman, and now, my
+cock, you’ve got to. Cap’n Smollett’s a fine seaman, as I’ll own up to
+any day, but stiff on discipline. ‘Dooty is dooty,’ says he, and right
+he is. Just you keep clear of the cap’n. The doctor himself is gone dead
+again you--‘ungrateful scamp’ was what he said; and the short and the
+long of the whole story is about here: you can’t go back to your own
+lot, for they won’t have you; and without you start a third ship’s
+company all by yourself, which might be lonely, you’ll have to jine with
+Cap’n Silver.”
+
+So far so good. My friends, then, were still alive, and though I partly
+believed the truth of Silver’s statement, that the cabin party were
+incensed at me for my desertion, I was more relieved than distressed by
+what I heard.
+
+“I don’t say nothing as to your being in our hands,” continued Silver,
+“though there you are, and you may lay to it. I’m all for argyment; I
+never seen good come out o’ threatening. If you like the service, well,
+you’ll jine; and if you don’t, Jim, why, you’re free to answer no--free
+and welcome, shipmate; and if fairer can be said by mortal seaman,
+shiver my sides!”
+
+“Am I to answer, then?” I asked with a very tremulous voice. Through all
+this sneering talk, I was made to feel the threat of death that overhung
+me, and my cheeks burned and my heart beat painfully in my breast.
+
+“Lad,” said Silver, “no one’s a-pressing of you. Take your bearings.
+None of us won’t hurry you, mate; time goes so pleasant in your company,
+you see.”
+
+“Well,” says I, growing a bit bolder, “if I’m to choose, I declare I
+have a right to know what’s what, and why you’re here, and where my
+friends are.”
+
+“Wot’s wot?” repeated one of the buccaneers in a deep growl. “Ah, he’d
+be a lucky one as knowed that!”
+
+“You’ll perhaps batten down your hatches till you’re spoke to, my
+friend,” cried Silver truculently to this speaker. And then, in
+his first gracious tones, he replied to me, “Yesterday morning, Mr.
+Hawkins,” said he, “in the dog-watch, down came Doctor Livesey with a
+flag of truce. Says he, ‘Cap’n Silver, you’re sold out. Ship’s gone.’
+Well, maybe we’d been taking a glass, and a song to help it round. I
+won’t say no. Leastways, none of us had looked out. We looked out, and
+by thunder, the old ship was gone! I never seen a pack o’ fools look
+fishier; and you may lay to that, if I tells you that looked the
+fishiest. ‘Well,’ says the doctor, ‘let’s bargain.’ We bargained, him
+and I, and here we are: stores, brandy, block house, the firewood you
+was thoughtful enough to cut, and in a manner of speaking, the whole
+blessed boat, from cross-trees to kelson. As for them, they’ve tramped;
+I don’t know where’s they are.”
+
+He drew again quietly at his pipe.
+
+“And lest you should take it into that head of yours,” he went on, “that
+you was included in the treaty, here’s the last word that was said: ‘How
+many are you,’ says I, ‘to leave?’ ‘Four,’ says he; ‘four, and one of us
+wounded. As for that boy, I don’t know where he is, confound him,’ says
+he, ‘nor I don’t much care. We’re about sick of him.’ These was his
+words.
+
+“Is that all?” I asked.
+
+“Well, it’s all that you’re to hear, my son,” returned Silver.
+
+“And now I am to choose?”
+
+“And now you are to choose, and you may lay to that,” said Silver.
+
+“Well,” said I, “I am not such a fool but I know pretty well what I have
+to look for. Let the worst come to the worst, it’s little I care. I’ve
+seen too many die since I fell in with you. But there’s a thing or two
+I have to tell you,” I said, and by this time I was quite excited; “and
+the first is this: here you are, in a bad way--ship lost, treasure lost,
+men lost, your whole business gone to wreck; and if you want to know who
+did it--it was I! I was in the apple barrel the night we sighted land,
+and I heard you, John, and you, Dick Johnson, and Hands, who is now at
+the bottom of the sea, and told every word you said before the hour was
+out. And as for the schooner, it was I who cut her cable, and it was I
+that killed the men you had aboard of her, and it was I who brought her
+where you’ll never see her more, not one of you. The laugh’s on my side;
+I’ve had the top of this business from the first; I no more fear you
+than I fear a fly. Kill me, if you please, or spare me. But one thing
+I’ll say, and no more; if you spare me, bygones are bygones, and when
+you fellows are in court for piracy, I’ll save you all I can. It is for
+you to choose. Kill another and do yourselves no good, or spare me and
+keep a witness to save you from the gallows.”
+
+I stopped, for, I tell you, I was out of breath, and to my wonder, not
+a man of them moved, but all sat staring at me like as many sheep. And
+while they were still staring, I broke out again, “And now, Mr. Silver,”
+ I said, “I believe you’re the best man here, and if things go to the
+worst, I’ll take it kind of you to let the doctor know the way I took
+it.”
+
+“I’ll bear it in mind,” said Silver with an accent so curious that I
+could not, for the life of me, decide whether he were laughing at my
+request or had been favourably affected by my courage.
+
+“I’ll put one to that,” cried the old mahogany-faced seaman--Morgan
+by name--whom I had seen in Long John’s public-house upon the quays of
+Bristol. “It was him that knowed Black Dog.”
+
+“Well, and see here,” added the sea-cook. “I’ll put another again to
+that, by thunder! For it was this same boy that faked the chart from
+Billy Bones. First and last, we’ve split upon Jim Hawkins!”
+
+“Then here goes!” said Morgan with an oath.
+
+And he sprang up, drawing his knife as if he had been twenty.
+
+“Avast, there!” cried Silver. “Who are you, Tom Morgan? Maybe you
+thought you was cap’n here, perhaps. By the powers, but I’ll teach you
+better! Cross me, and you’ll go where many a good man’s gone before you,
+first and last, these thirty year back--some to the yard-arm, shiver
+my timbers, and some by the board, and all to feed the fishes. There’s
+never a man looked me between the eyes and seen a good day a’terwards,
+Tom Morgan, you may lay to that.”
+
+Morgan paused, but a hoarse murmur rose from the others.
+
+“Tom’s right,” said one.
+
+“I stood hazing long enough from one,” added another. “I’ll be hanged if
+I’ll be hazed by you, John Silver.”
+
+“Did any of you gentlemen want to have it out with ME?” roared Silver,
+bending far forward from his position on the keg, with his pipe still
+glowing in his right hand. “Put a name on what you’re at; you ain’t
+dumb, I reckon. Him that wants shall get it. Have I lived this many
+years, and a son of a rum puncheon cock his hat athwart my hawse at the
+latter end of it? You know the way; you’re all gentlemen o’ fortune, by
+your account. Well, I’m ready. Take a cutlass, him that dares, and I’ll
+see the colour of his inside, crutch and all, before that pipe’s empty.”
+
+Not a man stirred; not a man answered.
+
+“That’s your sort, is it?” he added, returning his pipe to his mouth.
+“Well, you’re a gay lot to look at, anyway. Not much worth to fight, you
+ain’t. P’r’aps you can understand King George’s English. I’m cap’n here
+by ’lection. I’m cap’n here because I’m the best man by a long sea-mile.
+You won’t fight, as gentlemen o’ fortune should; then, by thunder,
+you’ll obey, and you may lay to it! I like that boy, now; I never seen
+a better boy than that. He’s more a man than any pair of rats of you in
+this here house, and what I say is this: let me see him that’ll lay a
+hand on him--that’s what I say, and you may lay to it.”
+
+There was a long pause after this. I stood straight up against the wall,
+my heart still going like a sledge-hammer, but with a ray of hope
+now shining in my bosom. Silver leant back against the wall, his arms
+crossed, his pipe in the corner of his mouth, as calm as though he had
+been in church; yet his eye kept wandering furtively, and he kept the
+tail of it on his unruly followers. They, on their part, drew gradually
+together towards the far end of the block house, and the low hiss of
+their whispering sounded in my ear continuously, like a stream. One
+after another, they would look up, and the red light of the torch would
+fall for a second on their nervous faces; but it was not towards me, it
+was towards Silver that they turned their eyes.
+
+“You seem to have a lot to say,” remarked Silver, spitting far into the
+air. “Pipe up and let me hear it, or lay to.”
+
+“Ax your pardon, sir,” returned one of the men; “you’re pretty free with
+some of the rules; maybe you’ll kindly keep an eye upon the rest. This
+crew’s dissatisfied; this crew don’t vally bullying a marlin-spike; this
+crew has its rights like other crews, I’ll make so free as that; and by
+your own rules, I take it we can talk together. I ax your pardon, sir,
+acknowledging you for to be captaing at this present; but I claim my
+right, and steps outside for a council.”
+
+And with an elaborate sea-salute, this fellow, a long, ill-looking,
+yellow-eyed man of five and thirty, stepped coolly towards the door and
+disappeared out of the house. One after another the rest followed his
+example, each making a salute as he passed, each adding some apology.
+“According to rules,” said one. “Forecastle council,” said Morgan. And
+so with one remark or another all marched out and left Silver and me
+alone with the torch.
+
+The sea-cook instantly removed his pipe.
+
+“Now, look you here, Jim Hawkins,” he said in a steady whisper that was
+no more than audible, “you’re within half a plank of death, and what’s
+a long sight worse, of torture. They’re going to throw me off. But, you
+mark, I stand by you through thick and thin. I didn’t mean to; no, not
+till you spoke up. I was about desperate to lose that much blunt, and
+be hanged into the bargain. But I see you was the right sort. I says to
+myself, you stand by Hawkins, John, and Hawkins’ll stand by you. You’re
+his last card, and by the living thunder, John, he’s yours! Back to
+back, says I. You save your witness, and he’ll save your neck!”
+
+I began dimly to understand.
+
+“You mean all’s lost?” I asked.
+
+“Aye, by gum, I do!” he answered. “Ship gone, neck gone--that’s the
+size of it. Once I looked into that bay, Jim Hawkins, and seen no
+schooner--well, I’m tough, but I gave out. As for that lot and their
+council, mark me, they’re outright fools and cowards. I’ll save your
+life--if so be as I can--from them. But, see here, Jim--tit for tat--you
+save Long John from swinging.”
+
+I was bewildered; it seemed a thing so hopeless he was asking--he, the
+old buccaneer, the ringleader throughout.
+
+“What I can do, that I’ll do,” I said.
+
+“It’s a bargain!” cried Long John. “You speak up plucky, and by thunder,
+I’ve a chance!”
+
+He hobbled to the torch, where it stood propped among the firewood, and
+took a fresh light to his pipe.
+
+“Understand me, Jim,” he said, returning. “I’ve a head on my shoulders,
+I have. I’m on squire’s side now. I know you’ve got that ship safe
+somewheres. How you done it, I don’t know, but safe it is. I guess Hands
+and O’Brien turned soft. I never much believed in neither of THEM. Now
+you mark me. I ask no questions, nor I won’t let others. I know when
+a game’s up, I do; and I know a lad that’s staunch. Ah, you that’s
+young--you and me might have done a power of good together!”
+
+He drew some cognac from the cask into a tin cannikin.
+
+“Will you taste, messmate?” he asked; and when I had refused: “Well,
+I’ll take a dram myself, Jim,” said he. “I need a caulker, for there’s
+trouble on hand. And talking o’ trouble, why did that doctor give me the
+chart, Jim?”
+
+My face expressed a wonder so unaffected that he saw the needlessness of
+further questions.
+
+“Ah, well, he did, though,” said he. “And there’s something under that,
+no doubt--something, surely, under that, Jim--bad or good.”
+
+And he took another swallow of the brandy, shaking his great fair head
+like a man who looks forward to the worst.
+
+
+
+
+29
+
+The Black Spot Again
+
+THE council of buccaneers had lasted some time, when one of them
+re-entered the house, and with a repetition of the same salute, which
+had in my eyes an ironical air, begged for a moment’s loan of the torch.
+Silver briefly agreed, and this emissary retired again, leaving us
+together in the dark.
+
+“There’s a breeze coming, Jim,” said Silver, who had by this time
+adopted quite a friendly and familiar tone.
+
+I turned to the loophole nearest me and looked out. The embers of the
+great fire had so far burned themselves out and now glowed so low and
+duskily that I understood why these conspirators desired a torch. About
+half-way down the slope to the stockade, they were collected in a group;
+one held the light, another was on his knees in their midst, and I saw
+the blade of an open knife shine in his hand with varying colours in
+the moon and torchlight. The rest were all somewhat stooping, as though
+watching the manoeuvres of this last. I could just make out that he
+had a book as well as a knife in his hand, and was still wondering how
+anything so incongruous had come in their possession when the kneeling
+figure rose once more to his feet and the whole party began to move
+together towards the house.
+
+“Here they come,” said I; and I returned to my former position, for it
+seemed beneath my dignity that they should find me watching them.
+
+“Well, let ’em come, lad--let ’em come,” said Silver cheerily. “I’ve
+still a shot in my locker.”
+
+The door opened, and the five men, standing huddled together just
+inside, pushed one of their number forward. In any other circumstances
+it would have been comical to see his slow advance, hesitating as he set
+down each foot, but holding his closed right hand in front of him.
+
+“Step up, lad,” cried Silver. “I won’t eat you. Hand it over, lubber. I
+know the rules, I do; I won’t hurt a depytation.”
+
+Thus encouraged, the buccaneer stepped forth more briskly, and having
+passed something to Silver, from hand to hand, slipped yet more smartly
+back again to his companions.
+
+The sea-cook looked at what had been given him.
+
+“The black spot! I thought so,” he observed. “Where might you have got
+the paper? Why, hillo! Look here, now; this ain’t lucky! You’ve gone and
+cut this out of a Bible. What fool’s cut a Bible?”
+
+“Ah, there!” said Morgan. “There! Wot did I say? No good’ll come o’
+that, I said.”
+
+“Well, you’ve about fixed it now, among you,” continued Silver. “You’ll
+all swing now, I reckon. What soft-headed lubber had a Bible?”
+
+“It was Dick,” said one.
+
+“Dick, was it? Then Dick can get to prayers,” said Silver. “He’s seen
+his slice of luck, has Dick, and you may lay to that.”
+
+But here the long man with the yellow eyes struck in.
+
+“Belay that talk, John Silver,” he said. “This crew has tipped you the
+black spot in full council, as in dooty bound; just you turn it over, as
+in dooty bound, and see what’s wrote there. Then you can talk.”
+
+“Thanky, George,” replied the sea-cook. “You always was brisk for
+business, and has the rules by heart, George, as I’m pleased to see.
+Well, what is it, anyway? Ah! ‘Deposed’--that’s it, is it? Very pretty
+wrote, to be sure; like print, I swear. Your hand o’ write, George? Why,
+you was gettin’ quite a leadin’ man in this here crew. You’ll be cap’n
+next, I shouldn’t wonder. Just oblige me with that torch again, will
+you? This pipe don’t draw.”
+
+“Come, now,” said George, “you don’t fool this crew no more. You’re a
+funny man, by your account; but you’re over now, and you’ll maybe step
+down off that barrel and help vote.”
+
+“I thought you said you knowed the rules,” returned Silver
+contemptuously. “Leastways, if you don’t, I do; and I wait here--and I’m
+still your cap’n, mind--till you outs with your grievances and I reply;
+in the meantime, your black spot ain’t worth a biscuit. After that,
+we’ll see.”
+
+“Oh,” replied George, “you don’t be under no kind of apprehension; WE’RE
+all square, we are. First, you’ve made a hash of this cruise--you’ll be
+a bold man to say no to that. Second, you let the enemy out o’ this here
+trap for nothing. Why did they want out? I dunno, but it’s pretty plain
+they wanted it. Third, you wouldn’t let us go at them upon the march.
+Oh, we see through you, John Silver; you want to play booty, that’s
+what’s wrong with you. And then, fourth, there’s this here boy.”
+
+“Is that all?” asked Silver quietly.
+
+“Enough, too,” retorted George. “We’ll all swing and sun-dry for your
+bungling.”
+
+“Well now, look here, I’ll answer these four p’ints; one after another
+I’ll answer ’em. I made a hash o’ this cruise, did I? Well now, you all
+know what I wanted, and you all know if that had been done that we’d
+’a been aboard the HISPANIOLA this night as ever was, every man of us
+alive, and fit, and full of good plum-duff, and the treasure in the hold
+of her, by thunder! Well, who crossed me? Who forced my hand, as was the
+lawful cap’n? Who tipped me the black spot the day we landed and began
+this dance? Ah, it’s a fine dance--I’m with you there--and looks mighty
+like a hornpipe in a rope’s end at Execution Dock by London town, it
+does. But who done it? Why, it was Anderson, and Hands, and you, George
+Merry! And you’re the last above board of that same meddling crew;
+and you have the Davy Jones’s insolence to up and stand for cap’n over
+me--you, that sank the lot of us! By the powers! But this tops the
+stiffest yarn to nothing.”
+
+Silver paused, and I could see by the faces of George and his late
+comrades that these words had not been said in vain.
+
+“That’s for number one,” cried the accused, wiping the sweat from his
+brow, for he had been talking with a vehemence that shook the house.
+“Why, I give you my word, I’m sick to speak to you. You’ve neither sense
+nor memory, and I leave it to fancy where your mothers was that let you
+come to sea. Sea! Gentlemen o’ fortune! I reckon tailors is your trade.”
+
+“Go on, John,” said Morgan. “Speak up to the others.”
+
+“Ah, the others!” returned John. “They’re a nice lot, ain’t they? You
+say this cruise is bungled. Ah! By gum, if you could understand how bad
+it’s bungled, you would see! We’re that near the gibbet that my neck’s
+stiff with thinking on it. You’ve seen ’em, maybe, hanged in chains,
+birds about ’em, seamen p’inting ’em out as they go down with the tide.
+‘Who’s that?’ says one. ‘That! Why, that’s John Silver. I knowed him
+well,’ says another. And you can hear the chains a-jangle as you go
+about and reach for the other buoy. Now, that’s about where we are,
+every mother’s son of us, thanks to him, and Hands, and Anderson, and
+other ruination fools of you. And if you want to know about number four,
+and that boy, why, shiver my timbers, isn’t he a hostage? Are we a-going
+to waste a hostage? No, not us; he might be our last chance, and I
+shouldn’t wonder. Kill that boy? Not me, mates! And number three? Ah,
+well, there’s a deal to say to number three. Maybe you don’t count it
+nothing to have a real college doctor to see you every day--you, John,
+with your head broke--or you, George Merry, that had the ague shakes
+upon you not six hours agone, and has your eyes the colour of lemon peel
+to this same moment on the clock? And maybe, perhaps, you didn’t know
+there was a consort coming either? But there is, and not so long till
+then; and we’ll see who’ll be glad to have a hostage when it comes to
+that. And as for number two, and why I made a bargain--well, you came
+crawling on your knees to me to make it--on your knees you came, you was
+that downhearted--and you’d have starved too if I hadn’t--but that’s a
+trifle! You look there--that’s why!”
+
+And he cast down upon the floor a paper that I instantly
+recognized--none other than the chart on yellow paper, with the three
+red crosses, that I had found in the oilcloth at the bottom of the
+captain’s chest. Why the doctor had given it to him was more than I
+could fancy.
+
+But if it were inexplicable to me, the appearance of the chart was
+incredible to the surviving mutineers. They leaped upon it like cats
+upon a mouse. It went from hand to hand, one tearing it from another;
+and by the oaths and the cries and the childish laughter with which they
+accompanied their examination, you would have thought, not only they
+were fingering the very gold, but were at sea with it, besides, in
+safety.
+
+“Yes,” said one, “that’s Flint, sure enough. J. F., and a score below,
+with a clove hitch to it; so he done ever.”
+
+“Mighty pretty,” said George. “But how are we to get away with it, and
+us no ship.”
+
+Silver suddenly sprang up, and supporting himself with a hand against
+the wall: “Now I give you warning, George,” he cried. “One more word
+of your sauce, and I’ll call you down and fight you. How? Why, how do I
+know? You had ought to tell me that--you and the rest, that lost me my
+schooner, with your interference, burn you! But not you, you can’t; you
+hain’t got the invention of a cockroach. But civil you can speak, and
+shall, George Merry, you may lay to that.”
+
+“That’s fair enow,” said the old man Morgan.
+
+“Fair! I reckon so,” said the sea-cook. “You lost the ship; I found the
+treasure. Who’s the better man at that? And now I resign, by thunder!
+Elect whom you please to be your cap’n now; I’m done with it.”
+
+“Silver!” they cried. “Barbecue forever! Barbecue for cap’n!”
+
+“So that’s the toon, is it?” cried the cook. “George, I reckon you’ll
+have to wait another turn, friend; and lucky for you as I’m not a
+revengeful man. But that was never my way. And now, shipmates, this
+black spot? ’Tain’t much good now, is it? Dick’s crossed his luck and
+spoiled his Bible, and that’s about all.”
+
+“It’ll do to kiss the book on still, won’t it?” growled Dick, who was
+evidently uneasy at the curse he had brought upon himself.
+
+“A Bible with a bit cut out!” returned Silver derisively. “Not it. It
+don’t bind no more’n a ballad-book.”
+
+“Don’t it, though?” cried Dick with a sort of joy. “Well, I reckon
+that’s worth having too.”
+
+“Here, Jim--here’s a cur’osity for you,” said Silver, and he tossed me
+the paper.
+
+It was around about the size of a crown piece. One side was blank,
+for it had been the last leaf; the other contained a verse or two of
+Revelation--these words among the rest, which struck sharply home upon
+my mind: “Without are dogs and murderers.” The printed side had been
+blackened with wood ash, which already began to come off and soil my
+fingers; on the blank side had been written with the same material the
+one word “Depposed.” I have that curiosity beside me at this moment, but
+not a trace of writing now remains beyond a single scratch, such as a
+man might make with his thumb-nail.
+
+That was the end of the night’s business. Soon after, with a drink all
+round, we lay down to sleep, and the outside of Silver’s vengeance was
+to put George Merry up for sentinel and threaten him with death if he
+should prove unfaithful.
+
+It was long ere I could close an eye, and heaven knows I had matter
+enough for thought in the man whom I had slain that afternoon, in my own
+most perilous position, and above all, in the remarkable game that I saw
+Silver now engaged upon--keeping the mutineers together with one hand
+and grasping with the other after every means, possible and impossible,
+to make his peace and save his miserable life. He himself slept
+peacefully and snored aloud, yet my heart was sore for him, wicked as he
+was, to think on the dark perils that environed and the shameful gibbet
+that awaited him.
+
+
+
+
+30
+
+On Parole
+
+I WAS wakened--indeed, we were all wakened, for I could see even the
+sentinel shake himself together from where he had fallen against the
+door-post--by a clear, hearty voice hailing us from the margin of the
+wood:
+
+“Block house, ahoy!” it cried. “Here’s the doctor.”
+
+And the doctor it was. Although I was glad to hear the sound, yet my
+gladness was not without admixture. I remembered with confusion my
+insubordinate and stealthy conduct, and when I saw where it had brought
+me--among what companions and surrounded by what dangers--I felt ashamed
+to look him in the face.
+
+He must have risen in the dark, for the day had hardly come; and when I
+ran to a loophole and looked out, I saw him standing, like Silver once
+before, up to the mid-leg in creeping vapour.
+
+“You, doctor! Top o’ the morning to you, sir!” cried Silver, broad awake
+and beaming with good nature in a moment. “Bright and early, to be sure;
+and it’s the early bird, as the saying goes, that gets the rations.
+George, shake up your timbers, son, and help Dr. Livesey over the ship’s
+side. All a-doin’ well, your patients was--all well and merry.”
+
+So he pattered on, standing on the hilltop with his crutch under his
+elbow and one hand upon the side of the log-house--quite the old John in
+voice, manner, and expression.
+
+“We’ve quite a surprise for you too, sir,” he continued. “We’ve a little
+stranger here--he! he! A noo boarder and lodger, sir, and looking fit
+and taut as a fiddle; slep’ like a supercargo, he did, right alongside
+of John--stem to stem we was, all night.”
+
+Dr. Livesey was by this time across the stockade and pretty near the
+cook, and I could hear the alteration in his voice as he said, “Not
+Jim?”
+
+“The very same Jim as ever was,” says Silver.
+
+The doctor stopped outright, although he did not speak, and it was some
+seconds before he seemed able to move on.
+
+“Well, well,” he said at last, “duty first and pleasure afterwards, as
+you might have said yourself, Silver. Let us overhaul these patients of
+yours.”
+
+A moment afterwards he had entered the block house and with one grim
+nod to me proceeded with his work among the sick. He seemed under no
+apprehension, though he must have known that his life, among these
+treacherous demons, depended on a hair; and he rattled on to his
+patients as if he were paying an ordinary professional visit in a quiet
+English family. His manner, I suppose, reacted on the men, for they
+behaved to him as if nothing had occurred, as if he were still ship’s
+doctor and they still faithful hands before the mast.
+
+“You’re doing well, my friend,” he said to the fellow with the bandaged
+head, “and if ever any person had a close shave, it was you; your head
+must be as hard as iron. Well, George, how goes it? You’re a pretty
+colour, certainly; why, your liver, man, is upside down. Did you take
+that medicine? Did he take that medicine, men?”
+
+“Aye, aye, sir, he took it, sure enough,” returned Morgan.
+
+“Because, you see, since I am mutineers’ doctor, or prison doctor as I
+prefer to call it,” says Doctor Livesey in his pleasantest way, “I make
+it a point of honour not to lose a man for King George (God bless him!)
+and the gallows.”
+
+The rogues looked at each other but swallowed the home-thrust in
+silence.
+
+“Dick don’t feel well, sir,” said one.
+
+“Don’t he?” replied the doctor. “Well, step up here, Dick, and let me
+see your tongue. No, I should be surprised if he did! The man’s tongue
+is fit to frighten the French. Another fever.”
+
+“Ah, there,” said Morgan, “that comed of sp’iling Bibles.”
+
+“That comes--as you call it--of being arrant asses,” retorted the
+doctor, “and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison,
+and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough. I think it most
+probable--though of course it’s only an opinion--that you’ll all have
+the deuce to pay before you get that malaria out of your systems. Camp
+in a bog, would you? Silver, I’m surprised at you. You’re less of a fool
+than many, take you all round; but you don’t appear to me to have the
+rudiments of a notion of the rules of health.
+
+“Well,” he added after he had dosed them round and they had taken
+his prescriptions, with really laughable humility, more like charity
+schoolchildren than blood-guilty mutineers and pirates--“well, that’s
+done for today. And now I should wish to have a talk with that boy,
+please.”
+
+And he nodded his head in my direction carelessly.
+
+George Merry was at the door, spitting and spluttering over some
+bad-tasted medicine; but at the first word of the doctor’s proposal he
+swung round with a deep flush and cried “No!” and swore.
+
+Silver struck the barrel with his open hand.
+
+“Si-lence!” he roared and looked about him positively like a lion.
+“Doctor,” he went on in his usual tones, “I was a-thinking of that,
+knowing as how you had a fancy for the boy. We’re all humbly grateful
+for your kindness, and as you see, puts faith in you and takes the drugs
+down like that much grog. And I take it I’ve found a way as’ll suit all.
+Hawkins, will you give me your word of honour as a young gentleman--for
+a young gentleman you are, although poor born--your word of honour not
+to slip your cable?”
+
+I readily gave the pledge required.
+
+“Then, doctor,” said Silver, “you just step outside o’ that stockade,
+and once you’re there I’ll bring the boy down on the inside, and I
+reckon you can yarn through the spars. Good day to you, sir, and all our
+dooties to the squire and Cap’n Smollett.”
+
+The explosion of disapproval, which nothing but Silver’s black looks had
+restrained, broke out immediately the doctor had left the house. Silver
+was roundly accused of playing double--of trying to make a separate
+peace for himself, of sacrificing the interests of his accomplices and
+victims, and, in one word, of the identical, exact thing that he was
+doing. It seemed to me so obvious, in this case, that I could not
+imagine how he was to turn their anger. But he was twice the man
+the rest were, and his last night’s victory had given him a huge
+preponderance on their minds. He called them all the fools and dolts
+you can imagine, said it was necessary I should talk to the doctor,
+fluttered the chart in their faces, asked them if they could afford to
+break the treaty the very day they were bound a-treasure-hunting.
+
+“No, by thunder!” he cried. “It’s us must break the treaty when the time
+comes; and till then I’ll gammon that doctor, if I have to ile his boots
+with brandy.”
+
+And then he bade them get the fire lit, and stalked out upon his crutch,
+with his hand on my shoulder, leaving them in a disarray, and silenced
+by his volubility rather than convinced.
+
+“Slow, lad, slow,” he said. “They might round upon us in a twinkle of an
+eye if we was seen to hurry.”
+
+Very deliberately, then, did we advance across the sand to where the
+doctor awaited us on the other side of the stockade, and as soon as we
+were within easy speaking distance Silver stopped.
+
+“You’ll make a note of this here also, doctor,” says he, “and the boy’ll
+tell you how I saved his life, and were deposed for it too, and you
+may lay to that. Doctor, when a man’s steering as near the wind as
+me--playing chuck-farthing with the last breath in his body, like--you
+wouldn’t think it too much, mayhap, to give him one good word? You’ll
+please bear in mind it’s not my life only now--it’s that boy’s into the
+bargain; and you’ll speak me fair, doctor, and give me a bit o’ hope to
+go on, for the sake of mercy.”
+
+Silver was a changed man once he was out there and had his back to his
+friends and the block house; his cheeks seemed to have fallen in, his
+voice trembled; never was a soul more dead in earnest.
+
+“Why, John, you’re not afraid?” asked Dr. Livesey.
+
+“Doctor, I’m no coward; no, not I--not SO much!” and he snapped his
+fingers. “If I was I wouldn’t say it. But I’ll own up fairly, I’ve the
+shakes upon me for the gallows. You’re a good man and a true; I never
+seen a better man! And you’ll not forget what I done good, not any more
+than you’ll forget the bad, I know. And I step aside--see here--and
+leave you and Jim alone. And you’ll put that down for me too, for it’s a
+long stretch, is that!”
+
+So saying, he stepped back a little way, till he was out of earshot, and
+there sat down upon a tree-stump and began to whistle, spinning round
+now and again upon his seat so as to command a sight, sometimes of me
+and the doctor and sometimes of his unruly ruffians as they went to and
+fro in the sand between the fire--which they were busy rekindling--and
+the house, from which they brought forth pork and bread to make the
+breakfast.
+
+“So, Jim,” said the doctor sadly, “here you are. As you have brewed, so
+shall you drink, my boy. Heaven knows, I cannot find it in my heart to
+blame you, but this much I will say, be it kind or unkind: when Captain
+Smollett was well, you dared not have gone off; and when he was ill and
+couldn’t help it, by George, it was downright cowardly!”
+
+I will own that I here began to weep. “Doctor,” I said, “you might spare
+me. I have blamed myself enough; my life’s forfeit anyway, and I should
+have been dead by now if Silver hadn’t stood for me; and doctor,
+believe this, I can die--and I dare say I deserve it--but what I fear is
+torture. If they come to torture me--”
+
+“Jim,” the doctor interrupted, and his voice was quite changed, “Jim, I
+can’t have this. Whip over, and we’ll run for it.”
+
+“Doctor,” said I, “I passed my word.”
+
+“I know, I know,” he cried. “We can’t help that, Jim, now. I’ll take it
+on my shoulders, holus bolus, blame and shame, my boy; but stay here,
+I cannot let you. Jump! One jump, and you’re out, and we’ll run for it
+like antelopes.”
+
+“No,” I replied; “you know right well you wouldn’t do the thing
+yourself--neither you nor squire nor captain; and no more will I. Silver
+trusted me; I passed my word, and back I go. But, doctor, you did not
+let me finish. If they come to torture me, I might let slip a word of
+where the ship is, for I got the ship, part by luck and part by risking,
+and she lies in North Inlet, on the southern beach, and just below high
+water. At half tide she must be high and dry.”
+
+“The ship!” exclaimed the doctor.
+
+Rapidly I described to him my adventures, and he heard me out in
+silence.
+
+“There is a kind of fate in this,” he observed when I had done. “Every
+step, it’s you that saves our lives; and do you suppose by any chance
+that we are going to let you lose yours? That would be a poor return, my
+boy. You found out the plot; you found Ben Gunn--the best deed that
+ever you did, or will do, though you live to ninety. Oh, by Jupiter, and
+talking of Ben Gunn! Why, this is the mischief in person. Silver!” he
+cried. “Silver! I’ll give you a piece of advice,” he continued as
+the cook drew near again; “don’t you be in any great hurry after that
+treasure.”
+
+“Why, sir, I do my possible, which that ain’t,” said Silver. “I can
+only, asking your pardon, save my life and the boy’s by seeking for that
+treasure; and you may lay to that.”
+
+“Well, Silver,” replied the doctor, “if that is so, I’ll go one step
+further: look out for squalls when you find it.”
+
+“Sir,” said Silver, “as between man and man, that’s too much and too
+little. What you’re after, why you left the block house, why you given
+me that there chart, I don’t know, now, do I? And yet I done your
+bidding with my eyes shut and never a word of hope! But no, this here’s
+too much. If you won’t tell me what you mean plain out, just say so and
+I’ll leave the helm.”
+
+“No,” said the doctor musingly; “I’ve no right to say more; it’s not my
+secret, you see, Silver, or, I give you my word, I’d tell it you. But
+I’ll go as far with you as I dare go, and a step beyond, for I’ll have
+my wig sorted by the captain or I’m mistaken! And first, I’ll give you a
+bit of hope; Silver, if we both get alive out of this wolf-trap, I’ll do
+my best to save you, short of perjury.”
+
+Silver’s face was radiant. “You couldn’t say more, I’m sure, sir, not if
+you was my mother,” he cried.
+
+“Well, that’s my first concession,” added the doctor. “My second is a
+piece of advice: keep the boy close beside you, and when you need help,
+halloo. I’m off to seek it for you, and that itself will show you if I
+speak at random. Good-bye, Jim.”
+
+And Dr. Livesey shook hands with me through the stockade, nodded to
+Silver, and set off at a brisk pace into the wood.
+
+
+
+
+31
+
+The Treasure-hunt--Flint’s Pointer
+
+“JIM,” said Silver when we were alone, “if I saved your life, you saved
+mine; and I’ll not forget it. I seen the doctor waving you to run for
+it--with the tail of my eye, I did; and I seen you say no, as plain as
+hearing. Jim, that’s one to you. This is the first glint of hope I had
+since the attack failed, and I owe it you. And now, Jim, we’re to go in
+for this here treasure-hunting, with sealed orders too, and I don’t like
+it; and you and me must stick close, back to back like, and we’ll save
+our necks in spite o’ fate and fortune.”
+
+Just then a man hailed us from the fire that breakfast was ready, and
+we were soon seated here and there about the sand over biscuit and fried
+junk. They had lit a fire fit to roast an ox, and it was now grown so
+hot that they could only approach it from the windward, and even there
+not without precaution. In the same wasteful spirit, they had cooked,
+I suppose, three times more than we could eat; and one of them, with an
+empty laugh, threw what was left into the fire, which blazed and roared
+again over this unusual fuel. I never in my life saw men so careless of
+the morrow; hand to mouth is the only word that can describe their way
+of doing; and what with wasted food and sleeping sentries, though they
+were bold enough for a brush and be done with it, I could see their
+entire unfitness for anything like a prolonged campaign.
+
+Even Silver, eating away, with Captain Flint upon his shoulder, had not
+a word of blame for their recklessness. And this the more surprised me,
+for I thought he had never shown himself so cunning as he did then.
+
+“Aye, mates,” said he, “it’s lucky you have Barbecue to think for you
+with this here head. I got what I wanted, I did. Sure enough, they have
+the ship. Where they have it, I don’t know yet; but once we hit the
+treasure, we’ll have to jump about and find out. And then, mates, us
+that has the boats, I reckon, has the upper hand.”
+
+Thus he kept running on, with his mouth full of the hot bacon; thus he
+restored their hope and confidence, and, I more than suspect, repaired
+his own at the same time.
+
+“As for hostage,” he continued, “that’s his last talk, I guess, with
+them he loves so dear. I’ve got my piece o’ news, and thanky to him
+for that; but it’s over and done. I’ll take him in a line when we go
+treasure-hunting, for we’ll keep him like so much gold, in case of
+accidents, you mark, and in the meantime. Once we got the ship and
+treasure both and off to sea like jolly companions, why then we’ll talk
+Mr. Hawkins over, we will, and we’ll give him his share, to be sure, for
+all his kindness.”
+
+It was no wonder the men were in a good humour now. For my part, I
+was horribly cast down. Should the scheme he had now sketched prove
+feasible, Silver, already doubly a traitor, would not hesitate to adopt
+it. He had still a foot in either camp, and there was no doubt he
+would prefer wealth and freedom with the pirates to a bare escape from
+hanging, which was the best he had to hope on our side.
+
+Nay, and even if things so fell out that he was forced to keep his faith
+with Dr. Livesey, even then what danger lay before us! What a moment
+that would be when the suspicions of his followers turned to certainty
+and he and I should have to fight for dear life--he a cripple and I a
+boy--against five strong and active seamen!
+
+Add to this double apprehension the mystery that still hung over the
+behaviour of my friends, their unexplained desertion of the stockade,
+their inexplicable cession of the chart, or harder still to understand,
+the doctor’s last warning to Silver, “Look out for squalls when you
+find it,” and you will readily believe how little taste I found in my
+breakfast and with how uneasy a heart I set forth behind my captors on
+the quest for treasure.
+
+We made a curious figure, had anyone been there to see us--all in soiled
+sailor clothes and all but me armed to the teeth. Silver had two guns
+slung about him--one before and one behind--besides the great cutlass
+at his waist and a pistol in each pocket of his square-tailed coat.
+To complete his strange appearance, Captain Flint sat perched upon his
+shoulder and gabbling odds and ends of purposeless sea-talk. I had a
+line about my waist and followed obediently after the sea-cook, who
+held the loose end of the rope, now in his free hand, now between his
+powerful teeth. For all the world, I was led like a dancing bear.
+
+The other men were variously burthened, some carrying picks and
+shovels--for that had been the very first necessary they brought ashore
+from the HISPANIOLA--others laden with pork, bread, and brandy for the
+midday meal. All the stores, I observed, came from our stock, and I
+could see the truth of Silver’s words the night before. Had he not
+struck a bargain with the doctor, he and his mutineers, deserted by the
+ship, must have been driven to subsist on clear water and the proceeds
+of their hunting. Water would have been little to their taste; a sailor
+is not usually a good shot; and besides all that, when they were so
+short of eatables, it was not likely they would be very flush of powder.
+
+Well, thus equipped, we all set out--even the fellow with the broken
+head, who should certainly have kept in shadow--and straggled, one after
+another, to the beach, where the two gigs awaited us. Even these bore
+trace of the drunken folly of the pirates, one in a broken thwart, and
+both in their muddy and unbailed condition. Both were to be carried
+along with us for the sake of safety; and so, with our numbers divided
+between them, we set forth upon the bosom of the anchorage.
+
+As we pulled over, there was some discussion on the chart. The red cross
+was, of course, far too large to be a guide; and the terms of the note
+on the back, as you will hear, admitted of some ambiguity. They ran, the
+reader may remember, thus:
+
+     Tall tree, Spy-glass shoulder, bearing a point to
+     the N. of N.N.E.
+     Skeleton Island E.S.E. and by E.
+     Ten feet.
+
+A tall tree was thus the principal mark. Now, right before us the
+anchorage was bounded by a plateau from two to three hundred feet high,
+adjoining on the north the sloping southern shoulder of the Spy-glass
+and rising again towards the south into the rough, cliffy eminence
+called the Mizzen-mast Hill. The top of the plateau was dotted thickly
+with pine-trees of varying height. Every here and there, one of a
+different species rose forty or fifty feet clear above its neighbours,
+and which of these was the particular “tall tree” of Captain Flint could
+only be decided on the spot, and by the readings of the compass.
+
+Yet, although that was the case, every man on board the boats had
+picked a favourite of his own ere we were half-way over, Long John alone
+shrugging his shoulders and bidding them wait till they were there.
+
+We pulled easily, by Silver’s directions, not to weary the hands
+prematurely, and after quite a long passage, landed at the mouth of
+the second river--that which runs down a woody cleft of the Spy-glass.
+Thence, bending to our left, we began to ascend the slope towards the
+plateau.
+
+At the first outset, heavy, miry ground and a matted, marish vegetation
+greatly delayed our progress; but by little and little the hill began
+to steepen and become stony under foot, and the wood to change its
+character and to grow in a more open order. It was, indeed, a most
+pleasant portion of the island that we were now approaching. A
+heavy-scented broom and many flowering shrubs had almost taken the place
+of grass. Thickets of green nutmeg-trees were dotted here and there with
+the red columns and the broad shadow of the pines; and the first mingled
+their spice with the aroma of the others. The air, besides, was fresh
+and stirring, and this, under the sheer sunbeams, was a wonderful
+refreshment to our senses.
+
+The party spread itself abroad, in a fan shape, shouting and leaping to
+and fro. About the centre, and a good way behind the rest, Silver and
+I followed--I tethered by my rope, he ploughing, with deep pants, among
+the sliding gravel. From time to time, indeed, I had to lend him a hand,
+or he must have missed his footing and fallen backward down the hill.
+
+We had thus proceeded for about half a mile and were approaching the
+brow of the plateau when the man upon the farthest left began to cry
+aloud, as if in terror. Shout after shout came from him, and the others
+began to run in his direction.
+
+“He can’t ’a found the treasure,” said old Morgan, hurrying past us from
+the right, “for that’s clean a-top.”
+
+Indeed, as we found when we also reached the spot, it was something
+very different. At the foot of a pretty big pine and involved in a green
+creeper, which had even partly lifted some of the smaller bones, a human
+skeleton lay, with a few shreds of clothing, on the ground. I believe a
+chill struck for a moment to every heart.
+
+“He was a seaman,” said George Merry, who, bolder than the rest, had
+gone up close and was examining the rags of clothing. “Leastways, this
+is good sea-cloth.”
+
+“Aye, aye,” said Silver; “like enough; you wouldn’t look to find a
+bishop here, I reckon. But what sort of a way is that for bones to lie?
+’Tain’t in natur’.”
+
+Indeed, on a second glance, it seemed impossible to fancy that the body
+was in a natural position. But for some disarray (the work, perhaps, of
+the birds that had fed upon him or of the slow-growing creeper that had
+gradually enveloped his remains) the man lay perfectly straight--his
+feet pointing in one direction, his hands, raised above his head like a
+diver’s, pointing directly in the opposite.
+
+“I’ve taken a notion into my old numbskull,” observed Silver. “Here’s
+the compass; there’s the tip-top p’int o’ Skeleton Island, stickin’
+out like a tooth. Just take a bearing, will you, along the line of them
+bones.”
+
+It was done. The body pointed straight in the direction of the island,
+and the compass read duly E.S.E. and by E.
+
+“I thought so,” cried the cook; “this here is a p’inter. Right up there
+is our line for the Pole Star and the jolly dollars. But, by thunder!
+If it don’t make me cold inside to think of Flint. This is one of HIS
+jokes, and no mistake. Him and these six was alone here; he killed ’em,
+every man; and this one he hauled here and laid down by compass, shiver
+my timbers! They’re long bones, and the hair’s been yellow. Aye, that
+would be Allardyce. You mind Allardyce, Tom Morgan?”
+
+“Aye, aye,” returned Morgan; “I mind him; he owed me money, he did, and
+took my knife ashore with him.”
+
+“Speaking of knives,” said another, “why don’t we find his’n lying
+round? Flint warn’t the man to pick a seaman’s pocket; and the birds, I
+guess, would leave it be.”
+
+“By the powers, and that’s true!” cried Silver.
+
+“There ain’t a thing left here,” said Merry, still feeling round among
+the bones; “not a copper doit nor a baccy box. It don’t look nat’ral to
+me.”
+
+“No, by gum, it don’t,” agreed Silver; “not nat’ral, nor not nice, says
+you. Great guns! Messmates, but if Flint was living, this would be a hot
+spot for you and me. Six they were, and six are we; and bones is what
+they are now.”
+
+“I saw him dead with these here deadlights,” said Morgan. “Billy took me
+in. There he laid, with penny-pieces on his eyes.”
+
+“Dead--aye, sure enough he’s dead and gone below,” said the fellow with
+the bandage; “but if ever sperrit walked, it would be Flint’s. Dear
+heart, but he died bad, did Flint!”
+
+“Aye, that he did,” observed another; “now he raged, and now he hollered
+for the rum, and now he sang. ‘Fifteen Men’ were his only song, mates;
+and I tell you true, I never rightly liked to hear it since. It was
+main hot, and the windy was open, and I hear that old song comin’ out as
+clear as clear--and the death-haul on the man already.”
+
+“Come, come,” said Silver; “stow this talk. He’s dead, and he don’t
+walk, that I know; leastways, he won’t walk by day, and you may lay to
+that. Care killed a cat. Fetch ahead for the doubloons.”
+
+We started, certainly; but in spite of the hot sun and the staring
+daylight, the pirates no longer ran separate and shouting through the
+wood, but kept side by side and spoke with bated breath. The terror of
+the dead buccaneer had fallen on their spirits.
+
+
+
+
+32
+
+The Treasure-hunt--The Voice Among the Trees
+
+PARTLY from the damping influence of this alarm, partly to rest Silver
+and the sick folk, the whole party sat down as soon as they had gained
+the brow of the ascent.
+
+The plateau being somewhat tilted towards the west, this spot on which
+we had paused commanded a wide prospect on either hand. Before us,
+over the tree-tops, we beheld the Cape of the Woods fringed with surf;
+behind, we not only looked down upon the anchorage and Skeleton Island,
+but saw--clear across the spit and the eastern lowlands--a great field
+of open sea upon the east. Sheer above us rose the Spyglass, here dotted
+with single pines, there black with precipices. There was no sound but
+that of the distant breakers, mounting from all round, and the chirp of
+countless insects in the brush. Not a man, not a sail, upon the sea; the
+very largeness of the view increased the sense of solitude.
+
+Silver, as he sat, took certain bearings with his compass.
+
+“There are three ‘tall trees’” said he, “about in the right line from
+Skeleton Island. ‘Spy-glass shoulder,’ I take it, means that lower p’int
+there. It’s child’s play to find the stuff now. I’ve half a mind to dine
+first.”
+
+“I don’t feel sharp,” growled Morgan. “Thinkin’ o’ Flint--I think it
+were--as done me.”
+
+“Ah, well, my son, you praise your stars he’s dead,” said Silver.
+
+“He were an ugly devil,” cried a third pirate with a shudder; “that blue
+in the face too!”
+
+“That was how the rum took him,” added Merry. “Blue! Well, I reckon he
+was blue. That’s a true word.”
+
+Ever since they had found the skeleton and got upon this train of
+thought, they had spoken lower and lower, and they had almost got to
+whispering by now, so that the sound of their talk hardly interrupted
+the silence of the wood. All of a sudden, out of the middle of the trees
+in front of us, a thin, high, trembling voice struck up the well-known
+air and words:
+
+     “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest--
+     Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
+
+I never have seen men more dreadfully affected than the pirates. The
+colour went from their six faces like enchantment; some leaped to their
+feet, some clawed hold of others; Morgan grovelled on the ground.
+
+“It’s Flint, by ----!” cried Merry.
+
+The song had stopped as suddenly as it began--broken off, you would have
+said, in the middle of a note, as though someone had laid his hand upon
+the singer’s mouth. Coming through the clear, sunny atmosphere among the
+green tree-tops, I thought it had sounded airily and sweetly; and the
+effect on my companions was the stranger.
+
+“Come,” said Silver, struggling with his ashen lips to get the word out;
+“this won’t do. Stand by to go about. This is a rum start, and I can’t
+name the voice, but it’s someone skylarking--someone that’s flesh and
+blood, and you may lay to that.”
+
+His courage had come back as he spoke, and some of the colour to his
+face along with it. Already the others had begun to lend an ear to this
+encouragement and were coming a little to themselves, when the same
+voice broke out again--not this time singing, but in a faint distant
+hail that echoed yet fainter among the clefts of the Spy-glass.
+
+“Darby M’Graw,” it wailed--for that is the word that best describes the
+sound--“Darby M’Graw! Darby M’Graw!” again and again and again; and then
+rising a little higher, and with an oath that I leave out: “Fetch aft
+the rum, Darby!”
+
+The buccaneers remained rooted to the ground, their eyes starting from
+their heads. Long after the voice had died away they still stared in
+silence, dreadfully, before them.
+
+“That fixes it!” gasped one. “Let’s go.”
+
+“They was his last words,” moaned Morgan, “his last words above board.”
+
+Dick had his Bible out and was praying volubly. He had been well brought
+up, had Dick, before he came to sea and fell among bad companions.
+
+Still Silver was unconquered. I could hear his teeth rattle in his head,
+but he had not yet surrendered.
+
+“Nobody in this here island ever heard of Darby,” he muttered; “not one
+but us that’s here.” And then, making a great effort: “Shipmates,”
+ he cried, “I’m here to get that stuff, and I’ll not be beat by man or
+devil. I never was feared of Flint in his life, and, by the powers, I’ll
+face him dead. There’s seven hundred thousand pound not a quarter of a
+mile from here. When did ever a gentleman o’ fortune show his stern to
+that much dollars for a boozy old seaman with a blue mug--and him dead
+too?”
+
+But there was no sign of reawakening courage in his followers, rather,
+indeed, of growing terror at the irreverence of his words.
+
+“Belay there, John!” said Merry. “Don’t you cross a sperrit.”
+
+And the rest were all too terrified to reply. They would have run away
+severally had they dared; but fear kept them together, and kept them
+close by John, as if his daring helped them. He, on his part, had pretty
+well fought his weakness down.
+
+“Sperrit? Well, maybe,” he said. “But there’s one thing not clear to me.
+There was an echo. Now, no man ever seen a sperrit with a shadow; well
+then, what’s he doing with an echo to him, I should like to know? That
+ain’t in natur’, surely?”
+
+This argument seemed weak enough to me. But you can never tell what will
+affect the superstitious, and to my wonder, George Merry was greatly
+relieved.
+
+“Well, that’s so,” he said. “You’ve a head upon your shoulders, John,
+and no mistake. ’Bout ship, mates! This here crew is on a wrong tack, I
+do believe. And come to think on it, it was like Flint’s voice, I
+grant you, but not just so clear-away like it, after all. It was liker
+somebody else’s voice now--it was liker--”
+
+“By the powers, Ben Gunn!” roared Silver.
+
+“Aye, and so it were,” cried Morgan, springing on his knees. “Ben Gunn
+it were!”
+
+“It don’t make much odds, do it, now?” asked Dick. “Ben Gunn’s not here
+in the body any more’n Flint.”
+
+But the older hands greeted this remark with scorn.
+
+“Why, nobody minds Ben Gunn,” cried Merry; “dead or alive, nobody minds
+him.”
+
+It was extraordinary how their spirits had returned and how the natural
+colour had revived in their faces. Soon they were chatting together,
+with intervals of listening; and not long after, hearing no further
+sound, they shouldered the tools and set forth again, Merry walking
+first with Silver’s compass to keep them on the right line with Skeleton
+Island. He had said the truth: dead or alive, nobody minded Ben Gunn.
+
+Dick alone still held his Bible, and looked around him as he went, with
+fearful glances; but he found no sympathy, and Silver even joked him on
+his precautions.
+
+“I told you,” said he--“I told you you had sp’iled your Bible. If it
+ain’t no good to swear by, what do you suppose a sperrit would give for
+it? Not that!” and he snapped his big fingers, halting a moment on his
+crutch.
+
+But Dick was not to be comforted; indeed, it was soon plain to me that
+the lad was falling sick; hastened by heat, exhaustion, and the shock
+of his alarm, the fever, predicted by Dr. Livesey, was evidently growing
+swiftly higher.
+
+It was fine open walking here, upon the summit; our way lay a little
+downhill, for, as I have said, the plateau tilted towards the west. The
+pines, great and small, grew wide apart; and even between the clumps of
+nutmeg and azalea, wide open spaces baked in the hot sunshine. Striking,
+as we did, pretty near north-west across the island, we drew, on the
+one hand, ever nearer under the shoulders of the Spy-glass, and on the
+other, looked ever wider over that western bay where I had once tossed
+and trembled in the coracle.
+
+The first of the tall trees was reached, and by the bearings proved the
+wrong one. So with the second. The third rose nearly two hundred feet
+into the air above a clump of underwood--a giant of a vegetable, with
+a red column as big as a cottage, and a wide shadow around in which a
+company could have manoeuvred. It was conspicuous far to sea both on
+the east and west and might have been entered as a sailing mark upon the
+chart.
+
+But it was not its size that now impressed my companions; it was the
+knowledge that seven hundred thousand pounds in gold lay somewhere
+buried below its spreading shadow. The thought of the money, as they
+drew nearer, swallowed up their previous terrors. Their eyes burned in
+their heads; their feet grew speedier and lighter; their whole soul
+was bound up in that fortune, that whole lifetime of extravagance and
+pleasure, that lay waiting there for each of them.
+
+Silver hobbled, grunting, on his crutch; his nostrils stood out and
+quivered; he cursed like a madman when the flies settled on his hot and
+shiny countenance; he plucked furiously at the line that held me to
+him and from time to time turned his eyes upon me with a deadly look.
+Certainly he took no pains to hide his thoughts, and certainly I read
+them like print. In the immediate nearness of the gold, all else had
+been forgotten: his promise and the doctor’s warning were both things
+of the past, and I could not doubt that he hoped to seize upon the
+treasure, find and board the HISPANIOLA under cover of night, cut
+every honest throat about that island, and sail away as he had at first
+intended, laden with crimes and riches.
+
+Shaken as I was with these alarms, it was hard for me to keep up with
+the rapid pace of the treasure-hunters. Now and again I stumbled, and it
+was then that Silver plucked so roughly at the rope and launched at me
+his murderous glances. Dick, who had dropped behind us and now brought
+up the rear, was babbling to himself both prayers and curses as his
+fever kept rising. This also added to my wretchedness, and to crown all,
+I was haunted by the thought of the tragedy that had once been acted
+on that plateau, when that ungodly buccaneer with the blue face--he who
+died at Savannah, singing and shouting for drink--had there, with his
+own hand, cut down his six accomplices. This grove that was now so
+peaceful must then have rung with cries, I thought; and even with the
+thought I could believe I heard it ringing still.
+
+We were now at the margin of the thicket.
+
+“Huzza, mates, all together!” shouted Merry; and the foremost broke into
+a run.
+
+And suddenly, not ten yards further, we beheld them stop. A low cry
+arose. Silver doubled his pace, digging away with the foot of his crutch
+like one possessed; and next moment he and I had come also to a dead
+halt.
+
+Before us was a great excavation, not very recent, for the sides had
+fallen in and grass had sprouted on the bottom. In this were the shaft
+of a pick broken in two and the boards of several packing-cases strewn
+around. On one of these boards I saw, branded with a hot iron, the name
+WALRUS--the name of Flint’s ship.
+
+All was clear to probation. The CACHE had been found and rifled; the
+seven hundred thousand pounds were gone!
+
+
+
+
+33
+
+The Fall of a Chieftain
+
+THERE never was such an overturn in this world. Each of these six men
+was as though he had been struck. But with Silver the blow passed almost
+instantly. Every thought of his soul had been set full-stretch, like a
+racer, on that money; well, he was brought up, in a single second, dead;
+and he kept his head, found his temper, and changed his plan before the
+others had had time to realize the disappointment.
+
+“Jim,” he whispered, “take that, and stand by for trouble.”
+
+And he passed me a double-barrelled pistol.
+
+At the same time, he began quietly moving northward, and in a few steps
+had put the hollow between us two and the other five. Then he looked at
+me and nodded, as much as to say, “Here is a narrow corner,” as, indeed,
+I thought it was. His looks were not quite friendly, and I was so
+revolted at these constant changes that I could not forbear whispering,
+“So you’ve changed sides again.”
+
+There was no time left for him to answer in. The buccaneers, with oaths
+and cries, began to leap, one after another, into the pit and to dig
+with their fingers, throwing the boards aside as they did so. Morgan
+found a piece of gold. He held it up with a perfect spout of oaths. It
+was a two-guinea piece, and it went from hand to hand among them for a
+quarter of a minute.
+
+“Two guineas!” roared Merry, shaking it at Silver. “That’s your seven
+hundred thousand pounds, is it? You’re the man for bargains, ain’t you?
+You’re him that never bungled nothing, you wooden-headed lubber!”
+
+“Dig away, boys,” said Silver with the coolest insolence; “you’ll find
+some pig-nuts and I shouldn’t wonder.”
+
+“Pig-nuts!” repeated Merry, in a scream. “Mates, do you hear that? I
+tell you now, that man there knew it all along. Look in the face of him
+and you’ll see it wrote there.”
+
+“Ah, Merry,” remarked Silver, “standing for cap’n again? You’re a
+pushing lad, to be sure.”
+
+But this time everyone was entirely in Merry’s favour. They began to
+scramble out of the excavation, darting furious glances behind them. One
+thing I observed, which looked well for us: they all got out upon the
+opposite side from Silver.
+
+Well, there we stood, two on one side, five on the other, the pit
+between us, and nobody screwed up high enough to offer the first blow.
+Silver never moved; he watched them, very upright on his crutch, and
+looked as cool as ever I saw him. He was brave, and no mistake.
+
+At last Merry seemed to think a speech might help matters.
+
+“Mates,” says he, “there’s two of them alone there; one’s the old
+cripple that brought us all here and blundered us down to this; the
+other’s that cub that I mean to have the heart of. Now, mates--”
+
+He was raising his arm and his voice, and plainly meant to lead a
+charge. But just then--crack! crack! crack!--three musket-shots flashed
+out of the thicket. Merry tumbled head foremost into the excavation; the
+man with the bandage spun round like a teetotum and fell all his length
+upon his side, where he lay dead, but still twitching; and the other
+three turned and ran for it with all their might.
+
+Before you could wink, Long John had fired two barrels of a pistol into
+the struggling Merry, and as the man rolled up his eyes at him in the
+last agony, “George,” said he, “I reckon I settled you.”
+
+At the same moment, the doctor, Gray, and Ben Gunn joined us, with
+smoking muskets, from among the nutmeg-trees.
+
+“Forward!” cried the doctor. “Double quick, my lads. We must head ’em
+off the boats.”
+
+And we set off at a great pace, sometimes plunging through the bushes to
+the chest.
+
+I tell you, but Silver was anxious to keep up with us. The work that man
+went through, leaping on his crutch till the muscles of his chest were
+fit to burst, was work no sound man ever equalled; and so thinks the
+doctor. As it was, he was already thirty yards behind us and on the
+verge of strangling when we reached the brow of the slope.
+
+“Doctor,” he hailed, “see there! No hurry!”
+
+Sure enough there was no hurry. In a more open part of the plateau, we
+could see the three survivors still running in the same direction as
+they had started, right for Mizzenmast Hill. We were already between
+them and the boats; and so we four sat down to breathe, while Long John,
+mopping his face, came slowly up with us.
+
+“Thank ye kindly, doctor,” says he. “You came in in about the nick, I
+guess, for me and Hawkins. And so it’s you, Ben Gunn!” he added. “Well,
+you’re a nice one, to be sure.”
+
+“I’m Ben Gunn, I am,” replied the maroon, wriggling like an eel in his
+embarrassment. “And,” he added, after a long pause, “how do, Mr. Silver?
+Pretty well, I thank ye, says you.”
+
+“Ben, Ben,” murmured Silver, “to think as you’ve done me!”
+
+The doctor sent back Gray for one of the pick-axes deserted, in their
+flight, by the mutineers, and then as we proceeded leisurely downhill to
+where the boats were lying, related in a few words what had taken place.
+It was a story that profoundly interested Silver; and Ben Gunn, the
+half-idiot maroon, was the hero from beginning to end.
+
+Ben, in his long, lonely wanderings about the island, had found the
+skeleton--it was he that had rifled it; he had found the treasure; he
+had dug it up (it was the haft of his pick-axe that lay broken in the
+excavation); he had carried it on his back, in many weary journeys, from
+the foot of the tall pine to a cave he had on the two-pointed hill at
+the north-east angle of the island, and there it had lain stored in
+safety since two months before the arrival of the HISPANIOLA.
+
+When the doctor had wormed this secret from him on the afternoon of the
+attack, and when next morning he saw the anchorage deserted, he had gone
+to Silver, given him the chart, which was now useless--given him the
+stores, for Ben Gunn’s cave was well supplied with goats’ meat salted
+by himself--given anything and everything to get a chance of moving in
+safety from the stockade to the two-pointed hill, there to be clear of
+malaria and keep a guard upon the money.
+
+“As for you, Jim,” he said, “it went against my heart, but I did what I
+thought best for those who had stood by their duty; and if you were not
+one of these, whose fault was it?”
+
+That morning, finding that I was to be involved in the horrid
+disappointment he had prepared for the mutineers, he had run all the way
+to the cave, and leaving the squire to guard the captain, had taken Gray
+and the maroon and started, making the diagonal across the island to be
+at hand beside the pine. Soon, however, he saw that our party had the
+start of him; and Ben Gunn, being fleet of foot, had been dispatched in
+front to do his best alone. Then it had occurred to him to work upon the
+superstitions of his former shipmates, and he was so far successful that
+Gray and the doctor had come up and were already ambushed before the
+arrival of the treasure-hunters.
+
+“Ah,” said Silver, “it were fortunate for me that I had Hawkins here.
+You would have let old John be cut to bits, and never given it a
+thought, doctor.”
+
+“Not a thought,” replied Dr. Livesey cheerily.
+
+And by this time we had reached the gigs. The doctor, with the pick-axe,
+demolished one of them, and then we all got aboard the other and set out
+to go round by sea for North Inlet.
+
+This was a run of eight or nine miles. Silver, though he was almost
+killed already with fatigue, was set to an oar, like the rest of us, and
+we were soon skimming swiftly over a smooth sea. Soon we passed out
+of the straits and doubled the south-east corner of the island, round
+which, four days ago, we had towed the HISPANIOLA.
+
+As we passed the two-pointed hill, we could see the black mouth of Ben
+Gunn’s cave and a figure standing by it, leaning on a musket. It was the
+squire, and we waved a handkerchief and gave him three cheers, in which
+the voice of Silver joined as heartily as any.
+
+Three miles farther, just inside the mouth of North Inlet, what should
+we meet but the HISPANIOLA, cruising by herself? The last flood had
+lifted her, and had there been much wind or a strong tide current, as
+in the southern anchorage, we should never have found her more, or found
+her stranded beyond help. As it was, there was little amiss beyond the
+wreck of the main-sail. Another anchor was got ready and dropped in a
+fathom and a half of water. We all pulled round again to Rum Cove,
+the nearest point for Ben Gunn’s treasure-house; and then Gray,
+single-handed, returned with the gig to the HISPANIOLA, where he was to
+pass the night on guard.
+
+A gentle slope ran up from the beach to the entrance of the cave. At the
+top, the squire met us. To me he was cordial and kind, saying nothing
+of my escapade either in the way of blame or praise. At Silver’s polite
+salute he somewhat flushed.
+
+“John Silver,” he said, “you’re a prodigious villain and imposter--a
+monstrous imposter, sir. I am told I am not to prosecute you. Well,
+then, I will not. But the dead men, sir, hang about your neck like
+mill-stones.”
+
+“Thank you kindly, sir,” replied Long John, again saluting.
+
+“I dare you to thank me!” cried the squire. “It is a gross dereliction
+of my duty. Stand back.”
+
+And thereupon we all entered the cave. It was a large, airy place, with
+a little spring and a pool of clear water, overhung with ferns. The
+floor was sand. Before a big fire lay Captain Smollett; and in a far
+corner, only duskily flickered over by the blaze, I beheld great heaps
+of coin and quadrilaterals built of bars of gold. That was Flint’s
+treasure that we had come so far to seek and that had cost already the
+lives of seventeen men from the HISPANIOLA. How many it had cost in the
+amassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep,
+what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what
+shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell. Yet there
+were still three upon that island--Silver, and old Morgan, and Ben
+Gunn--who had each taken his share in these crimes, as each had hoped in
+vain to share in the reward.
+
+“Come in, Jim,” said the captain. “You’re a good boy in your line, Jim,
+but I don’t think you and me’ll go to sea again. You’re too much of the
+born favourite for me. Is that you, John Silver? What brings you here,
+man?”
+
+“Come back to my dooty, sir,” returned Silver.
+
+“Ah!” said the captain, and that was all he said.
+
+What a supper I had of it that night, with all my friends around me; and
+what a meal it was, with Ben Gunn’s salted goat and some delicacies and
+a bottle of old wine from the HISPANIOLA. Never, I am sure, were people
+gayer or happier. And there was Silver, sitting back almost out of the
+firelight, but eating heartily, prompt to spring forward when anything
+was wanted, even joining quietly in our laughter--the same bland,
+polite, obsequious seaman of the voyage out.
+
+
+
+
+34
+
+And Last
+
+THE next morning we fell early to work, for the transportation of this
+great mass of gold near a mile by land to the beach, and thence three
+miles by boat to the HISPANIOLA, was a considerable task for so small
+a number of workmen. The three fellows still abroad upon the island did
+not greatly trouble us; a single sentry on the shoulder of the hill was
+sufficient to ensure us against any sudden onslaught, and we thought,
+besides, they had had more than enough of fighting.
+
+Therefore the work was pushed on briskly. Gray and Ben Gunn came and
+went with the boat, while the rest during their absences piled treasure
+on the beach. Two of the bars, slung in a rope’s end, made a good load
+for a grown man--one that he was glad to walk slowly with. For my part,
+as I was not much use at carrying, I was kept busy all day in the cave
+packing the minted money into bread-bags.
+
+It was a strange collection, like Billy Bones’s hoard for the diversity
+of coinage, but so much larger and so much more varied that I think I
+never had more pleasure than in sorting them. English, French, Spanish,
+Portuguese, Georges, and Louises, doubloons and double guineas and
+moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the
+last hundred years, strange Oriental pieces stamped with what looked
+like wisps of string or bits of spider’s web, round pieces and square
+pieces, and pieces bored through the middle, as if to wear them round
+your neck--nearly every variety of money in the world must, I think,
+have found a place in that collection; and for number, I am sure they
+were like autumn leaves, so that my back ached with stooping and my
+fingers with sorting them out.
+
+Day after day this work went on; by every evening a fortune had been
+stowed aboard, but there was another fortune waiting for the morrow; and
+all this time we heard nothing of the three surviving mutineers.
+
+At last--I think it was on the third night--the doctor and I were
+strolling on the shoulder of the hill where it overlooks the lowlands of
+the isle, when, from out the thick darkness below, the wind brought us
+a noise between shrieking and singing. It was only a snatch that reached
+our ears, followed by the former silence.
+
+“Heaven forgive them,” said the doctor; “’tis the mutineers!”
+
+“All drunk, sir,” struck in the voice of Silver from behind us.
+
+Silver, I should say, was allowed his entire liberty, and in spite of
+daily rebuffs, seemed to regard himself once more as quite a privileged
+and friendly dependent. Indeed, it was remarkable how well he bore
+these slights and with what unwearying politeness he kept on trying to
+ingratiate himself with all. Yet, I think, none treated him better than
+a dog, unless it was Ben Gunn, who was still terribly afraid of his old
+quartermaster, or myself, who had really something to thank him for;
+although for that matter, I suppose, I had reason to think even worse of
+him than anybody else, for I had seen him meditating a fresh treachery
+upon the plateau. Accordingly, it was pretty gruffly that the doctor
+answered him.
+
+“Drunk or raving,” said he.
+
+“Right you were, sir,” replied Silver; “and precious little odds which,
+to you and me.”
+
+“I suppose you would hardly ask me to call you a humane man,” returned
+the doctor with a sneer, “and so my feelings may surprise you, Master
+Silver. But if I were sure they were raving--as I am morally certain
+one, at least, of them is down with fever--I should leave this camp,
+and at whatever risk to my own carcass, take them the assistance of my
+skill.”
+
+“Ask your pardon, sir, you would be very wrong,” quoth Silver. “You
+would lose your precious life, and you may lay to that. I’m on your side
+now, hand and glove; and I shouldn’t wish for to see the party weakened,
+let alone yourself, seeing as I know what I owes you. But these men down
+there, they couldn’t keep their word--no, not supposing they wished to;
+and what’s more, they couldn’t believe as you could.”
+
+“No,” said the doctor. “You’re the man to keep your word, we know that.”
+
+Well, that was about the last news we had of the three pirates. Only
+once we heard a gunshot a great way off and supposed them to be hunting.
+A council was held, and it was decided that we must desert them on the
+island--to the huge glee, I must say, of Ben Gunn, and with the strong
+approval of Gray. We left a good stock of powder and shot, the bulk
+of the salt goat, a few medicines, and some other necessaries, tools,
+clothing, a spare sail, a fathom or two of rope, and by the particular
+desire of the doctor, a handsome present of tobacco.
+
+That was about our last doing on the island. Before that, we had got the
+treasure stowed and had shipped enough water and the remainder of the
+goat meat in case of any distress; and at last, one fine morning, we
+weighed anchor, which was about all that we could manage, and stood out
+of North Inlet, the same colours flying that the captain had flown and
+fought under at the palisade.
+
+The three fellows must have been watching us closer than we thought for,
+as we soon had proved. For coming through the narrows, we had to
+lie very near the southern point, and there we saw all three of
+them kneeling together on a spit of sand, with their arms raised in
+supplication. It went to all our hearts, I think, to leave them in that
+wretched state; but we could not risk another mutiny; and to take them
+home for the gibbet would have been a cruel sort of kindness. The doctor
+hailed them and told them of the stores we had left, and where they were
+to find them. But they continued to call us by name and appeal to us,
+for God’s sake, to be merciful and not leave them to die in such a
+place.
+
+At last, seeing the ship still bore on her course and was now swiftly
+drawing out of earshot, one of them--I know not which it was--leapt to
+his feet with a hoarse cry, whipped his musket to his shoulder, and sent
+a shot whistling over Silver’s head and through the main-sail.
+
+After that, we kept under cover of the bulwarks, and when next I looked
+out they had disappeared from the spit, and the spit itself had almost
+melted out of sight in the growing distance. That was, at least, the end
+of that; and before noon, to my inexpressible joy, the highest rock of
+Treasure Island had sunk into the blue round of sea.
+
+We were so short of men that everyone on board had to bear a hand--only
+the captain lying on a mattress in the stern and giving his orders, for
+though greatly recovered he was still in want of quiet. We laid her
+head for the nearest port in Spanish America, for we could not risk the
+voyage home without fresh hands; and as it was, what with baffling winds
+and a couple of fresh gales, we were all worn out before we reached it.
+
+It was just at sundown when we cast anchor in a most beautiful
+land-locked gulf, and were immediately surrounded by shore boats full
+of Negroes and Mexican Indians and half-bloods selling fruits and
+vegetables and offering to dive for bits of money. The sight of so many
+good-humoured faces (especially the blacks), the taste of the tropical
+fruits, and above all the lights that began to shine in the town made a
+most charming contrast to our dark and bloody sojourn on the island;
+and the doctor and the squire, taking me along with them, went ashore
+to pass the early part of the night. Here they met the captain of an
+English man-of-war, fell in talk with him, went on board his ship, and,
+in short, had so agreeable a time that day was breaking when we came
+alongside the HISPANIOLA.
+
+Ben Gunn was on deck alone, and as soon as we came on board he began,
+with wonderful contortions, to make us a confession. Silver was gone.
+The maroon had connived at his escape in a shore boat some hours ago,
+and he now assured us he had only done so to preserve our lives, which
+would certainly have been forfeit if “that man with the one leg
+had stayed aboard.” But this was not all. The sea-cook had not gone
+empty-handed. He had cut through a bulkhead unobserved and had removed
+one of the sacks of coin, worth perhaps three or four hundred guineas,
+to help him on his further wanderings.
+
+I think we were all pleased to be so cheaply quit of him.
+
+Well, to make a long story short, we got a few hands on board, made a
+good cruise home, and the HISPANIOLA reached Bristol just as Mr. Blandly
+was beginning to think of fitting out her consort. Five men only of
+those who had sailed returned with her. “Drink and the devil had done
+for the rest,” with a vengeance, although, to be sure, we were not quite
+in so bad a case as that other ship they sang about:
+
+     With one man of her crew alive,
+     What put to sea with seventy-five.
+
+All of us had an ample share of the treasure and used it wisely or
+foolishly, according to our natures. Captain Smollett is now retired
+from the sea. Gray not only saved his money, but being suddenly smit
+with the desire to rise, also studied his profession, and he is now
+mate and part owner of a fine full-rigged ship, married besides, and the
+father of a family. As for Ben Gunn, he got a thousand pounds, which he
+spent or lost in three weeks, or to be more exact, in nineteen days, for
+he was back begging on the twentieth. Then he was given a lodge to keep,
+exactly as he had feared upon the island; and he still lives, a great
+favourite, though something of a butt, with the country boys, and a
+notable singer in church on Sundays and saints’ days.
+
+Of Silver we have heard no more. That formidable seafaring man with one
+leg has at last gone clean out of my life; but I dare say he met his old
+Negress, and perhaps still lives in comfort with her and Captain Flint.
+It is to be hoped so, I suppose, for his chances of comfort in another
+world are very small.
+
+The bar silver and the arms still lie, for all that I know, where
+Flint buried them; and certainly they shall lie there for me. Oxen and
+wain-ropes would not bring me back again to that accursed island; and
+the worst dreams that ever I have are when I hear the surf booming about
+its coasts or start upright in bed with the sharp voice of Captain Flint
+still ringing in my ears: “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”
diff --git a/search-engine/books/Winnie-the-Pooh.txt b/search-engine/books/Winnie-the-Pooh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f4f2672
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+++ b/search-engine/books/Winnie-the-Pooh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3981 @@
+Title: Winnie-the-Pooh
+Author: A. A. Milne
+
+                            WINNIE-THE-POOH
+
+                            _BY A. A. MILNE_
+
+
+
+
+                              _JUVENILES_
+
+                        When We Were Very Young
+
+    "_The best book of verses for children_ _ever written._"--A. EDWARD
+    NEWTON in _The Atlantic Monthly_.
+
+              Fourteen Songs from When We Were Very Young
+
+    Words by A. A. Milne. Music by H. Fraser-Simson. Decorations by
+    E. H. Shepard.
+
+                         The King's Breakfast
+
+    Words by A. A. Milne. Music by H. Fraser-Simson. Decorations by
+    E. H. Shepard
+
+
+                               _ESSAYS_
+
+                          Not That It Matters
+                          The Sunny Side
+                          If I May
+
+
+                            _MYSTERY STORY_
+
+                         The Red House Mystery
+
+
+
+
+                            WINNIE-THE-POOH
+                            BY A. A. MILNE
+
+                      McCLELLAND & STEWART, LTD.
+
+                      PUBLISHERS  -  -   TORONTO
+
+
+
+
+                        Copyright, Canada, 1926
+                    By McClelland & Stewart, Limited
+                          Publishers, Toronto
+
+                    First  Printing, October, 1926
+                    Second   "       July, 1927
+                     Third   "       December, 1928
+                    Fourth   "       December, 1929
+                     Fifth   "       March, 1931
+
+                           Printed in Canada
+
+
+
+
+                                 TO HER
+
+    HAND IN HAND WE COME
+      CHRISTOPHER ROBIN AND I
+    TO LAY THIS BOOK IN YOUR LAP.
+        SAY YOU'RE SURPRISED?
+        SAY YOU LIKE IT?
+        SAY IT'S JUST WHAT YOU WANTED?
+          BECAUSE IT'S YOURS----
+          BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU.
+
+
+
+
+                              INTRODUCTION
+
+If you happen to have read another book about Christopher Robin, you may
+remember that he once had a swan (or the swan had Christopher Robin, I
+don't know which) and that he used to call this swan Pooh. That was a
+long time ago, and when we said good-bye, we took the name with us, as
+we didn't think the swan would want it any more. Well, when Edward Bear
+said that he would like an exciting name all to himself, Christopher
+Robin said at once, without stopping to think, that he was
+Winnie-the-Pooh. And he was. So, as I have explained the Pooh part, I
+will now explain the rest of it.
+
+You can't be in London for long without going to the Zoo. There are some
+people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called WAYIN, and walk as
+quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the one called
+WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the animal they love the
+most, and stay there. So when Christopher Robin goes to the Zoo, he goes
+to where the Polar Bears are, and he whispers something to the third
+keeper from the left, and doors are unlocked, and we wander through dark
+passages and up steep stairs, until at last we come to the special cage,
+and the cage is opened, and out trots something brown and furry, and
+with a happy cry of "Oh, Bear!" Christopher Robin rushes into its arms.
+Now this bear's name is Winnie, which shows what a good name for bears
+it is, but the funny thing is that we can't remember whether Winnie is
+called after Pooh, or Pooh after Winnie. We did know once, but we have
+forgotten....
+
+I had written as far as this when Piglet looked up and said in his
+squeaky voice, "What about _Me_?" "My dear Piglet," I said, "the whole
+book is about you." "So it is about Pooh," he squeaked. You see what it
+is. He is jealous because he thinks Pooh is having a Grand Introduction
+all to himself. Pooh is the favourite, of course, there's no denying it,
+but Piglet comes in for a good many things which Pooh misses; because
+you can't take Pooh to school without everybody knowing it, but Piglet
+is so small that he slips into a pocket, where it is very comforting to
+feel him when you are not quite sure whether twice seven is twelve or
+twenty-two. Sometimes he slips out and has a good look in the ink-pot,
+and in this way he has got more education than Pooh, but Pooh doesn't
+mind. Some have brains, and some haven't, he says, and there it is.
+
+And now all the others are saying, "What about _Us_?" So perhaps the
+best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the
+book.
+
+                                                                A. A. M.
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+        I. IN WHICH WE ARE INTRODUCED TO WINNIE-THE-POOH AND SOME
+           BEES, AND THE STORIES BEGIN
+
+       II. IN WHICH POOH GOES VISITING AND GETS INTO A TIGHT PLACE
+
+      III. IN WHICH POOH AND PIGLET GO HUNTING AND NEARLY CATCH A
+           WOOZLE
+
+       IV. IN WHICH EEYORE LOSES A TAIL AND POOH FINDS ONE
+
+        V. IN WHICH PIGLET MEETS A HEFFALUMP
+
+       VI. IN WHICH EEYORE HAS A BIRTHDAY AND GETS TWO PRESENTS
+
+      VII. IN WHICH KANGA AND BABY ROO COME TO THE FOREST, AND
+           PIGLET HAS A BATH
+
+     VIII. IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN LEADS AN EXPOTITION TO THE
+           NORTH POLE
+
+       IX. IN WHICH PIGLET IS ENTIRELY SURROUNDED BY WATER
+
+        X. IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN GIVES A POOH PARTY, AND WE SAY
+           GOOD-BYE
+
+
+
+
+                            WINNIE-THE-POOH
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+                      IN WHICH WE ARE INTRODUCED TO
+                     WINNIE-THE-POOH AND SOME BEES,
+                          AND THE STORIES BEGIN
+
+
+Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the
+back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows,
+the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there
+really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and
+think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't. Anyhow, here he
+is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh.
+
+When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, "But
+I thought he was a boy?"
+
+"So did I," said Christopher Robin.
+
+"Then you can't call him Winnie?"
+
+"I don't."
+
+"But you said----"
+
+"He's Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don't you know what '_ther_' means?"
+
+"Ah, yes, now I do," I said quickly; and I hope you do too, because it
+is all the explanation you are going to get.
+
+Sometimes Winnie-the-Pooh likes a game of some sort when he comes
+downstairs, and sometimes he likes to sit quietly in front of the fire
+and listen to a story. This evening----
+
+"What about a story?" said Christopher Robin.
+
+"_What_ about a story?" I said.
+
+"Could you very sweetly tell Winnie-the-Pooh one?"
+
+"I suppose I could," I said. "What sort of stories does he like?"
+
+"About himself. Because he's _that_ sort of Bear."
+
+"Oh, I see."
+
+"So could you very sweetly?"
+
+"I'll try," I said.
+
+So I tried.
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday,
+Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of
+Sanders.
+
+(_"What does 'under the name' mean?" asked Christopher Robin._
+
+"_It means he had the name over the door in gold letters, and lived
+under it._"
+
+_"Winnie-the-Pooh wasn't quite sure," said Christopher Robin._
+
+_"Now I am," said a growly voice._
+
+_"Then I will go on," said I._)
+
+One day when he was out walking, he came to an open place in the middle
+of the forest, and in the middle of this place was a large oak-tree,
+and, from the top of the tree, there came a loud buzzing-noise.
+
+Winnie-the-Pooh sat down at the foot of the tree, put his head between
+his paws and began to think.
+
+First of all he said to himself: "That buzzing-noise means something.
+You don't get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing,
+without its meaning something. If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's
+making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise
+that _I_ know of is because you're a bee."
+
+Then he thought another long time, and said: "And the only reason for
+being a bee that I know of is making honey."
+
+And then he got up, and said: "And the only reason for making honey is
+so as _I_ can eat it." So he began to climb the tree.
+
+He climbed and he climbed and he climbed, and as he climbed he sang a
+little song to himself. It went like this:
+
+    Isn't it funny
+    How a bear likes honey?
+    Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
+    I wonder why he does?
+
+Then he climbed a little further ... and a little further ... and
+then just a little further. By that time he had thought of another song.
+
+    It's a very funny thought that, if Bears were Bees,
+    They'd build their nests at the _bottom_ of trees.
+    And that being so (if the Bees were Bears),
+    We shouldn't have to climb up all these stairs.
+
+He was getting rather tired by this time, so that is why he sang a
+Complaining Song. He was nearly there now, and if he just stood on that
+branch ...
+
+_Crack!_
+
+"Oh, help!" said Pooh, as he dropped ten feet on the branch below him.
+
+"If only I hadn't----" he said, as he bounced twenty feet on to the next
+branch.
+
+"You see, what I _meant_ to do," he explained, as he turned
+head-over-heels, and crashed on to another branch thirty feet below,
+"what I _meant_ to do----"
+
+"Of course, it _was_ rather----" he admitted, as he slithered very
+quickly through the next six branches.
+
+"It all comes, I suppose," he decided, as he said good-bye to the last
+branch, spun round three times, and flew gracefully into a gorse-bush,
+"it all comes of _liking_ honey so much. Oh, help!"
+
+He crawled out of the gorse-bush, brushed the prickles from his nose,
+and began to think again. And the first person he thought of was
+Christopher Robin.
+
+(_"Was that me?" said Christopher Robin in an awed voice, hardly daring
+to believe it._
+
+"_That was you._"
+
+_Christopher Robin said nothing, but his eyes got larger and larger, and
+his face got pinker and pinker._)
+
+So Winnie-the-Pooh went round to his friend Christopher Robin, who lived
+behind a green door in another part of the forest.
+
+"Good morning, Christopher Robin," he said.
+
+"Good morning, Winnie-_ther_-Pooh," said you.
+
+"I wonder if you've got such a thing as a balloon about you?"
+
+"A balloon?"
+
+"Yes, I just said to myself coming along: 'I wonder if Christopher Robin
+has such a thing as a balloon about him?' I just said it to myself,
+thinking of balloons, and wondering."
+
+"What do you want a balloon for?" you said.
+
+Winnie-the-Pooh looked round to see that nobody was listening, put his
+paw to his mouth, and said in a deep whisper: "_Honey!_"
+
+"But you don't get honey with balloons!"
+
+"_I_ do," said Pooh.
+
+Well, it just happened that you had been to a party the day before at
+the house of your friend Piglet, and you had balloons at the party. You
+had had a big green balloon; and one of Rabbit's relations had had a big
+blue one, and had left it behind, being really too young to go to a
+party at all; and so you had brought the green one _and_ the blue one
+home with you.
+
+"Which one would you like?" you asked Pooh.
+
+He put his head between his paws and thought very carefully.
+
+"It's like this," he said. "When you go after honey with a balloon, the
+great thing is not to let the bees know you're coming. Now, if you have
+a green balloon, they might think you were only part of the tree, and
+not notice you, and, if you have a blue balloon, they might think you
+were only part of the sky, and not notice you, and the question is:
+Which is most likely?"
+
+"Wouldn't they notice _you_ underneath the balloon?" you asked.
+
+"They might or they might not," said Winnie-the-Pooh. "You never can
+tell with bees." He thought for a moment and said: "I shall try to look
+like a small black cloud. That will deceive them."
+
+"Then you had better have the blue balloon," you said; and so it was
+decided.
+
+Well, you both went out with the blue balloon, and you took your gun
+with you, just in case, as you always did, and Winnie-the-Pooh went to a
+very muddy place that he knew of, and rolled and rolled until he was
+black all over; and then, when the balloon was blown up as big as big,
+and you and Pooh were both holding on to the string, you let go
+suddenly, and Pooh Bear floated gracefully up into the sky, and stayed
+there--level with the top of the tree and about twenty feet away from
+it.
+
+"Hooray!" you shouted.
+
+"Isn't that fine?" shouted Winnie-the-Pooh down to you. "What do I look
+like?"
+
+"You look like a Bear holding on to a balloon," you said.
+
+"Not," said Pooh anxiously, "--not like a small black cloud in a blue
+sky?"
+
+"Not very much."
+
+"Ah, well, perhaps from up here it looks different. And, as I say, you
+never can tell with bees."
+
+There was no wind to blow him nearer to the tree, so there he stayed. He
+could see the honey, he could smell the honey, but he couldn't quite
+reach the honey.
+
+After a little while he called down to you.
+
+"Christopher Robin!" he said in a loud whisper.
+
+"Hallo!"
+
+"I think the bees _suspect_ something!"
+
+"What sort of thing?"
+
+"I don't know. But something tells me that they're _suspicious_!"
+
+"Perhaps they think that you're after their honey."
+
+"It may be that. You never can tell with bees."
+
+There was another little silence, and then he called down to you again.
+
+"Christopher Robin!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Have you an umbrella in your house?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"I wish you would bring it out here, and walk up and down with it, and
+look up at me every now and then, and say 'Tut-tut, it looks like rain.'
+I think, if you did that, it would help the deception which we are
+practising on these bees."
+
+Well, you laughed to yourself, "Silly old Bear!" but you didn't say it
+aloud because you were so fond of him, and you went home for your
+umbrella.
+
+"Oh, there you are!" called down Winnie-the-Pooh, as soon as you got
+back to the tree. "I was beginning to get anxious. I have discovered
+that the bees are now definitely Suspicious."
+
+"Shall I put my umbrella up?" you said.
+
+"Yes, but wait a moment. We must be practical. The important bee to
+deceive is the Queen Bee. Can you see which is the Queen Bee from down
+there?"
+
+"No."
+
+"A pity. Well, now, if you walk up and down with your umbrella, saying,
+'Tut-tut, it looks like rain,' I shall do what I can by singing a little
+Cloud Song, such as a cloud might sing.... Go!"
+
+So, while you walked up and down and wondered if it would rain,
+Winnie-the-Pooh sang this song:
+
+    How sweet to be a Cloud
+      Floating in the Blue!
+    Every little cloud
+    _Always_ sings aloud.
+
+    "How sweet to be a Cloud
+      Floating in the Blue!"
+    It makes him very proud
+    To be a little cloud.
+
+The bees were still buzzing as suspiciously as ever. Some of them,
+indeed, left their nests and flew all round the cloud as it began the
+second verse of this song, and one bee sat down on the nose of the cloud
+for a moment, and then got up again.
+
+"Christopher--_ow!_--Robin," called out the cloud.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I have just been thinking, and I have come to a very important
+decision. _These are the wrong sort of bees._"
+
+"Are they?"
+
+"Quite the wrong sort. So I should think they would make the wrong sort
+of honey, shouldn't you?"
+
+"Would they?"
+
+"Yes. So I think I shall come down."
+
+"How?" asked you.
+
+Winnie-the-Pooh hadn't thought about this. If he let go of the string,
+he would fall--_bump_--and he didn't like the idea of that. So he
+thought for a long time, and then he said:
+
+"Christopher Robin, you must shoot the balloon with your gun. Have you
+got your gun?"
+
+"Of course I have," you said. "But if I do that, it will spoil the
+balloon," you said.
+
+"But if you _don't_," said Pooh, "I shall have to let go, and that would
+spoil _me_."
+
+When he put it like this, you saw how it was, and you aimed very
+carefully at the balloon, and fired.
+
+"_Ow!_" said Pooh.
+
+"Did I miss?" you asked.
+
+"You didn't exactly _miss_," said Pooh, "but you missed the _balloon_."
+
+"I'm so sorry," you said, and you fired again, and this time you hit the
+balloon, and the air came slowly out, and Winnie-the-Pooh floated down
+to the ground.
+
+But his arms were so stiff from holding on to the string of the balloon
+all that time that they stayed up straight in the air for more than a
+week, and whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it
+off. And I think--but I am not sure--that _that_ is why he was always
+called Pooh.
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+"Is that the end of the story?" asked Christopher Robin.
+
+"That's the end of that one. There are others."
+
+"About Pooh and Me?"
+
+"And Piglet and Rabbit and all of you. Don't you remember?"
+
+"I do remember, and then when I try to remember, I forget."
+
+"That day when Pooh and Piglet tried to catch the Heffalump----"
+
+"They didn't catch it, did they?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Pooh couldn't, because he hasn't any brain. Did _I_ catch it?"
+
+"Well, that comes into the story."
+
+Christopher Robin nodded.
+
+"I do remember," he said, "only Pooh doesn't very well, so that's why he
+likes having it told to him again. Because then it's a real story and
+not just a remembering."
+
+"That's just how _I_ feel," I said.
+
+Christopher Robin gave a deep sigh, picked his Bear up by the leg, and
+walked off to the door, trailing Pooh behind him. At the door he turned
+and said, "Coming to see me have my bath?"
+
+"I might," I said.
+
+"I didn't hurt him when I shot him, did I?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+He nodded and went out, and in a moment I heard Winnie-the-Pooh--_bump,
+bump, bump_--going up the stairs behind him.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+                     IN WHICH POOH GOES VISITING AND
+                         GETS INTO A TIGHT PLACE
+
+
+Edward Bear, known to his friends as Winnie-the-Pooh, or Pooh for
+short, was walking through the forest one day, humming proudly to
+himself. He had made up a little hum that very morning, as he was doing
+his Stoutness Exercises in front of the glass: _Tra-la-la, tra-la-la_,
+as he stretched up as high as he could go, and then _Tra-la-la,
+tra-la--oh, help!--la_, as he tried to reach his toes. After breakfast
+he had said it over and over to himself until he had learnt it off by
+heart, and now he was humming it right through, properly. It went like
+this:
+
+      _Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,_
+      _Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,_
+    _Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum._
+      _Tiddle-iddle, tiddle-iddle,_
+      _Tiddle-iddle, tiddle-iddle,_
+    _Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um._
+
+Well, he was humming this hum to himself, and walking along gaily,
+wondering what everybody else was doing, and what it felt like, being
+somebody else, when suddenly he came to a sandy bank, and in the bank
+was a large hole.
+
+"Aha!" said Pooh. (_Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum._) "If I know anything about
+anything, that hole means Rabbit," he said, "and Rabbit means Company,"
+he said, "and Company means Food and Listening-to-Me-Humming and such
+like. _Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um._"
+
+So he bent down, put his head into the hole, and called out:
+
+"Is anybody at home?"
+
+There was a sudden scuffling noise from inside the hole, and then
+silence.
+
+"What I said was, 'Is anybody at home?'" called out Pooh very loudly.
+
+"No!" said a voice; and then added, "You needn't shout so loud. I heard
+you quite well the first time."
+
+"Bother!" said Pooh. "Isn't there anybody here at all?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+Winnie-the-Pooh took his head out of the hole, and thought for a little,
+and he thought to himself, "There must be somebody there, because
+somebody must have _said_ 'Nobody.'" So he put his head back in the
+hole, and said:
+
+"Hallo, Rabbit, isn't that you?"
+
+"No," said Rabbit, in a different sort of voice this time.
+
+"But isn't that Rabbit's voice?"
+
+"I don't _think_ so," said Rabbit. "It isn't _meant_ to be."
+
+"Oh!" said Pooh.
+
+He took his head out of the hole, and had another think, and then he put
+it back, and said:
+
+"Well, could you very kindly tell me where Rabbit is?"
+
+"He has gone to see his friend Pooh Bear, who is a great friend of his."
+
+"But this _is_ Me!" said Bear, very much surprised.
+
+"What sort of Me?"
+
+"Pooh Bear."
+
+"Are you sure?" said Rabbit, still more surprised.
+
+"Quite, quite sure," said Pooh.
+
+"Oh, well, then, come in."
+
+So Pooh pushed and pushed and pushed his way through the hole, and at
+last he got in.
+
+"You were quite right," said Rabbit, looking at him all over. "It _is_
+you. Glad to see you."
+
+"Who did you think it was?"
+
+"Well, I wasn't sure. You know how it is in the Forest. One can't have
+_anybody_ coming into one's house. One has to be _careful_. What about a
+mouthful of something?"
+
+Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o'clock in the morning,
+and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and
+when Rabbit said, "Honey or condensed milk with your bread?" he was so
+excited that he said, "Both," and then, so as not to seem greedy, he
+added, "But don't bother about the bread, please." And for a long time
+after that he said nothing ... until at last, humming to himself in a
+rather sticky voice, he got up, shook Rabbit lovingly by the paw, and
+said that he must be going on.
+
+"Must you?" said Rabbit politely.
+
+"Well," said Pooh, "I could stay a little longer if it--if you----" and
+he tried very hard to look in the direction of the larder.
+
+"As a matter of fact," said Rabbit, "I was going out myself directly."
+
+"Oh, well, then, I'll be going on. Good-bye."
+
+"Well, good-bye, if you're sure you won't have any more."
+
+"_Is_ there any more?" asked Pooh quickly.
+
+Rabbit took the covers off the dishes, and said, "No, there wasn't."
+
+"I thought not," said Pooh, nodding to himself. "Well, good-bye. I must
+be going on."
+
+So he started to climb out of the hole. He pulled with his front paws,
+and pushed with his back paws, and in a little while his nose was out in
+the open again ... and then his ears ... and then his front paws ...
+and then his shoulders ... and then----
+
+"Oh, help!" said Pooh. "I'd better go back."
+
+"Oh, bother!" said Pooh. "I shall have to go on."
+
+"I can't do either!" said Pooh. "Oh, help _and_ bother!"
+
+Now by this time Rabbit wanted to go for a walk too, and finding the
+front door full, he went out by the back door, and came round to Pooh,
+and looked at him.
+
+"Hallo, are you stuck?" he asked.
+
+"N-no," said Pooh carelessly. "Just resting and thinking and humming to
+myself."
+
+"Here, give us a paw."
+
+Pooh Bear stretched out a paw, and Rabbit pulled and pulled and
+pulled....
+
+"_Ow!_" cried Pooh. "You're hurting!"
+
+"The fact is," said Rabbit, "you're stuck."
+
+"It all comes," said Pooh crossly, "of not having front doors big
+enough."
+
+"It all comes," said Rabbit sternly, "of eating too much. I thought at
+the time," said Rabbit, "only I didn't like to say anything," said
+Rabbit, "that one of us was eating too much," said Rabbit, "and I knew
+it wasn't _me_," he said. "Well, well, I shall go and fetch Christopher
+Robin."
+
+Christopher Robin lived at the other end of the Forest, and when he came
+back with Rabbit, and saw the front half of Pooh, he said, "Silly old
+Bear," in such a loving voice that everybody felt quite hopeful again.
+
+"I was just beginning to think," said Bear, sniffing slightly, "that
+Rabbit might never be able to use his front door again. And I should
+_hate_ that," he said.
+
+"So should I," said Rabbit.
+
+"Use his front door again?" said Christopher Robin. "Of course he'll use
+his front door again."
+
+"Good," said Rabbit.
+
+"If we can't pull you out, Pooh, we might push you back."
+
+Rabbit scratched his whiskers thoughtfully, and pointed out that, when
+once Pooh was pushed back, he was back, and of course nobody was more
+glad to see Pooh than _he_ was, still there it was, some lived in trees
+and some lived underground, and----
+
+"You mean I'd _never_ get out?" said Pooh.
+
+"I mean," said Rabbit, "that having got _so_ far, it seems a pity to
+waste it."
+
+Christopher Robin nodded.
+
+"Then there's only one thing to be done," he said. "We shall have to
+wait for you to get thin again."
+
+"How long does getting thin take?" asked Pooh anxiously.
+
+"About a week, I should think."
+
+"But I can't stay here for a _week_!"
+
+"You can _stay_ here all right, silly old Bear. It's getting you out
+which is so difficult."
+
+"We'll read to you," said Rabbit cheerfully. "And I hope it won't snow,"
+he added. "And I say, old fellow, you're taking up a good deal of room
+in my house--_do_ you mind if I use your back legs as a towel-horse?
+Because, I mean, there they are--doing nothing--and it would be very
+convenient just to hang the towels on them."
+
+"A week!" said Pooh gloomily. "_What about meals?_"
+
+"I'm afraid no meals," said Christopher Robin, "because of getting thin
+quicker. But we _will_ read to you."
+
+Bear began to sigh, and then found he couldn't because he was so tightly
+stuck; and a tear rolled down his eye, as he said:
+
+"Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a
+Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?"
+
+So for a week Christopher Robin read that sort of book at the North end
+of Pooh, and Rabbit hung his washing on the South end ... and in
+between Bear felt himself getting slenderer and slenderer. And at the
+end of the week Christopher Robin said, "_Now!_"
+
+So he took hold of Pooh's front paws and Rabbit took hold of Christopher
+Robin, and all Rabbit's friends and relations took hold of Rabbit, and
+they all pulled together....
+
+And for a long time Pooh only said "_Ow!_" ...
+
+And "_Oh!_" ...
+
+And then, all of a sudden, he said "_Pop!_" just as if a cork were
+coming out of a bottle.
+
+And Christopher Robin and Rabbit and all Rabbit's friends and relations
+went head-over-heels backwards ... and on the top of them came
+Winnie-the-Pooh--free!
+
+So, with a nod of thanks to his friends, he went on with his walk
+through the forest, humming proudly to himself. But, Christopher Robin
+looked after him lovingly, and said to himself, "Silly old Bear!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+                   IN WHICH POOH AND PIGLET GO HUNTING
+                        AND NEARLY CATCH A WOOZLE
+
+
+The Piglet lived in a very grand house in the middle of a beech-tree,
+and the beech-tree was in the middle of the forest, and the Piglet lived
+in the middle of the house. Next to his house was a piece of broken
+board which had: "TRESPASSERS W" on it. When Christopher Robin asked the
+Piglet what it meant, he said it was his grandfather's name, and had
+been in the family for a long time, Christopher Robin said you
+_couldn't_ be called Trespassers W, and Piglet said yes, you could,
+because his grandfather was, and it was short for Trespassers Will,
+which was short for Trespassers William. And his grandfather had had two
+names in case he lost one--Trespassers after an uncle, and William after
+Trespassers.
+
+"I've got two names," said Christopher Robin carelessly.
+
+"Well, there you are, that proves it," said Piglet.
+
+One fine winter's day when Piglet was brushing away the snow in front of
+his house, he happened to look up, and there was Winnie-the-Pooh. Pooh
+was walking round and round in a circle, thinking of something else, and
+when Piglet called to him, he just went on walking.
+
+"Hallo!" said Piglet, "what are _you_ doing?"
+
+"Hunting," said Pooh.
+
+"Hunting what?"
+
+"Tracking something," said Winnie-the-Pooh very mysteriously.
+
+"Tracking what?" said Piglet, coming closer.
+
+"That's just what I ask myself. I ask myself, What?"
+
+"What do you think you'll answer?"
+
+"I shall have to wait until I catch up with it," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
+"Now, look there." He pointed to the ground in front of him. "What do
+you see there?"
+
+"Tracks," said Piglet. "Paw-marks." He gave a little squeak of
+excitement. "Oh, Pooh! Do you think it's a--a--a Woozle?"
+
+"It may be," said Pooh. "Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. You
+never can tell with paw-marks."
+
+With these few words he went on tracking, and Piglet, after watching him
+for a minute or two, ran after him. Winnie-the-Pooh had come to a sudden
+stop, and was bending over the tracks in a puzzled sort of way.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Piglet.
+
+"It's a very funny thing," said Bear, "but there seem to be
+_two_ animals now. This--whatever-it-was--has been joined by
+another--whatever-it-is--and the two of them are now proceeding
+in company. Would you mind coming with me, Piglet, in case they
+turn out to be Hostile Animals?"
+
+Piglet scratched his ear in a nice sort of way, and said that he had
+nothing to do until Friday, and would be delighted to come, in case it
+really _was_ a Woozle.
+
+"You mean, in case it really is two Woozles," said Winnie-the-Pooh, and
+Piglet said that anyhow he had nothing to do until Friday. So off they
+went together.
+
+There was a small spinney of larch trees just here, and it seemed as if
+the two Woozles, if that is what they were, had been going round this
+spinney; so round this spinney went Pooh and Piglet after them; Piglet
+passing the time by telling Pooh what his Grandfather Trespassers W had
+done to Remove Stiffness after Tracking, and how his Grandfather
+Trespassers W had suffered in his later years from Shortness of Breath,
+and other matters of interest, and Pooh wondering what a Grandfather was
+like, and if perhaps this was Two Grandfathers they were after now, and,
+if so, whether he would be allowed to take one home and keep it, and
+what Christopher Robin would say. And still the tracks went on in front
+of them....
+
+Suddenly Winnie-the-Pooh stopped, and pointed excitedly in front of him.
+"_Look!_"
+
+"_What?_" said Piglet, with a jump. And then, to show that he hadn't
+been frightened, he jumped up and down once or twice more in an
+exercising sort of way.
+
+"The tracks!" said Pooh. "_A third animal has joined the other two!_"
+
+"Pooh!" cried Piglet. "Do you think it is another Woozle?"
+
+"No," said Pooh, "because it makes different marks. It is either Two
+Woozles and one, as it might be, Wizzle, or Two, as it might be, Wizzles
+and one, if so it is, Woozle. Let us continue to follow them."
+
+So they went on, feeling just a little anxious now, in case the three
+animals in front of them were of Hostile Intent. And Piglet wished very
+much that his Grandfather T. W. were there, instead of elsewhere, and
+Pooh thought how nice it would be if they met Christopher Robin suddenly
+but quite accidentally, and only because he liked Christopher Robin so
+much. And then, all of a sudden, Winnie-the-Pooh stopped again, and
+licked the tip of his nose in a cooling manner, for he was feeling more
+hot and anxious than ever in his life before. _There were four animals
+in front of them!_
+
+"Do you see, Piglet? Look at their tracks! Three, as it were, Woozles,
+and one, as it was, Wizzle. _Another Woozle has joined them!_"
+
+And so it seemed to be. There were the tracks; crossing over each other
+here, getting muddled up with each other there; but, quite plainly every
+now and then, the tracks of four sets of paws.
+
+"I _think_," said Piglet, when he had licked the tip of his nose too,
+and found that it brought very little comfort, "I _think_ that I have
+just remembered something. I have just remembered something that I
+forgot to do yesterday and shan't be able to do to-morrow. So I suppose
+I really ought to go back and do it now."
+
+"We'll do it this afternoon, and I'll come with you," said Pooh.
+
+"It isn't the sort of thing you can do in the afternoon," said Piglet
+quickly. "It's a very particular morning thing, that has to be done in
+the morning, and, if possible, between the hours of----What would you
+say the time was?"
+
+"About twelve," said Winnie-the-Pooh, looking at the sun.
+
+"Between, as I was saying, the hours of twelve and twelve five. So,
+really, dear old Pooh, if you'll excuse me----_What's that?_"
+
+Pooh looked up at the sky, and then, as he heard the whistle again, he
+looked up into the branches of a big oak-tree, and then he saw a friend
+of his.
+
+"It's Christopher Robin," he said.
+
+"Ah, then you'll be all right," said Piglet. "You'll be quite safe with
+_him_. Good-bye," and he trotted off home as quickly as he could, very
+glad to be Out of All Danger again.
+
+Christopher Robin came slowly down his tree.
+
+"Silly old Bear," he said, "what _were_ you doing? First you went round
+the spinney twice by yourself, and then Piglet ran after you and you
+went round again together, and then you were just going round a fourth
+time----"
+
+"Wait a moment," said Winnie-the-Pooh, holding up his paw.
+
+He sat down and thought, in the most thoughtful way he could think. Then
+he fitted his paw into one of the Tracks ... and then he scratched his
+nose twice, and stood up.
+
+"Yes," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
+
+"I see now," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
+
+"I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of No Brain
+at All."
+
+"You're the Best Bear in All the World," said Christopher Robin
+soothingly.
+
+"Am I?" said Pooh hopefully. And then he brightened up suddenly.
+
+"Anyhow," he said, "it is nearly Luncheon Time."
+
+So he went home for it.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+                      IN WHICH EEYORE LOSES A TAIL
+                           AND POOH FINDS ONE
+
+
+The Old Grey Donkey, Eeyore, stood by himself in a thistly corner of
+the forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought
+about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and
+sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch
+as which?"--and sometimes he didn't quite know what he _was_ thinking
+about. So when Winnie-the-Pooh came stumping along, Eeyore was very glad
+to be able to stop thinking for a little, in order to say "How do you
+do?" in a gloomy manner to him.
+
+"And how are you?" said Winnie-the-Pooh.
+
+Eeyore shook his head from side to side.
+
+"Not very how," he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a
+long time."
+
+"Dear, dear," said Pooh, "I'm sorry about that. Let's have a look at
+you."
+
+So Eeyore stood there, gazing sadly at the ground, and Winnie-the-Pooh
+walked all round him once.
+
+"Why, what's happened to your tail?" he said in surprise.
+
+"What _has_ happened to it?" said Eeyore.
+
+"It isn't there!"
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Well, either a tail _is_ there or it isn't there. You can't make a
+mistake about it. And yours _isn't_ there!"
+
+"Then what is?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Let's have a look," said Eeyore, and he turned slowly round to the
+place where his tail had been a little while ago, and then, finding that
+he couldn't catch it up, he turned round the other way, until he came
+back to where he was at first, and then he put his head down and looked
+between his front legs, and at last he said, with a long, sad sigh, "I
+believe you're right."
+
+"Of course I'm right," said Pooh.
+
+"That Accounts for a Good Deal," said Eeyore gloomily. "It Explains
+Everything. No Wonder."
+
+"You must have left it somewhere," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
+
+"Somebody must have taken it," said Eeyore. "How Like Them," he added,
+after a long silence.
+
+Pooh felt that he ought to say something helpful about it, but didn't
+quite know what. So he decided to do something helpful instead.
+
+"Eeyore," he said solemnly, "I, Winnie-the-Pooh, will find your tail for
+you."
+
+"Thank you, Pooh," answered Eeyore. "You're a real friend," said he.
+"Not like Some," he said.
+
+So Winnie-the-Pooh went off to find Eeyore's tail.
+
+It was a fine spring morning in the forest as he started out. Little
+soft clouds played happily in a blue sky, skipping from time to time in
+front of the sun as if they had come to put it out, and then sliding
+away suddenly so that the next might have his turn. Through them and
+between them the sun shone bravely; and a copse which had worn its firs
+all the year round seemed old and dowdy now beside the new green lace
+which the beeches had put on so prettily. Through copse and spinney
+marched Bear; down open slopes of gorse and heather, over rocky beds of
+streams, up steep banks of sandstone into the heather again; and so at
+last, tired and hungry, to the Hundred Acre Wood. For it was in the
+Hundred Acre Wood that Owl lived.
+
+"And if anyone knows anything about anything," said Bear to himself,
+"it's Owl who knows something about something," he said, "or my name's
+not Winnie-the-Pooh," he said. "Which it is," he added. "So there you
+are."
+
+Owl lived at The Chestnuts, an old-world residence of great charm, which
+was grander than anybody else's, or seemed so to Bear, because it had
+both a knocker _and_ a bell-pull. Underneath the knocker there was a
+notice which said:
+
+                   PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD.
+
+Underneath the bell-pull there was a notice which said:
+
+                  PLEZ CNOKE IF AN RNSR IS NOT REQID.
+
+These notices had been written by Christopher Robin, who was the only
+one in the forest who could spell; for Owl, wise though he was in many
+ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL, yet somehow
+went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST.
+
+Winnie-the-Pooh read the two notices very carefully, first from left to
+right, and afterwards, in case he had missed some of it, from right to
+left. Then, to make quite sure, he knocked and pulled the knocker, and
+he pulled and knocked the bell-rope, and he called out in a very loud
+voice, "Owl! I require an answer! It's Bear speaking." And the door
+opened, and Owl looked out.
+
+"Hallo, Pooh," he said. "How's things?"
+
+"Terrible and Sad," said Pooh, "because Eeyore, who is a friend of mine,
+has lost his tail. And he's Moping about it. So could you very kindly
+tell me how to find it for him?"
+
+"Well," said Owl, "the customary procedure in such cases is as follows."
+
+"What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said Pooh. "For I am a Bear of
+Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me."
+
+"It means the Thing to Do."
+
+"As long as it means that, I don't mind," said Pooh humbly.
+
+"The thing to do is as follows. First, Issue a Reward. Then----"
+
+"Just a moment," said Pooh, holding up his paw. "_What_ do we do to
+this--what you were saying? You sneezed just as you were going to tell
+me."
+
+"I _didn't_ sneeze."
+
+"Yes, you did, Owl."
+
+"Excuse me, Pooh, I didn't. You can't sneeze without knowing it."
+
+"Well, you can't know it without something having been sneezed."
+
+"What I _said_ was, 'First _Issue_ a Reward'."
+
+"You're doing it again," said Pooh sadly.
+
+"A Reward!" said Owl very loudly. "We write a notice to say that we will
+give a large something to anybody who finds Eeyore's tail."
+
+"I see, I see," said Pooh, nodding his head. "Talking about large
+somethings," he went on dreamily, "I generally have a small something
+about now--about this time in the morning," and he looked wistfully at
+the cupboard in the corner of Owl's parlour; "just a mouthful of
+condensed milk or whatnot, with perhaps a lick of honey----"
+
+"Well, then," said Owl, "we write out this notice, and we put it up all
+over the forest."
+
+"A lick of honey," murmured Bear to himself, "or--or not, as the case
+may be." And he gave a deep sigh, and tried very hard to listen to what
+Owl was saying.
+
+But Owl went on and on, using longer and longer words, until at last he
+came back to where he started, and he explained that the person to write
+out this notice was Christopher Robin.
+
+"It was he who wrote the ones on my front door for me. Did you see them,
+Pooh?"
+
+For some time now Pooh had been saying "Yes" and "No" in turn, with his
+eyes shut, to all that Owl was saying, and having said, "Yes, yes," last
+time, he said "No, not at all," now, without really knowing what Owl was
+talking about.
+
+"Didn't you see them?" said Owl, a little surprised. "Come and look at
+them now."
+
+So they went outside. And Pooh looked at the knocker and the notice
+below it, and he looked at the bell-rope and the notice below it, and
+the more he looked at the bell-rope, the more he felt that he had seen
+something like it, somewhere else, sometime before.
+
+"Handsome bell-rope, isn't it?" said Owl.
+
+Pooh nodded.
+
+"It reminds me of something," he said, "but I can't think what. Where
+did you get it?"
+
+"I just came across it in the Forest. It was hanging over a bush, and I
+thought at first somebody lived there, so I rang it, and nothing
+happened, and then I rang it again very loudly, and it came off in my
+hand, and as nobody seemed to want it, I took it home, and----"
+
+"Owl," said Pooh solemnly, "you made a mistake. Somebody did want it."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Eeyore. My dear friend Eeyore. He was--he was fond of it."
+
+"Fond of it?"
+
+"Attached to it," said Winnie-the-Pooh sadly.
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+So with these words he unhooked it, and carried it back to Eeyore; and
+when Christopher Robin had nailed it on in its right place again, Eeyore
+frisked about the forest, waving his tail so happily that
+Winnie-the-Pooh came over all funny, and had to hurry home for a little
+snack of something to sustain him. And, wiping his mouth half an hour
+afterwards, he sang to himself proudly:
+
+    _Who found the Tail?_
+      "I," said Pooh,
+    "At a quarter to two
+      (Only it was quarter to eleven really),
+    _I_ found the Tail!"
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+                    IN WHICH PIGLET MEETS A HEFFALUMP
+
+
+One day, when Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet were
+all talking together, Christopher Robin finished the mouthful he was
+eating and said carelessly: "I saw a Heffalump to-day, Piglet."
+
+"What was it doing?" asked Piglet.
+
+"Just lumping along," said Christopher Robin. "I don't think it saw
+_me_."
+
+"I saw one once," said Piglet. "At least, I think I did," he said. "Only
+perhaps it wasn't."
+
+"So did I," said Pooh, wondering what a Heffalump was like.
+
+"You don't often see them," said Christopher Robin carelessly.
+
+"Not now," said Piglet.
+
+"Not at this time of year," said Pooh.
+
+Then they all talked about something else, until it was time for Pooh
+and Piglet to go home together. At first as they stumped along the path
+which edged the Hundred Acre Wood, they didn't say much to each other;
+but when they came to the stream and had helped each other across the
+stepping stones, and were able to walk side by side again over the
+heather, they began to talk in a friendly way about this and that, and
+Piglet said, "If you see what I mean, Pooh," and Pooh said, "It's just
+what I think myself, Piglet," and Piglet said, "But, on the other hand,
+Pooh, we must remember," and Pooh said, "Quite true, Piglet, although I
+had forgotten it for the moment." And then, just as they came to the Six
+Pine Trees, Pooh looked round to see that nobody else was listening, and
+said in a very solemn voice:
+
+"Piglet, I have decided something."
+
+"What have you decided, Pooh?"
+
+"I have decided to catch a Heffalump."
+
+Pooh nodded his head several times as he said this, and waited for
+Piglet to say "How?" or "Pooh, you couldn't!" or something helpful of
+that sort, but Piglet said nothing. The fact was Piglet was wishing that
+_he_ had thought about it first.
+
+"I shall do it," said Pooh, after waiting a little longer, "by means of
+a trap. And it must be a Cunning Trap, so you will have to help me,
+Piglet."
+
+"Pooh," said Piglet, feeling quite happy again now, "I will." And then
+he said, "How shall we do it?" and Pooh said, "That's just it. How?" And
+then they sat down together to think it out.
+
+Pooh's first idea was that they should dig a Very Deep Pit, and then the
+Heffalump would come along and fall into the Pit, and----
+
+"Why?" said Piglet.
+
+"Why what?" said Pooh.
+
+"Why would he fall in?"
+
+Pooh rubbed his nose with his paw, and said that the Heffalump might be
+walking along, humming a little song, and looking up at the sky,
+wondering if it would rain, and so he wouldn't see the Very Deep Pit
+until he was half-way down, when it would be too late.
+
+Piglet said that this was a very good Trap, but supposing it were
+raining already?
+
+Pooh rubbed his nose again, and said that he hadn't thought of that. And
+then he brightened up, and said that, if it were raining already, the
+Heffalump would be looking at the sky wondering if it would _clear up_,
+and so he wouldn't see the Very Deep Pit until he was half-way
+down.... When it would be too late.
+
+Piglet said that, now that this point had been explained, he thought it
+was a Cunning Trap.
+
+Pooh was very proud when he heard this, and he felt that the Heffalump
+was as good as caught already, but there was just one other thing which
+had to be thought about, and it was this. _Where should they dig the
+Very Deep Pit?_
+
+Piglet said that the best place would be somewhere where a Heffalump
+was, just before he fell into it, only about a foot farther on.
+
+"But then he would see us digging it," said Pooh.
+
+"Not if he was looking at the sky."
+
+"He would Suspect," said Pooh, "if he happened to look down." He thought
+for a long time and then added sadly, "It isn't as easy as I thought. I
+suppose that's why Heffalumps hardly _ever_ get caught."
+
+"That must be it," said Piglet.
+
+They sighed and got up; and when they had taken a few gorse prickles out
+of themselves they sat down again; and all the time Pooh was saying to
+himself, "If only I could _think_ of something!" For he felt sure that a
+Very Clever Brain could catch a Heffalump if only he knew the right way
+to go about it.
+
+"Suppose," he said to Piglet, "_you_ wanted to catch _me_, how would you
+do it?"
+
+"Well," said Piglet, "I should do it like this. I should make a Trap,
+and I should put a Jar of Honey in the Trap, and you would smell it, and
+you would go in after it, and----"
+
+"And I would go in after it," said Pooh excitedly, "only very carefully
+so as not to hurt myself, and I would get to the Jar of Honey, and I
+should lick round the edges first of all, pretending that there wasn't
+any more, you know, and then I should walk away and think about it a
+little, and then I should come back and start licking in the middle of
+the jar, and then----"
+
+"Yes, well never mind about that. There you would be, and there I should
+catch you. Now the first thing to think of is, What do Heffalumps like?
+I should think acorns, shouldn't you? We'll get a lot of----I say, wake
+up, Pooh!"
+
+Pooh, who had gone into a happy dream, woke up with a start, and said
+that Honey was a much more trappy thing than Haycorns. Piglet didn't
+think so; and they were just going to argue about it, when Piglet
+remembered that, if they put acorns in the Trap, _he_ would have to find
+the acorns, but if they put honey, then Pooh would have to give up some
+of his own honey, so he said, "All right, honey then," just as Pooh
+remembered it too, and was going to say, "All right, haycorns."
+
+"Honey," said Piglet to himself in a thoughtful way, as if it were now
+settled. "_I'll_ dig the pit, while _you_ go and get the honey."
+
+"Very well," said Pooh, and he stumped off.
+
+As soon as he got home, he went to the larder; and he stood on a chair,
+and took down a very large jar of honey from the top shelf. It had HUNNY
+written on it, but, just to make sure, he took off the paper cover and
+looked at it, and it _looked_ just like honey. "But you never can tell,"
+said Pooh. "I remember my uncle saying once that he had seen cheese just
+this colour." So he put his tongue in, and took a large lick. "Yes," he
+said, "it is. No doubt about that. And honey, I should say, right down
+to the bottom of the jar. Unless, of course," he said, "somebody put
+cheese in at the bottom just for a joke. Perhaps I had better go a
+_little_ further ... just in case ... in case Heffalumps _don't_
+like cheese ... same as me.... Ah!" And he gave a deep sigh. "I
+_was_ right. It _is_ honey, right the way down."
+
+Having made certain of this, he took the jar back to Piglet, and Piglet
+looked up from the bottom of his Very Deep Pit, and said, "Got it?" and
+Pooh said, "Yes, but it isn't quite a full jar," and he threw it down to
+Piglet, and Piglet said, "No, it isn't! Is that all you've got left?"
+and Pooh said "Yes." Because it was. So Piglet put the jar at the bottom
+of the Pit, and climbed out, and they went off home together.
+
+"Well, good night, Pooh," said Piglet, when they had got to Pooh's
+house. "And we meet at six o'clock to-morrow morning by the Pine Trees,
+and see how many Heffalumps we've got in our Trap."
+
+"Six o'clock, Piglet. And have you got any string?"
+
+"No. Why do you want string?"
+
+"To lead them home with."
+
+"Oh! ... I _think_ Heffalumps come if you whistle."
+
+"Some do and some don't. You never can tell with Heffalumps. Well, good
+night!"
+
+"Good night!"
+
+And off Piglet trotted to his house TRESPASSERS W, while Pooh made his
+preparations for bed.
+
+Some hours later, just as the night was beginning to steal away, Pooh
+woke up suddenly with a sinking feeling. He had had that sinking feeling
+before, and he knew what it meant. _He was hungry._ So he went to the
+larder, and he stood on a chair and reached up to the top shelf, and
+found--nothing.
+
+"That's funny," he thought. "I know I had a jar of honey there. A full
+jar, full of honey right up to the top, and it had HUNNY written on it,
+so that I should know it was honey. That's very funny." And then he
+began to wander up and down, wondering where it was and murmuring a
+murmur to himself. Like this:
+
+    It's very, very funny,
+    'Cos I _know_ I had some honey;
+    'Cos it had a label on,
+            Saying HUNNY.
+    A goloptious full-up pot too,
+    And I don't know where it's got to,
+    No, I don't know where it's gone--
+            Well, it's funny.
+
+He had murmured this to himself three times in a singing sort of way,
+when suddenly he remembered. He had put it into the Cunning Trap to
+catch the Heffalump.
+
+"Bother!" said Pooh. "It all comes of trying to be kind to Heffalumps."
+And he got back into bed.
+
+But he couldn't sleep. The more he tried to sleep, the more he couldn't.
+He tried Counting Sheep, which is sometimes a good way of getting to
+sleep, and, as that was no good, he tried counting Heffalumps. And that
+was worse. Because every Heffalump that he counted was making straight
+for a pot of Pooh's honey, _and eating it all_. For some minutes he lay
+there miserably, but when the five hundred and eighty-seventh Heffalump
+was licking its jaws, and saying to itself, "Very good honey this, I
+don't know when I've tasted better," Pooh could bear it no longer. He
+jumped out of bed, he ran out of the house, and he ran straight to the
+Six Pine Trees.
+
+The Sun was still in bed, but there was a lightness in the sky over the
+Hundred Acre Wood which seemed to show that it was waking up and would
+soon be kicking off the clothes. In the half-light the Pine Trees looked
+cold and lonely, and the Very Deep Pit seemed deeper than it was, and
+Pooh's jar of honey at the bottom was something mysterious, a shape and
+no more. But as he got nearer to it his nose told him that it was indeed
+honey, and his tongue came out and began to polish up his mouth, ready
+for it.
+
+"Bother!" said Pooh, as he got his nose inside the jar. "A Heffalump has
+been eating it!" And then he thought a little and said, "Oh, no, _I_
+did. I forgot."
+
+Indeed, he had eaten most of it. But there was a little left at the very
+bottom of the jar, and he pushed his head right in, and began to
+lick....
+
+By and by Piglet woke up. As soon as he woke he said to himself, "Oh!"
+Then he said bravely, "Yes," and then, still more bravely, "Quite so."
+But he didn't feel very brave, for the word which was really jiggeting
+about in his brain was "Heffalumps."
+
+What was a Heffalump like?
+
+Was it Fierce?
+
+_Did_ it come when you whistled? And _how_ did it come?
+
+Was it Fond of Pigs at all?
+
+If it was Fond of Pigs, did it make any difference _what sort of Pig_?
+
+Supposing it was Fierce with Pigs, would it make any difference _if the
+Pig had a grandfather called TRESPASSERS WILLIAM_?
+
+He didn't know the answer to any of these questions ... and he was
+going to see his first Heffalump in about an hour from now!
+
+Of course Pooh would be with him, and it was much more Friendly with
+two. But suppose Heffalumps were Very Fierce with Pigs _and_ Bears?
+Wouldn't it be better to pretend that he had a headache, and couldn't go
+up to the Six Pine Trees this morning? But then suppose that it was a
+very fine day, and there was no Heffalump in the trap, here he would be,
+in bed all the morning, simply wasting his time for nothing. What should
+he do?
+
+And then he had a Clever Idea. He would go up very quietly to the Six
+Pine Trees now, peep very cautiously into the Trap, and see if there
+_was_ a Heffalump there. And if there was, he would go back to bed, and
+if there wasn't, he wouldn't.
+
+So off he went. At first he thought that there wouldn't be a Heffalump
+in the Trap, and then he thought that there would, and as he got nearer
+he was _sure_ that there would, because he could hear it heffalumping
+about it like anything.
+
+"Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!" said Piglet to himself. And he wanted to
+run away. But somehow, having got so near, he felt that he must just see
+what a Heffalump was like. So he crept to the side of the Trap and
+looked in....
+
+And all the time Winnie-the-Pooh had been trying to get the honey-jar
+off his head. The more he shook it, the more tightly it stuck.
+
+"_Bother!_" he said, inside the jar, and "_Oh, help!_" and, mostly,
+"_Ow!_" And he tried bumping it against things, but as he couldn't see
+what he was bumping it against, it didn't help him; and he tried to
+climb out of the Trap, but as he could see nothing but jar, and not much
+of that, he couldn't find his way. So at last he lifted up his head, jar
+and all, and made a loud, roaring noise of Sadness and Despair ... and
+it was at that moment that Piglet looked down.
+
+"Help, help!" cried Piglet, "a Heffalump, a Horrible Heffalump!" and he
+scampered off as hard as he could, still crying out, "Help, help, a
+Herrible Hoffalump! Hoff, Hoff, a Hellible Horralump! Holl, Holl, a
+Hoffable Hellerump!" And he didn't stop crying and scampering until he
+got to Christopher Robin's house.
+
+"Whatever's the matter, Piglet?" said Christopher Robin, who was just
+getting up.
+
+"Heff," said Piglet, breathing so hard that he could hardly speak, "a
+Heff--a Heff--a Heffalump."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Up there," said Piglet, waving his paw.
+
+"What did it look like?"
+
+"Like--like----It had the biggest head you ever saw, Christopher Robin.
+A great enormous thing, like--like nothing. A huge big--well, like a--I
+don't know--like an enormous big nothing. Like a jar."
+
+"Well," said Christopher Robin, putting on his shoes, "I shall go and
+look at it. Come on."
+
+Piglet wasn't afraid if he had Christopher Robin with him, so off they
+went....
+
+"I can hear it, can't you?" said Piglet anxiously, as they got near.
+
+"I can hear _something_," said Christopher Robin.
+
+It was Pooh bumping his head against a tree-root he had found.
+
+"There!" said Piglet. "Isn't it _awful_?" And he held on tight to
+Christopher Robin's hand.
+
+Suddenly Christopher Robin began to laugh ... and he laughed ... and he
+laughed ... and he laughed. And while he was still laughing--_Crash_
+went the Heffalump's head against the tree-root, Smash went the jar,
+and out came Pooh's head again....
+
+Then Piglet saw what a Foolish Piglet he had been, and he was so ashamed
+of himself that he ran straight off home and went to bed with a
+headache. But Christopher Robin and Pooh went home to breakfast
+together.
+
+"Oh, Bear!" said Christopher Robin. "How I do love you!"
+
+"So do I," said Pooh.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+                     IN WHICH EEYORE HAS A BIRTHDAY
+                          AND GETS TWO PRESENTS
+
+
+Eeyore, the old grey Donkey, stood by the side of the stream, and
+looked at himself in the water.
+
+"Pathetic," he said. "That's what it is. Pathetic."
+
+He turned and walked slowly down the stream for twenty yards, splashed
+across it, and walked slowly back on the other side. Then he looked at
+himself in the water again.
+
+"As I thought," he said. "No better from _this_ side. But nobody minds.
+Nobody cares. Pathetic, that's what it is."
+
+There was a crackling noise in the bracken behind him, and out came
+Pooh.
+
+"Good morning, Eeyore," said Pooh.
+
+"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it _is_ a good
+morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's
+all there is to it."
+
+"Can't all _what_?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose.
+
+"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush."
+
+"Oh!" said Pooh. He thought for a long time, and then asked, "What
+mulberry bush is that?"
+
+"Bon-hommy," went on Eeyore gloomily. "French word meaning bonhommy," he
+explained. "I'm not complaining, but There It Is."
+
+Pooh sat down on a large stone, and tried to think this out. It sounded
+to him like a riddle, and he was never much good at riddles, being a
+Bear of Very Little Brain. So he sang _Cottleston Pie_ instead:
+
+    Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
+    A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
+    Ask me a riddle and I reply:
+    "_Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie._"
+
+That was the first verse. When he had finished it, Eeyore didn't
+actually say that he didn't like it, so Pooh very kindly sang the second
+verse to him:
+
+    Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
+    A fish can't whistle and neither can I.
+    Ask me a riddle and I reply:
+    "_Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie_."
+
+Eeyore still said nothing at all, so Pooh hummed the third verse quietly
+to himself:
+
+    Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
+    Why does a chicken, I don't know why.
+    Ask me a riddle and I reply:
+    "_Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie_."
+
+"That's right," said Eeyore. "Sing. Umty-tiddly, umty-too. Here we go
+gathering Nuts and May. Enjoy yourself."
+
+"I am," said Pooh.
+
+"Some can," said Eeyore.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?"
+
+"_Is_ anything the matter?"
+
+"You seem so sad, Eeyore."
+
+"Sad? Why should I be sad? It's my birthday. The happiest day of the
+year."
+
+"Your birthday?" said Pooh in great surprise.
+
+"Of course it is. Can't you see? Look at all the presents I have had."
+He waved a foot from side to side. "Look at the birthday cake. Candles
+and pink sugar."
+
+Pooh looked--first to the right and then to the left.
+
+"Presents?" said Pooh. "Birthday cake?" said Pooh. "_Where?_"
+
+"Can't you see them?"
+
+"No," said Pooh.
+
+"Neither can I," said Eeyore. "Joke," he explained. "Ha ha!"
+
+Pooh scratched his head, being a little puzzled by all this.
+
+"But is it really your birthday?" he asked.
+
+"It is."
+
+"Oh! Well, Many happy returns of the day, Eeyore."
+
+"And many happy returns to you, Pooh Bear."
+
+"But it isn't _my_ birthday."
+
+"No, it's mine."
+
+"But you said 'Many happy returns'----"
+
+"Well, why not? You don't always want to be miserable on my birthday, do
+you?"
+
+"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
+
+"It's bad enough," said Eeyore, almost breaking down, "being miserable
+myself, what with no presents and no cake and no candles, and no proper
+notice taken of me at all, but if everybody else is going to be
+miserable too----"
+
+This was too much for Pooh. "Stay there!" he called to Eeyore, as he
+turned and hurried back home as quick as he could; for he felt that he
+must get poor Eeyore a present of _some_ sort at once, and he could
+always think of a proper one afterwards.
+
+Outside his house he found Piglet, jumping up and down trying to reach
+the knocker.
+
+"Hallo, Piglet," he said.
+
+"Hallo, Pooh," said Piglet.
+
+"What are _you_ trying to do?"
+
+"I was trying to reach the knocker," said Piglet. "I just came
+round----"
+
+"Let me do it for you," said Pooh kindly. So he reached up and knocked
+at the door. "I have just seen Eeyore," he began, "and poor Eeyore is in
+a Very Sad Condition, because it's his birthday, and nobody has taken
+any notice of it, and he's very Gloomy--you know what Eeyore is--and
+there he was, and----What a long time whoever lives here is answering
+this door." And he knocked again.
+
+"But Pooh," said Piglet, "it's your own house!"
+
+"Oh!" said Pooh. "So it is," he said. "Well, let's go in."
+
+So in they went. The first thing Pooh did was to go to the cupboard to
+see if he had quite a small jar of honey left; and he had, so he took it
+down.
+
+"I'm giving this to Eeyore," he explained, "as a present. What are _you_
+going to give?"
+
+"Couldn't I give it too?" said Piglet. "From both of us?"
+
+"No," said Pooh. "That would _not_ be a good plan."
+
+"All right, then, I'll give him a balloon. I've got one left from my
+party. I'll go and get it now, shall I?"
+
+"That, Piglet, is a _very_ good idea. It is just what Eeyore wants to
+cheer him up. Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon."
+
+So off Piglet trotted; and in the other direction went Pooh, with his
+jar of honey.
+
+It was a warm day, and he had a long way to go. He hadn't gone more than
+half-way when a sort of funny feeling began to creep all over him. It
+began at the tip of his nose and trickled all through him and out at the
+soles of his feet. It was just as if somebody inside him were saying,
+"Now then, Pooh, time for a little something."
+
+"Dear, dear," said Pooh, "I didn't know it was as late as that." So he
+sat down and took the top off his jar of honey. "Lucky I brought this
+with me," he thought. "Many a bear going out on a warm day like this
+would never have thought of bringing a little something with him." And
+he began to eat.
+
+"Now let me see," he thought, as he took his last lick of the inside of
+the jar, "where was I going? Ah, yes, Eeyore." He got up slowly.
+
+And then, suddenly, he remembered. He had eaten Eeyore's birthday
+present!
+
+"_Bother!_" said Pooh. "What _shall_ I do? I _must_ give him
+_something_."
+
+For a little while he couldn't think of anything. Then he thought:
+"Well, it's a very nice pot, even if there's no honey in it, and if I
+washed it clean, and got somebody to write '_A Happy Birthday_' on it,
+Eeyore could keep things in it, which might be Useful." So, as he was
+just passing the Hundred Acre Wood, he went inside to call on Owl, who
+lived there.
+
+"Good morning, Owl," he said.
+
+"Good morning, Pooh," said Owl.
+
+"Many happy returns of Eeyore's birthday," said Pooh.
+
+"Oh, is that what it is?"
+
+"What are you giving him, Owl?"
+
+"What are _you_ giving him, Pooh?"
+
+"I'm giving him a Useful Pot to Keep Things In, and I wanted to ask
+you----"
+
+"Is this it?" said Owl, taking it out of Pooh's paw.
+
+"Yes, and I wanted to ask you----"
+
+"Somebody has been keeping honey in it," said Owl.
+
+"You can keep _anything_ in it," said Pooh earnestly. "It's Very Useful
+like that. And I wanted to ask you----"
+
+"You ought to write '_A Happy Birthday_' on it."
+
+"_That_ was what I wanted to ask you," said Pooh. "Because my spelling
+is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the
+wrong places. Would _you_ write 'A Happy Birthday' on it for me?"
+
+"It's a nice pot," said Owl, looking at it all round. "Couldn't I give
+it too? From both of us?"
+
+"No," said Pooh. "That would _not_ be a good plan. Now I'll just wash it
+first, and then you can write on it."
+
+Well, he washed the pot out, and dried it, while Owl licked the end of
+his pencil, and wondered how to spell "birthday."
+
+"Can you read, Pooh?" he asked a little anxiously. "There's a notice
+about knocking and ringing outside my door, which Christopher Robin
+wrote. Could you read it?"
+
+"Christopher Robin told me what it said, and _then_ I could."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you what _this_ says, and then you'll be able to."
+
+So Owl wrote ... and this is what he wrote:
+
+                 HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY.
+
+Pooh looked on admiringly.
+
+"I'm just saying 'A Happy Birthday'," said Owl carelessly.
+
+"It's a nice long one," said Pooh, very much impressed by it.
+
+"Well, _actually_, of course, I'm saying 'A Very Happy Birthday with
+love from Pooh.' Naturally it takes a good deal of pencil to say a long
+thing like that."
+
+"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
+
+While all this was happening, Piglet had gone back to his own house to
+get Eeyore's balloon. He held it very tightly against himself, so that
+it shouldn't blow away, and he ran as fast as he could so as to get to
+Eeyore before Pooh did; for he thought that he would like to be the
+first one to give a present, just as if he had thought of it without
+being told by anybody. And running along, and thinking how pleased
+Eeyore would be, he didn't look where he was going ... and suddenly he
+put his foot in a rabbit hole, and fell down flat on his face.
+
+BANG!!!???***!!!
+
+Piglet lay there, wondering what had happened. At first he thought that
+the whole world had blown up; and then he thought that perhaps only the
+Forest part of it had; and then he thought that perhaps only _he_ had,
+and he was now alone in the moon or somewhere, and would never see
+Christopher Robin or Pooh or Eeyore again. And then he thought, "Well,
+even if I'm in the moon, I needn't be face downwards all the time," so
+he got cautiously up and looked about him.
+
+He was still in the Forest!
+
+"Well, that's funny," he thought. "I wonder what that bang was. I
+couldn't have made such a noise just falling down. And where's my
+balloon? And what's that small piece of damp rag doing?"
+
+It was the balloon!
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Piglet "Oh, dear, oh, dearie, dearie, dear! Well, it's
+too late now. I can't go back, and I haven't another balloon, and
+perhaps Eeyore doesn't _like_ balloons so _very_ much."
+
+So he trotted on, rather sadly now, and down he came to the side of the
+stream where Eeyore was, and called out to him.
+
+"Good morning, Eeyore," shouted Piglet.
+
+"Good morning, Little Piglet," said Eeyore. "If it _is_ a good morning,"
+he said. "Which I doubt," said he. "Not that it matters," he said.
+
+"Many happy returns of the day," said Piglet, having now got closer.
+
+Eeyore stopped looking at himself in the stream, and turned to stare at
+Piglet.
+
+"Just say that again," he said.
+
+"Many hap----"
+
+"Wait a moment."
+
+Balancing on three legs, he began to bring his fourth leg very
+cautiously up to his ear. "I did this yesterday," he explained, as he
+fell down for the third time. "It's quite easy. It's so as I can hear
+better.... There, that's done it! Now then, what were you saying?" He
+pushed his ear forward with his hoof.
+
+"Many happy returns of the day," said Piglet again.
+
+"Meaning me?"
+
+"Of course, Eeyore."
+
+"My birthday?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Me having a real birthday?"
+
+"Yes, Eeyore, and I've brought you a present."
+
+Eeyore took down his right hoof from his right ear, turned round, and
+with great difficulty put up his left hoof.
+
+"I must have that in the other ear," he said. "Now then."
+
+"A present," said Piglet very loudly.
+
+"Meaning me again?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"My birthday still?"
+
+"Of course, Eeyore."
+
+"Me going on having a real birthday?"
+
+"Yes, Eeyore, and I brought you a balloon."
+
+"_Balloon?_" said Eeyore. "You did say balloon? One of those big
+coloured things you blow up? Gaiety, song-and-dance, here we are and
+there we are?"
+
+"Yes, but I'm afraid--I'm very sorry, Eeyore--but when I was running
+along to bring it you, I fell down."
+
+"Dear, dear, how unlucky! You ran too fast, I expect. You didn't hurt
+yourself, Little Piglet?"
+
+"No, but I--I--oh, Eeyore, I burst the balloon!"
+
+There was a very long silence.
+
+"My balloon?" said Eeyore at last.
+
+Piglet nodded.
+
+"My birthday balloon?"
+
+"Yes, Eeyore," said Piglet sniffing a little. "Here it is. With--with
+many happy returns of the day." And he gave Eeyore the small piece of
+damp rag.
+
+"Is this it?" said Eeyore, a little surprised.
+
+Piglet nodded.
+
+"My present?"
+
+Piglet nodded again.
+
+"The balloon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Thank you, Piglet," said Eeyore. "You don't mind my asking," he went
+on, "but what colour was this balloon when it--when it _was_ a balloon?"
+
+"Red."
+
+"I just wondered.... Red," he murmured to himself. "My favourite
+colour.... How big was it?"
+
+"About as big as me."
+
+"I just wondered.... About as big as Piglet," he said to himself
+sadly. "My favourite size. Well, well."
+
+Piglet felt very miserable, and didn't know what to say. He was still
+opening his mouth to begin something, and then deciding that it wasn't
+any good saying _that_, when he heard a shout from the other side of the
+river, and there was Pooh.
+
+"Many happy returns of the day," called out Pooh, forgetting that he had
+said it already.
+
+"Thank you, Pooh, I'm having them," said Eeyore gloomily.
+
+"I've brought you a little present," said Pooh excitedly.
+
+"I've had it," said Eeyore.
+
+Pooh had now splashed across the stream to Eeyore, and Piglet was
+sitting a little way off, his head in his paws, snuffling to himself.
+
+"It's a Useful Pot," said Pooh. "Here it is. And it's got 'A Very Happy
+Birthday with love from Pooh' written on it. That's what all that
+writing is. And it's for putting things in. There!"
+
+When Eeyore saw the pot, he became quite excited.
+
+"Why!" he said. "I believe my Balloon will just go into that Pot!"
+
+"Oh, no, Eeyore," said Pooh. "Balloons are much too big to go into Pots.
+What you do with a balloon is, you hold the ballon----"
+
+"Not mine," said Eeyore proudly. "Look, Piglet!" And as Piglet looked
+sorrowfully round, Eeyore picked the balloon up with his teeth, and
+placed it carefully in the pot; picked it out and put it on the ground;
+and then picked it up again and put it carefully back.
+
+"So it does!" said Pooh. "It goes in!"
+
+"So it does!" said Piglet. "And it comes out!"
+
+"Doesn't it?" said Eeyore. "It goes in and out like anything."
+
+"I'm very glad," said Pooh happily, "that I thought of giving you a
+Useful Pot to put things in."
+
+"I'm very glad," said Piglet happily, "that I thought of giving you
+Something to put in a Useful Pot."
+
+But Eeyore wasn't listening. He was taking the balloon out, and putting
+it back again, as happy as could be....
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+"And didn't _I_ give him anything?" asked Christopher Robin sadly.
+
+"Of course you did," I said. "You gave him--don't you remember--a
+little--a little----"
+
+"I gave him a box of paints to paint things with."
+
+"That was it."
+
+"Why didn't I give it to him in the morning?"
+
+"You were so busy getting his party ready for him. He had a cake with
+icing on the top, and three candles, and his name in pink sugar,
+and----"
+
+"Yes, _I_ remember," said Christopher Robin.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+                    IN WHICH KANGA AND BABY ROO COME
+                  TO THE FOREST, AND PIGLET HAS A BATH
+
+
+Nobody seemed to know where they came from, but there they were in the
+Forest: Kanga and Baby Roo. When Pooh asked Christopher Robin, "How did
+they come here?" Christopher Robin said, "In the Usual Way, if you know
+what I mean, Pooh," and Pooh, who didn't, said "Oh!" Then he nodded his
+head twice and said, "In the Usual Way. Ah!" Then he went to call upon
+his friend Piglet to see what _he_ thought about it. And at Piglet's
+house he found Rabbit. So they all talked about it together.
+
+"What I don't like about it is this," said Rabbit. "Here are we--you,
+Pooh, and you, Piglet, and Me--and suddenly----"
+
+"And Eeyore," said Pooh.
+
+"And Eeyore--and then suddenly----"
+
+"And Owl," said Pooh.
+
+"And Owl--and then all of a sudden----"
+
+"Oh, and Eeyore," said Pooh. "I was forgetting _him_."
+
+"Here--we--are," said Rabbit very slowly and carefully, "all--of--us,
+and then, suddenly, we wake up one morning and, what do we find? We find
+a Strange Animal among us. An animal of whom we have never even heard
+before! An animal who carries her family about with her in her pocket!
+Suppose _I_ carried _my_ family about with me in _my_ pocket, how many
+pockets should I want?"
+
+"Sixteen," said Piglet.
+
+"Seventeen, isn't it?" said Rabbit. "And one more for a
+handkerchief--that's eighteen. Eighteen pockets in one suit! I haven't
+time."
+
+There was a long and thoughtful silence ... and then Pooh, who had
+been frowning very hard for some minutes, said: "_I_ make it fifteen."
+
+"What?" said Rabbit.
+
+"Fifteen."
+
+"Fifteen what?"
+
+"Your family."
+
+"What about them?"
+
+Pooh rubbed his nose and said that he thought Rabbit had been talking
+about his family.
+
+"Did I?" said Rabbit carelessly.
+
+"Yes, you said----"
+
+"Never mind, Pooh," said Piglet impatiently.
+
+"The question is, What are we to do about Kanga?"
+
+"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
+
+"The best way," said Rabbit, "would be this. The best way would be to
+steal Baby Roo and hide him, and then when Kanga says, 'Where's Baby
+Roo?' we say, '_Aha!_'"
+
+"_Aha!_" said Pooh, practising. "_Aha! Aha!_ ... Of course," he went
+on, "we could say 'Aha!' even if we hadn't stolen Baby Roo."
+
+"Pooh," said Rabbit kindly, "you haven't any brain."
+
+"I know," said Pooh humbly.
+
+"We say '_Aha!_' so that Kanga knows that _we_ know where Baby Roo is.
+'_Aha!_' means 'We'll tell you where Baby Roo is, if you promise to go
+away from the Forest and never come back.' Now don't talk while I
+think."
+
+Pooh went into a corner and tried saying 'Aha!' in that sort of voice.
+Sometimes it seemed to him that it did mean what Rabbit said, and
+sometimes it seemed to him that it didn't. "I suppose it's just
+practice," he thought. "I wonder if Kanga will have to practise too so
+as to understand it."
+
+"There's just one thing," said Piglet, fidgeting a bit. "I was talking
+to Christopher Robin, and he said that a Kanga was Generally Regarded as
+One of the Fiercer Animals. I am not frightened of Fierce Animals in the
+ordinary way, but it is well known that, if One of the Fiercer Animals
+is Deprived of Its Young, it becomes as fierce as Two of the Fiercer
+Animals. In which case '_Aha!_' is perhaps a _foolish_ thing to say."
+
+"Piglet," said Rabbit, taking out a pencil, and licking the end of it,
+"you haven't any pluck."
+
+"It is hard to be brave," said Piglet, sniffing slightly, "when you're
+only a Very Small Animal."
+
+Rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said:
+
+"It is because you are a very small animal that you will be Useful in
+the adventure before us."
+
+Piglet was so excited at the idea of being Useful, that he forgot to be
+frightened any more, and when Rabbit went on to say that Kangas were
+only Fierce during the winter months, being at other times of an
+Affectionate Disposition, he could hardly sit still, he was so eager to
+begin being useful at once.
+
+"What about me?" said Pooh sadly. "I suppose _I_ shan't be useful?"
+
+"Never mind, Pooh," said Piglet comfortingly. "Another time perhaps."
+
+"Without Pooh," said Rabbit solemnly as he sharpened his pencil, "the
+adventure would be impossible."
+
+"Oh!" said Piglet, and tried not to look disappointed. But Pooh went
+into a corner of the room and said proudly to himself, "Impossible
+without Me! _That_ sort of Bear."
+
+"Now listen all of you," said Rabbit when he had finished writing, and
+Pooh and Piglet sat listening very eagerly with their mouths open. This
+was what Rabbit read out:
+
+                        PLAN TO CAPTURE BABY ROO
+
+   1. _General Remarks._ Kanga runs faster than any of Us, even Me.
+
+   2. _More General Remarks._ Kanga never takes her eye off Baby Roo,
+      except when he's safely buttoned up in her pocket.
+
+   3. _Therefore._ If we are to capture Baby Roo, we must get a Long
+      Start, because Kanga runs faster than any of Us, even Me.
+     (_See_ 1.)
+
+   4. _A Thought._ If Roo had jumped out of Kanga's pocket and Piglet
+      had jumped in, Kanga wouldn't know the difference, because Piglet
+      is a Very Small Animal.
+
+   5. Like Roo.
+
+   6. But Kanga would have to be looking the other way first, so as not
+      to see Piglet jumping in.
+
+   7. See 2.
+
+   8. _Another Thought._ But if Pooh was talking to her very excitedly,
+      she _might_ look the other way for a moment.
+
+   9. And then I could run away with Roo.
+
+   10. Quickly.
+
+   11. _And Kanga wouldn't discover the difference until Afterwards._
+
+Well, Rabbit read this out proudly, and for a little while after he had
+read it nobody said anything. And then Piglet, who had been opening and
+shutting his mouth without making any noise, managed to say very
+huskily:
+
+"And--Afterwards?"
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"When Kanga _does_ Discover the Difference?"
+
+"Then we all say '_Aha!_'"
+
+"All three of us?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Why, what's the trouble, Piglet?"
+
+"Nothing," said Piglet, "as long as _we all three_ say it. As long as we
+all three say it," said Piglet, "I don't mind," he said, "but I
+shouldn't care to say '_Aha!_' by myself. It wouldn't sound _nearly_ so
+well. By the way," he said, "you _are_ quite sure about what you said
+about the winter months?"
+
+"The winter months?"
+
+"Yes, only being Fierce in the Winter Months."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes, that's all right. Well, Pooh? You see what you have to
+do?"
+
+"No," said Pooh Bear. "Not yet," he said. "What _do_ I do?"
+
+"Well, you just have to talk very hard to Kanga so as she doesn't notice
+anything."
+
+"Oh! What about?"
+
+"Anything you like."
+
+"You mean like telling her a little bit of poetry or something?"
+
+"That's it," said Rabbit. "Splendid. Now come along."
+
+So they all went out to look for Kanga.
+
+Kanga and Roo were spending a quiet afternoon in a sandy part of the
+Forest. Baby Roo was practising very small jumps in the sand, and
+falling down mouse-holes and climbing out of them, and Kanga was
+fidgeting about and saying "Just one more jump, dear, and then we must
+go home." And at that moment who should come stumping up the hill but
+Pooh.
+
+"Good afternoon, Kanga."
+
+"Good afternoon, Pooh."
+
+"Look at me jumping," squeaked Roo, and fell into another mouse-hole.
+
+"Hallo, Roo, my little fellow!"
+
+"We were just going home," said Kanga. "Good afternoon, Rabbit. Good
+afternoon, Piglet."
+
+Rabbit and Piglet, who had now come up from the other side of the hill,
+said "Good afternoon," and "Hallo, Roo," and Roo asked them to look at
+him jumping, so they stayed and looked.
+
+And Kanga looked too....
+
+"Oh, Kanga," said Pooh, after Rabbit had winked at him twice, "I don't
+know if you are interested in Poetry at all?"
+
+"Hardly at all," said Kanga.
+
+"Oh!" said Pooh.
+
+"Roo, dear, just one more jump and then we must go home."
+
+There was a short silence while Roo fell down another mouse-hole.
+
+"Go on," said Rabbit in a loud whisper behind his paw.
+
+"Talking of Poetry," said Pooh, "I made up a little piece as I was
+coming along. It went like this. Er--now let me see----"
+
+"Fancy!" said Kanga. "Now Roo, dear----"
+
+"You'll like this piece of poetry," said Rabbit.
+
+"You'll love it," said Piglet.
+
+"You must listen very carefully," said Rabbit.
+
+"So as not to miss any of it," said Piglet.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Kanga, but she still looked at Baby Roo.
+
+"_How_ did it go, Pooh?" said Rabbit.
+
+Pooh gave a little cough and began.
+
+              LINES WRITTEN BY A BEAR OF VERY LITTLE BRAIN
+
+    On Monday, when the sun is hot
+    I wonder to myself a lot:
+    "Now is it true, or is it not,
+    "That what is which and which is what?"
+
+    On Tuesday, when it hails and snows,
+    The feeling on me grows and grows
+    That hardly anybody knows
+    If those are these or these are those.
+
+    On Wednesday, when the sky is blue,
+    And I have nothing else to do,
+    I sometimes wonder if it's true
+    That who is what and what is who.
+
+    On Thursday, when it starts to freeze
+    And hoar-frost twinkles on the trees,
+    How very readily one sees
+    That these are whose--but whose are these?
+
+    On Friday----
+
+"Yes, it is, isn't it?" said Kanga, not waiting to hear what happened on
+Friday. "Just one more jump, Roo, dear, and then we really _must_ be
+going."
+
+Rabbit gave Pooh a hurrying-up sort of nudge.
+
+"Talking of Poetry," said Pooh quickly, "have you ever noticed that tree
+right over there?"
+
+"Where?" said Kanga. "Now, Roo----"
+
+"Right over there," said Pooh, pointing behind Kanga's back.
+
+"No," said Kanga. "Now jump in, Roo, dear, and we'll go home."
+
+"You ought to look at that tree right over there," said Rabbit. "Shall I
+lift you in, Roo?" And he picked up Roo in his paws.
+
+"I can see a bird in it from here," said Pooh. "Or is it a fish?"
+
+"You ought to see that bird from here," said Rabbit. "Unless it's a
+fish."
+
+"It isn't a fish, it's a bird," said Piglet.
+
+"So it is," said Rabbit.
+
+"Is it a starling or a blackbird?" said Pooh.
+
+"That's the whole question," said Rabbit. "Is it a blackbird or a
+starling?"
+
+And then at last Kanga did turn her head to look. And the moment that
+her head was turned, Rabbit said in a loud voice "In you go, Roo!" and
+in jumped Piglet into Kanga's pocket, and off scampered Rabbit, with Roo
+in his paws, as fast as he could.
+
+"Why, where's Rabbit?" said Kanga, turning round again. "Are you all
+right, Roo, dear?"
+
+Piglet made a squeaky Roo-noise from the bottom of Kanga's pocket.
+
+"Rabbit had to go away," said Pooh. "I think he thought of something he
+had to go and see about suddenly."
+
+"And Piglet?"
+
+"I think Piglet thought of something at the same time. Suddenly."
+
+"Well, we must be getting home," said Kanga. "Good-bye, Pooh." And in
+three large jumps she was gone.
+
+Pooh looked after her as she went.
+
+"I wish I could jump like that," he thought. "Some can and some can't.
+That's how it is."
+
+But there were moments when Piglet wished that Kanga couldn't. Often,
+when he had had a long walk home through the Forest, he had wished that
+he were a bird; but now he thought jerkily to himself at the bottom of
+Kanga's pocket,
+
+        this                              take
+    "If      is          shall      really    to
+                flying I      never              it."
+
+And as he went up in the air he said, "_Ooooooo!_" and as he came down
+he said, "_Ow!_" And he was saying, "_Ooooooo-ow, Ooooooo-ow,
+Ooooooo-ow_" all the way to Kanga's house.
+
+Of course as soon as Kanga unbuttoned her pocket, she saw what had
+happened. Just for a moment, she thought she was frightened, and then
+she knew she wasn't; for she felt quite sure that Christopher Robin
+would never let any harm happen to Roo. So she said to herself, "If they
+are having a joke with me, I will have a joke with them."
+
+"Now then, Roo, dear," she said, as she took Piglet out of her pocket.
+"Bed-time."
+
+"_Aha!_" said Piglet, as well as he could after his Terrifying Journey.
+But it wasn't a very good "_Aha!_" and Kanga didn't seem to understand
+what it meant.
+
+"Bath first," said Kanga in a cheerful voice.
+
+"_Aha!_" said Piglet again, looking round anxiously for the others. But
+the others weren't there. Rabbit was playing with Baby Roo in his own
+house, and feeling more fond of him every minute, and Pooh, who had
+decided to be a Kanga, was still at the sandy place on the top of the
+Forest, practising jumps.
+
+"I am not at all sure," said Kanga in a thoughtful voice, "that it
+wouldn't be a good idea to have a _cold_ bath this evening. Would you
+like that, Roo, dear?"
+
+Piglet, who had never been really fond of baths, shuddered a long
+indignant shudder, and said in as brave a voice as he could:
+
+"Kanga, I see that the time has come to spleak painly."
+
+"Funny little Roo," said Kanga, as she got the bath-water ready.
+
+"I am _not_ Roo," said Piglet loudly. "I am Piglet!"
+
+"Yes, dear, yes," said Kanga soothingly. "And imitating Piglet's voice
+too! So clever of him," she went on, as she took a large bar of yellow
+soap out of the cupboard. "What _will_ he be doing next?"
+
+"Can't you _see_?" shouted Piglet. "Haven't you got _eyes_? _Look_ at
+me!"
+
+"I _am_ looking, Roo, dear," said Kanga rather severely. "And you know
+what I told you yesterday about making faces. If you go on making faces
+like Piglet's, you will grow up to _look_ like Piglet--and _then_ think
+how sorry you will be. Now then, into the bath, and don't let me have to
+speak to you about it again."
+
+Before he knew where he was, Piglet was in the bath, and Kanga was
+scrubbing him firmly with a large lathery flannel.
+
+"Ow!" cried Piglet. "Let me out! I'm Piglet!"
+
+"Don't open the mouth, dear, or the soap goes in," said Kanga. "There!
+What did I tell you?"
+
+"You--you--you did it on purpose," spluttered Piglet, as soon as he
+could speak again ... and then accidentally had another mouthful of
+lathery flannel.
+
+"That's right, dear, don't say anything," said Kanga, and in another
+minute Piglet was out of the bath, and being rubbed dry with a towel.
+
+"Now," said Kanga, "there's your medicine, and then bed."
+
+"W-w-what medicine?" said Piglet.
+
+"To make you grow big and strong, dear. You don't want to grow up small
+and weak like Piglet, do you? Well, then!"
+
+At that moment there was a knock at the door.
+
+"Come in," said Kanga, and in came Christopher Robin.
+
+"Christopher Robin, Christopher Robin!" cried Piglet. "Tell Kanga who I
+am! She keeps saying I'm Roo. I'm _not_ Roo, am I?"
+
+Christopher Robin looked at him very carefully, and shook his head.
+
+"You can't be Roo," he said, "because I've just seen Roo playing in
+Rabbit's house."
+
+"Well!" said Kanga. "Fancy that! Fancy my making a mistake like that."
+
+"There you are!" said Piglet. "I told you so. I'm Piglet."
+
+Christopher Robin shook his head again.
+
+"Oh, you're not Piglet," he said. "I know Piglet well, and he's _quite_
+a different colour."
+
+Piglet began to say that this was because he had just had a bath, and
+then he thought that perhaps he wouldn't say that, and as he opened his
+mouth to say something else, Kanga slipped the medicine spoon in, and
+then patted him on the back and told him that it was really quite a nice
+taste when you got used to it.
+
+"I knew it wasn't Piglet," said Kanga. "I wonder who it can be."
+
+"Perhaps it's some relation of Pooh's," said Christopher Robin. "What
+about a nephew or an uncle or something?"
+
+Kanga agreed that this was probably what it was, and said that they
+would have to call it by some name.
+
+"I shall call it Pootel," said Christopher Robin. "Henry Pootel for
+short."
+
+And just when it was decided, Henry Pootel wriggled out of Kanga's arms
+and jumped to the ground. To his great joy Christopher Robin had left
+the door open. Never had Henry Pootel Piglet run so fast as he ran then,
+and he didn't stop running until he had got quite close to his house.
+But when he was a hundred yards away he stopped running, and rolled the
+rest of the way home, so as to get his own nice comfortable colour
+again....
+
+So Kanga and Roo stayed in the Forest. And every Tuesday Roo spent the
+day with his great friend Rabbit, and every Tuesday Kanga spent the day
+with her great friend Pooh, teaching him to jump, and every Tuesday
+Piglet spent the day with his great friend Christopher Robin. So they
+were all happy again.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+                    IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN LEADS
+                     AN EXPOTITION TO THE NORTH POLE
+
+
+One fine day Pooh had stumped up to the top of the Forest to see if
+his friend Christopher Robin was interested in Bears at all. At
+breakfast that morning (a simple meal of marmalade spread lightly over a
+honeycomb or two) he had suddenly thought of a new song. It began like
+this:
+
+    "_Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear._"
+
+When he had got as far as this, he scratched his head, and thought to
+himself "That's a very good start for a song, but what about the second
+line?" He tried singing "Ho," two or three times, but it didn't seem to
+help. "Perhaps it would be better," he thought, "if I sang Hi for the
+life of a Bear." So he sang it ... but it wasn't. "Very well, then,"
+he said, "I shall sing that first line twice, and perhaps if I sing it
+very quickly, I shall find myself singing the third and fourth lines
+before I have time to think of them, and that will be a Good Song. Now
+then:"
+
+          Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear!
+          Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear!
+    I don't much mind if it rains or snows,
+    'Cos I've got a lot of honey on my nice new nose,
+    I don't much care if it snows or thaws,
+    'Cos I've got a lot of honey on my nice clean paws!
+          Sing Ho! for a Bear!
+          Sing Ho! for a Pooh!
+    And I'll have a little something in an hour or two!
+
+He was so pleased with this song that he sang it all the way to the top
+of the Forest, "and if I go on singing it much longer," he thought, "it
+will be time for the little something, and then the last line won't be
+true." So he turned it into a hum instead.
+
+Christopher Robin was sitting outside his door, putting on his Big
+Boots. As soon as he saw the Big Boots, Pooh knew that an Adventure was
+going to happen, and he brushed the honey off his nose with the back of
+his paw, and spruced himself up as well as he could, so as to look Ready
+for Anything.
+
+"Good-morning, Christopher Robin," he called out.
+
+"Hallo, Pooh Bear. I can't get this boot on."
+
+"That's bad," said Pooh.
+
+"Do you think you could very kindly lean against me, 'cos I keep pulling
+so hard that I fall over backwards."
+
+Pooh sat down, dug his feet into the ground, and pushed hard against
+Christopher Robin's back, and Christopher Robin pushed hard against his,
+and pulled and pulled at his boot until he had got it on.
+
+"And that's that," said Pooh. "What do we do next?"
+
+"We are all going on an Expedition," said Christopher Robin, as he got
+up and brushed himself. "Thank you, Pooh."
+
+"Going on an Expotition?" said Pooh eagerly. "I don't think I've ever
+been on one of those. Where are we going to on this Expotition?"
+
+"Expedition, silly old Bear. It's got an 'x' in it."
+
+"Oh!" said Pooh. "I know." But he didn't really.
+
+"We're going to discover the North Pole."
+
+"Oh!" said Pooh again. "What _is_ the North Pole?" he asked.
+
+"It's just a thing you discover," said Christopher Robin carelessly, not
+being quite sure himself.
+
+"Oh! I see," said Pooh. "Are bears any good at discovering it?"
+
+"Of course they are. And Rabbit and Kanga and all of you. It's an
+Expedition. That's what an Expedition means. A long line of everybody.
+You'd better tell the others to get ready, while I see if my gun's all
+right. And we must all bring Provisions."
+
+"Bring what?"
+
+"Things to eat."
+
+"Oh!" said Pooh happily. "I thought you said Provisions. I'll go and
+tell them." And he stumped off.
+
+The first person he met was Rabbit.
+
+"Hallo, Rabbit," he said, "is that you?"
+
+"Let's pretend it isn't," said Rabbit, "and see what happens."
+
+"I've got a message for you."
+
+"I'll give it to him."
+
+"We're all going on an Expotition with Christopher Robin!"
+
+"What is it when we're on it?"
+
+"A sort of boat, I think," said Pooh.
+
+"Oh! that sort."
+
+"Yes. And we're going to discover a Pole or something. Or was it a Mole?
+Anyhow we're going to discover it."
+
+"We are, are we?" said Rabbit.
+
+"Yes. And we've got to bring Pro--things to eat with us. In case we want
+to eat them. Now I'm going down to Piglet's. Tell Kanga, will you?"
+
+He left Rabbit and hurried down to Piglet's house. The Piglet was
+sitting on the ground at the door of his house blowing happily at a
+dandelion, and wondering whether it would be this year, next year,
+sometime or never. He had just discovered that it would be never, and
+was trying to remember what "_it_" was, and hoping it wasn't anything
+nice, when Pooh came up.
+
+"Oh! Piglet," said Pooh excitedly, "we're going on an Expotition, all of
+us, with things to eat. To discover something."
+
+"To discover what?" said Piglet anxiously.
+
+"Oh! just something."
+
+"Nothing fierce?"
+
+"Christopher Robin didn't say anything about fierce. He just said it had
+an 'x'."
+
+"It isn't their necks I mind," said Piglet earnestly. "It's their teeth.
+But if Christopher Robin is coming I don't mind anything."
+
+In a little while they were all ready at the top of the Forest, and the
+Expotition started. First came Christopher Robin and Rabbit, then Piglet
+and Pooh; then Kanga, with Roo in her pocket, and Owl; then Eeyore; and,
+at the end, in a long line, all Rabbit's friends-and-relations.
+
+"I didn't ask them," explained Rabbit carelessly. "They just came. They
+always do. They can march at the end, after Eeyore."
+
+"What I say," said Eeyore, "is that it's unsettling. I didn't want to
+come on this Expo--what Pooh said. I only came to oblige. But here I
+am; and if I am the end of the Expo--what we're talking about--then
+let me _be_ the end. But if, every time I want to sit down for a
+little rest, I have to brush away half a dozen of Rabbit's smaller
+friends-and-relations first, then this isn't an Expo--whatever it
+is--at all, it's simply a Confused Noise. That's what _I_ say."
+
+"I see what Eeyore means," said Owl. "If you ask me----"
+
+"I'm not asking anybody," said Eeyore. "I'm just telling everybody. We
+can look for the North Pole, or we can play 'Here we go gathering Nuts
+and May' with the end part of an ant's nest. It's all the same to me."
+
+There was a shout from the top of the line.
+
+"Come on!" called Christopher Robin.
+
+"Come on!" called Pooh and Piglet.
+
+"Come on!" called Owl.
+
+"We're starting," said Rabbit. "I must go." And he hurried off to the
+front of the Expotition with Christopher Robin.
+
+"All right," said Eeyore. "We're going. Only Don't Blame Me."
+
+So off they all went to discover the Pole. And as they walked, they
+chattered to each other of this and that, all except Pooh, who was
+making up a song.
+
+"This is the first verse," he said to Piglet, when he was ready with it.
+
+"First verse of what?"
+
+"My song."
+
+"What song?"
+
+"This one."
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"Well, if you listen, Piglet, you'll hear it."
+
+"How do you know I'm not listening?"
+
+Pooh couldn't answer that one, so he began to sing.
+
+    They all went off to discover the Pole,
+      Owl and Piglet and Rabbit and all;
+    It's a Thing you Discover, as I've been tole
+      By Owl and Piglet and Rabbit and all.
+    Eeyore, Christopher Robin and Pooh
+    And Rabbit's relations all went too--
+    And where the Pole was none of them knew....
+      Sing Hey! for Owl and Rabbit and all!
+
+"Hush!" said Christopher Robin turning round to Pooh, "we're just coming
+to a Dangerous Place."
+
+"Hush!" said Pooh turning round quickly to Piglet.
+
+"Hush!" said Piglet to Kanga.
+
+"Hush!" said Kanga to Owl, while Roo said "Hush!" several times to
+himself very quietly.
+
+"Hush!" said Owl to Eeyore.
+
+"_Hush!_" said Eeyore in a terrible voice to all Rabbit's
+friends-and-relations, and "Hush!" they said hastily to each other all
+down the line, until it got to the last one of all. And the last and
+smallest friend-and-relation was so upset to find that the whole
+Expotition was saying "Hush!" to _him_, that he buried himself head
+downwards in a crack in the ground, and stayed there for two days until
+the danger was over, and then went home in a great hurry, and lived
+quietly with his Aunt ever-afterwards. His name was Alexander Beetle.
+
+They had come to a stream which twisted and tumbled between high rocky
+banks, and Christopher Robin saw at once how dangerous it was.
+
+"It's just the place," he explained, "for an Ambush."
+
+"What sort of bush?" whispered Pooh to Piglet. "A gorse-bush?"
+
+"My dear Pooh," said Owl in his superior way, "don't you know what an
+Ambush is?"
+
+"Owl," said Piglet, looking round at him severely, "Pooh's whisper was a
+perfectly private whisper, and there was no need----"
+
+"An Ambush," said Owl, "is a sort of Surprise."
+
+"So is a gorse-bush sometimes," said Pooh.
+
+"An Ambush, as I was about to explain to Pooh," said Piglet, "is a sort
+of Surprise."
+
+"If people jump out at you suddenly, that's an Ambush," said Owl.
+
+"It's an Ambush, Pooh, when people jump at you suddenly," explained
+Piglet.
+
+Pooh, who now knew what an Ambush was, said that a gorse-bush had sprung
+at him suddenly one day when he fell off a tree, and he had taken six
+days to get all the prickles out of himself.
+
+"We are not _talking_ about gorse-bushes," said Owl a little crossly.
+
+"I am," said Pooh.
+
+They were climbing very cautiously up the stream now, going from rock to
+rock, and after they had gone a little way they came to a place where
+the banks widened out at each side, so that on each side of the water
+there was a level strip of grass on which they could sit down and rest.
+As soon as he saw this, Christopher Robin called "Halt!" and they all
+sat down and rested.
+
+"I think," said Christopher Robin, "that we ought to eat all our
+Provisions now, so that we shan't have so much to carry."
+
+"Eat all our what?" said Pooh.
+
+"All that we've brought," said Piglet, getting to work.
+
+"That's a good idea," said Pooh, and he got to work too.
+
+"Have you all got something?" asked Christopher Robin with his mouth
+full.
+
+"All except me," said Eeyore. "As Usual." He looked round at them in his
+melancholy way. "I suppose none of you are sitting on a thistle by any
+chance?"
+
+"I believe I am," said Pooh. "Ow!" He got up, and looked behind him.
+"Yes, I was. I thought so."
+
+"Thank you, Pooh. If you've quite finished with it." He moved across to
+Pooh's place, and began to eat.
+
+"It don't do them any Good, you know, sitting on them," he went on, as
+he looked up munching. "Takes all the Life out of them. Remember that
+another time, all of you. A little Consideration, a little Thought for
+Others, makes all the difference."
+
+As soon as he had finished his lunch Christopher Robin whispered to
+Rabbit, and Rabbit said "Yes, yes, of course," and they walked a little
+way up the stream together.
+
+"I didn't want the others to hear," said Christopher Robin.
+
+"Quite so," said Rabbit, looking important.
+
+"It's--I wondered--It's only--Rabbit, I suppose _you_ don't know, What
+does the North Pole _look_ like?"
+
+"Well," said Rabbit, stroking his whiskers. "Now you're asking me."
+
+"I did know once, only I've sort of forgotten," said Christopher Robin
+carelessly.
+
+"It's a funny thing," said Rabbit, "but I've sort of forgotten too,
+although I did know _once_."
+
+"I suppose it's just a pole stuck in the ground?"
+
+"Sure to be a pole," said Rabbit, "because of calling it a pole, and if
+it's a pole, well, I should think it would be sticking in the ground,
+shouldn't you, because there'd be nowhere else to stick it."
+
+"Yes, that's what I thought."
+
+"The only thing," said Rabbit, "is, _where is it sticking_?"
+
+"That's what we're looking for," said Christopher Robin.
+
+They went back to the others. Piglet was lying on his back, sleeping
+peacefully. Roo was washing his face and paws in the stream, while Kanga
+explained to everybody proudly that this was the first time he had ever
+washed his face himself, and Owl was telling Kanga an Interesting
+Anecdote full of long words like Encyclopædia and Rhododendron to which
+Kanga wasn't listening.
+
+"I don't hold with all this washing," grumbled Eeyore. "This modern
+Behind-the-ears nonsense. What do _you_ think, Pooh?"
+
+"Well," said Pooh, "_I_ think----"
+
+But we shall never know what Pooh thought, for there came a sudden
+squeak from Roo, a splash, and a loud cry of alarm from Kanga.
+
+"So much for _washing_," said Eeyore.
+
+"Roo's fallen in!" cried Rabbit, and he and Christopher Robin came
+rushing down to the rescue.
+
+"Look at me swimming!" squeaked Roo from the middle of his pool, and was
+hurried down a waterfall into the next pool.
+
+"Are you all right, Roo dear?" called Kanga anxiously.
+
+"Yes!" said Roo. "Look at me sw----" and down he went over the next
+waterfall into another pool.
+
+Everybody was doing something to help. Piglet, wide awake suddenly, was
+jumping up and down and making "Oo, I say" noises; Owl was explaining
+that in a case of Sudden and Temporary Immersion the Important Thing was
+to keep the Head Above Water; Kanga was jumping along the bank, saying
+"Are you _sure_ you're all right, Roo dear?" to which Roo, from whatever
+pool he was in at the moment, was answering "Look at me swimming!"
+Eeyore had turned round and hung his tail over the first pool into which
+Roo fell, and with his back to the accident was grumbling quietly to
+himself, and saying, "All this washing; but catch on to my tail, little
+Roo, and you'll be all right"; and, Christopher Robin and Rabbit came
+hurrying past Eeyore, and were calling out to the others in front of
+them.
+
+"All right, Roo, I'm coming," called Christopher Robin.
+
+"Get something across the stream lower down, some of you fellows,"
+called Rabbit.
+
+But Pooh was getting something. Two pools below Roo he was standing with
+a long pole in his paws, and Kanga came up and took one end of it, and
+between them they held it across the lower part of the pool; and Roo,
+still bubbling proudly, "Look at me swimming," drifted up against it,
+and climbed out.
+
+"Did you see me swimming?" squeaked Roo excitedly, while Kanga scolded
+him and rubbed him down. "Pooh, did you see me swimming? That's called
+swimming, what I was doing. Rabbit, did you see what I was doing?
+Swimming. Hallo, Piglet! I say, Piglet! What do you think I was doing!
+Swimming! Christopher Robin, did you see me----"
+
+But Christopher Robin wasn't listening. He was looking at Pooh.
+
+"Pooh," he said, "where did you find that pole?"
+
+Pooh looked at the pole in his hands.
+
+"I just found it," he said. "I thought it ought to be useful. I just
+picked it up."
+
+"Pooh," said Christopher Robin solemnly, "the Expedition is over. You
+have found the North Pole!"
+
+"Oh!" said Pooh.
+
+Eeyore was sitting with his tail in the water when they all got back to
+him.
+
+"Tell Roo to be quick, somebody," he said. "My tail's getting cold. I
+don't want to mention it, but I just mention it. I don't want to
+complain but there it is. My tail's cold."
+
+"Here I am!" squeaked Roo.
+
+"Oh, there you are."
+
+"Did you see me swimming?"
+
+Eeyore took his tail out of the water, and swished it from side to side.
+
+"As I expected," he said. "Lost all feeling. Numbed it. That's what it's
+done. Numbed it. Well, as long as nobody minds, I suppose it's all
+right."
+
+"Poor old Eeyore. I'll dry it for you," said Christopher Robin, and he
+took out his handkerchief and rubbed it up.
+
+"Thank you, Christopher Robin. You're the only one who seems to
+understand about tails. They don't think--that's what the matter with
+some of these others. They've no imagination. A tail isn't a tail to
+_them_, it's just a Little Bit Extra at the back."
+
+"Never mind, Eeyore," said Christopher Robin, rubbing his hardest. "Is
+_that_ better?"
+
+"It's feeling more like a tail perhaps. It Belongs again, if you know
+what I mean."
+
+"Hullo, Eeyore," said Pooh, coming up to them with his pole.
+
+"Hullo, Pooh. Thank you for asking, but I shall be able to use it again
+in a day or two."
+
+"Use what?" said Pooh.
+
+"What we are talking about."
+
+"I wasn't talking about anything," said Pooh, looking puzzled.
+
+"My mistake again. I thought you were saying how sorry you were about my
+tail, being all numb, and could you do anything to help?"
+
+"No," said Pooh. "That wasn't me," he said. He thought for a little and
+then suggested helpfully, "Perhaps it was somebody else."
+
+"Well, thank him for me when you see him."
+
+Pooh looked anxiously at Christopher Robin.
+
+"Pooh's found the North Pole," said Christopher Robin. "Isn't that
+lovely?"
+
+Pooh looked modestly down.
+
+"Is that it?" said Eeyore.
+
+"Yes," said Christopher Robin.
+
+"Is that what we were looking for?"
+
+"Yes," said Pooh.
+
+"Oh!" said Eeyore. "Well, anyhow--it didn't rain," he said.
+
+They stuck the pole in the ground, and Christopher Robin tied a message
+on to it.
+
+                               NORTH POLE
+
+                           DISCOVERED BY POOH
+
+                             POOH FOUND IT.
+
+Then they all went home again. And I think, but I am not quite sure,
+that Roo had a hot bath and went straight to bed. But Pooh went back to
+his own house, and feeling very proud of what he had done, had a little
+something to revive himself.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+                       IN WHICH PIGLET IS ENTIRELY
+                           SURROUNDED BY WATER
+
+
+It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never
+in all his life, and _he_ was goodness knows _how_ old--three, was it,
+or four?--never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days.
+
+"If only," he thought, as he looked out of the window, "I had been in
+Pooh's house, or Christopher Robin's house, or Rabbit's house when it
+began to rain, then I should have had Company all this time, instead of
+being here all alone, with nothing to do except wonder when it will
+stop." And he imagined himself with Pooh, saying, "Did you ever see such
+rain, Pooh?" and Pooh saying, "Isn't it _awful_, Piglet?" and Piglet
+saying, "I wonder how it is over Christopher Robin's way" and Pooh
+saying, "I should think poor old Rabbit is about flooded out by this
+time." It would have been jolly to talk like this, and really, it wasn't
+much good having anything exciting like floods, if you couldn't share
+them with somebody.
+
+For it was rather exciting. The little dry ditches in which Piglet had
+nosed about so often had become streams, the little streams across which
+he had splashed were rivers, and the river, between whose steep banks
+they had played so happily, had sprawled out of its own bed and was
+taking up so much room everywhere, that Piglet was beginning to wonder
+whether it would be coming into _his_ bed soon.
+
+"It's a little Anxious," he said to himself, "to be a Very Small Animal
+Entirely Surrounded by Water. Christopher Robin and Pooh could escape by
+Climbing Trees, and Kanga could escape by Jumping, and Rabbit could
+escape by Burrowing, and Owl could escape by Flying, and Eeyore could
+escape by--by Making a Loud Noise Until Rescued, and here am I,
+surrounded by water and I can't do _anything_."
+
+It went on raining, and every day the water got a little higher, until
+now it was nearly up to Piglet's window ... and still he hadn't done
+anything.
+
+"There's Pooh," he thought to himself. "Pooh hasn't much Brain, but he
+never comes to any harm. He does silly things and they turn out right.
+There's Owl. Owl hasn't exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things. He would
+know the Right Thing to Do when Surrounded by Water. There's Rabbit. He
+hasn't Learnt in Books, but he can always Think of a Clever Plan.
+There's Kanga. She isn't Clever, Kanga isn't, but she would be so
+anxious about Roo that she would do a Good Thing to Do without thinking
+about It. And then there's Eeyore. And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow
+that he wouldn't mind about this. But I wonder what Christopher Robin
+would do?"
+
+Then suddenly he remembered a story which Christopher Robin had told him
+about a man on a desert island who had written something in a bottle and
+thrown it in the sea; and Piglet thought that if he wrote something in a
+bottle and threw it in the water, perhaps somebody would come and rescue
+_him_!
+
+He left the window and began to search his house, all of it that wasn't
+under water, and at last he found a pencil and a small piece of dry
+paper, and a bottle with a cork to it. And he wrote on one side of the
+paper:
+
+                                 HELP!
+                              PIGLET (ME)
+
+and on the other side:
+
+                       IT'S ME PIGLET, HELP HELP.
+
+Then he put the paper in the bottle, and he corked the bottle up as
+tightly as he could, and he leant out of his window as far as he could
+lean without falling in, and he threw the bottle as far as he could
+throw--_splash!_--and in a little while it bobbed up again on the water;
+and he watched it floating slowly away in the distance, until his eyes
+ached with looking, and sometimes he thought it was the bottle, and
+sometimes he thought it was just a ripple on the water which he was
+following, and then suddenly he knew that he would never see it again
+and that he had done all that he could do to save himself.
+
+"So now," he thought, "somebody else will have to do something, and I
+hope they will do it soon, because if they don't I shall have to swim,
+which I can't, so I hope they do it soon." And then he gave a very long
+sigh and said, "I wish Pooh were here. It's so much more friendly with
+two."
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+When the rain began Pooh was asleep. It rained, and it rained, and it
+rained, and he slept and he slept and he slept. He had had a tiring day.
+You remember how he discovered the North Pole; well, he was so proud of
+this that he asked Christopher Robin if there were any other Poles such
+as a Bear of Little Brain might discover.
+
+"There's a South Pole," said Christopher Robin, "and I expect there's an
+East Pole and a West Pole, though people don't like talking about them."
+
+Pooh was very excited when he heard this, and suggested that they should
+have an Expotition to discover the East Pole, but Christopher Robin had
+thought of something else to do with Kanga; so Pooh went out to discover
+the East Pole by himself. Whether he discovered it or not, I forget; but
+he was so tired when he got home that, in the very middle of his supper,
+after he had been eating for little more than half-an-hour, he fell fast
+asleep in his chair, and slept and slept and slept.
+
+Then suddenly he was dreaming. He was at the East Pole, and it was a
+very cold pole with the coldest sort of snow and ice all over it. He had
+found a bee-hive to sleep in, but there wasn't room for his legs, so he
+had left them outside. And Wild Woozles, such as inhabit the East Pole,
+came and nibbled all the fur off his legs to make nests for their Young.
+And the more they nibbled, the colder his legs got, until suddenly he
+woke up with an _Ow!_--and there he was, sitting in his chair with his
+feet in the water, and water all round him!
+
+He splashed to his door and looked out....
+
+"This is Serious," said Pooh. "I must have an Escape."
+
+So he took his largest pot of honey and escaped with it to a broad
+branch of his tree, well above the water, and then he climbed down again
+and escaped with another pot ... and when the whole Escape was
+finished, there was Pooh sitting on his branch, dangling his legs, and
+there, beside him, were ten pots of honey....
+
+Two days later, there was Pooh, sitting on his branch, dangling his
+legs, and there, beside him, were four pots of honey....
+
+Three days later, there was Pooh, sitting on his branch, dangling his
+legs, and there beside him, was one pot of honey.
+
+Four days later, there was Pooh ...
+
+And it was on the morning of the fourth day that Piglet's bottle came
+floating past him, and with one loud cry of "Honey!" Pooh plunged into
+the water, seized the bottle, and struggled back to his tree again.
+
+"Bother!" said Pooh, as he opened it. "All that wet for nothing. What's
+that bit of paper doing?"
+
+He took it out and looked at it.
+
+"It's a Missage," he said to himself, "that's what it is. And that
+letter is a 'P,' and so is that, and so is that, and 'P' means 'Pooh,'
+so it's a very important Missage to me, and I can't read it. I must find
+Christopher Robin or Owl or Piglet, one of those Clever Readers who can
+read things, and they will tell me what this missage means. Only I can't
+swim. Bother!"
+
+Then he had an idea, and I think that for a Bear of Very Little Brain,
+it was a good idea. He said to himself:
+
+"If a bottle can float, then a jar can float, and if a jar floats, I can
+sit on the top of it, if it's a very big jar."
+
+So he took his biggest jar, and corked it up. "All boats have to have a
+name," he said, "so I shall call mine _The Floating Bear_." And with
+these words he dropped his boat into the water and jumped in after it.
+
+For a little while Pooh and _The Floating Bear_ were uncertain as to
+which of them was meant to be on the top, but after trying one or two
+different positions, they settled down with _The Floating Bear_
+underneath and Pooh triumphantly astride it, paddling vigorously with
+his feet.
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+Christopher Robin lived at the very top of the Forest. It rained, and it
+rained, and it rained, but the water couldn't come up to _his_ house. It
+was rather jolly to look down into the valleys and see the water all
+round him, but it rained so hard that he stayed indoors most of the
+time, and thought about things. Every morning he went out with his
+umbrella and put a stick in the place where the water came up to, and
+every next morning he went out and couldn't see his stick any more, so
+he put another stick in the place where the water came up to, and then
+he walked home again, and each morning he had a shorter way to walk than
+he had had the morning before. On the morning of the fifth day he saw
+the water all round him, and knew that for the first time in his life he
+was on a real island. Which was very exciting.
+
+It was on this morning that Owl came flying over the water to say "How
+do you do," to his friend Christopher Robin.
+
+"I say, Owl," said Christopher Robin, "isn't this fun? I'm on an
+island!"
+
+"The atmospheric conditions have been very unfavourable lately," said
+Owl.
+
+"The what?"
+
+"It has been raining," explained Owl.
+
+"Yes," said Christopher Robin. "It has."
+
+"The flood-level has reached an unprecedented height."
+
+"The who?"
+
+"There's a lot of water about," explained Owl.
+
+"Yes," said Christopher Robin, "there is."
+
+"However, the prospects are rapidly becoming more favourable. At any
+moment----"
+
+"Have you seen Pooh?"
+
+"No. At any moment----"
+
+"I hope he's all right," said Christopher Robin. "I've been wondering
+about him. I expect Piglet's with him. Do you think they're all right,
+Owl?"
+
+"I expect so. You see, at any moment----"
+
+"Do go and see, Owl. Because Pooh hasn't got very much brain, and he
+might do something silly, and I do love him so, Owl. Do you see, Owl?"
+
+"That's all right," said Owl. "I'll go. Back directly." And he flew off.
+
+In a little while he was back again.
+
+"Pooh isn't there," he said.
+
+"Not there?"
+
+"Has _been_ there. He's been sitting on a branch of his tree outside his
+house with nine pots of honey. But he isn't there now."
+
+"Oh, Pooh!" cried Christopher Robin. "Where _are_ you?"
+
+"Here I am," said a growly voice behind him.
+
+"Pooh!"
+
+They rushed into each other's arms.
+
+"How did you get here, Pooh?" asked Christopher Robin, when he was ready
+to talk again.
+
+"On my boat," said Pooh proudly. "I had a Very Important Missage sent me
+in a bottle, and owing to having got some water in my eyes, I couldn't
+read it, so I brought it to you. On my boat."
+
+With these proud words he gave Christopher Robin the missage.
+
+"But it's from Piglet!" cried Christopher Robin when he had read it.
+
+"Isn't there anything about Pooh in it?" asked Bear, looking over his
+shoulder.
+
+Christopher Robin read the message aloud.
+
+"Oh, are those 'P's' piglets? I thought they were poohs."
+
+"We must rescue him at once! I thought he was with _you_, Pooh. Owl,
+could you rescue him on your back?"
+
+"I don't think so," said Owl, after grave thought. "It is doubtful if
+the necessary dorsal muscles----"
+
+"Then would you fly to him at _once_ and say that Rescue is Coming? And
+Pooh and I will think of a Rescue and come as quick as ever we can. Oh,
+don't _talk_, Owl, go on quick!" And, still thinking of something to
+say, Owl flew off.
+
+"Now then, Pooh," said Christopher Robin, "where's your boat?"
+
+"I ought to say," explained Pooh as they walked down to the shore of the
+island, "that it isn't just an ordinary sort of boat. Sometimes it's a
+Boat, and sometimes it's more of an Accident. It all depends."
+
+"Depends on what?"
+
+"On whether I'm on the top of it or underneath it."
+
+"Oh! Well, where is it?"
+
+"There!" said Pooh, pointing proudly to _The Floating Bear_.
+
+It wasn't what Christopher Robin expected, and the more he looked at it,
+the more he thought what a Brave and Clever Bear Pooh was, and the more
+Christopher Robin thought this, the more Pooh looked modestly down his
+nose and tried to pretend he wasn't.
+
+"But it's too small for two of us," said Christopher Robin sadly.
+
+"Three of us with Piglet."
+
+"That makes it smaller still. Oh, Pooh Bear, what shall we do?"
+
+And then this Bear, Pooh Bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, F.O.P. (Friend of
+Piglet's), R.C. (Rabbit's Companion), P.D. (Pole Discoverer), E.C. and
+T.F. (Eeyore's Comforter and Tail-finder)--in fact, Pooh himself--said
+something so clever that Christopher Robin could only look at him with
+mouth open and eyes staring, wondering if this was really the Bear of
+Very Little Brain whom he had known and loved so long.
+
+"We might go in your umbrella," said Pooh.
+
+"?"
+
+"We might go in your umbrella," said Pooh.
+
+"? ?"
+
+"We might go in your umbrella," said Pooh.
+
+"!!!!!!"
+
+For suddenly Christopher Robin saw that they might. He opened his
+umbrella and put it point downwards in the water. It floated but
+wobbled. Pooh got in. He was just beginning to say that it was all right
+now, when he found that it wasn't, so after a short drink which he
+didn't really want he waded back to Christopher Robin. Then they both
+got in together, and it wobbled no longer.
+
+"I shall call this boat _The Brain of Pooh_," said Christopher Robin,
+and _The Brain of Pooh_ set sail forthwith in a south-westerly
+direction, revolving gracefully.
+
+You can imagine Piglet's joy when at last the ship came in sight of him.
+In after-years he liked to think that he had been in Very Great Danger
+during the Terrible Flood, but the only danger he had really been in was
+in the last half-hour of his imprisonment, when Owl, who had just flown
+up, sat on a branch of his tree to comfort him, and told him a very long
+story about an aunt who had once laid a seagull's egg by mistake, and
+the story went on and on, rather like this sentence, until Piglet who
+was listening out of his window without much hope, went to sleep quietly
+and naturally, slipping slowly out of the window towards the water until
+he was only hanging on by his toes, at which moment luckily, a sudden
+loud squawk from Owl, which was really part of the story, being what his
+aunt said, woke the Piglet up and just gave him time to jerk himself
+back into safety and say, "How interesting, and did she?" when--well,
+you can imagine his joy when at last he saw the good ship, _Brain of
+Pooh_ (_Captain_, C. Robin; _1st Mate_, P. Bear) coming over the sea to
+rescue him. Christopher Robin and Pooh again....
+
+And that is really the end of the story, and I am very tired after that
+last sentence, I think I shall stop there.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+
+                    IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN GIVES
+                    POOH A PARTY, AND WE SAY GOOD-BYE
+
+
+One day when the sun had come back over the Forest, bringing with it
+the scent of may, and all the streams of the Forest were tinkling
+happily to find themselves their own pretty shape again, and the little
+pools lay dreaming of the life they had seen and the big things they had
+done, and in the warmth and quiet of the Forest the cuckoo was trying
+over his voice carefully and listening to see if he liked it, and
+wood-pigeons were complaining gently to themselves in their lazy
+comfortable way that it was the other fellow's fault, but it didn't
+matter very much; on such a day as this Christopher Robin whistled in a
+special way he had, and Owl came flying out of the Hundred Acre Wood to
+see what was wanted.
+
+"Owl," said Christopher Robin, "I am going to give a party."
+
+"You are, are you?" said Owl.
+
+"And it's to be a special sort of party, because it's because of what
+Pooh did when he did what he did to save Piglet from the flood."
+
+"Oh, that's what it's for, is it?" said Owl.
+
+"Yes, so will you tell Pooh as quickly as you can, and all the others,
+because it will be to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, it will, will it?" said Owl, still being as helpful as possible.
+
+"So will you go and tell them, Owl?"
+
+Owl tried to think of something very wise to say, but couldn't, so he
+flew off to tell the others. And the first person he told was Pooh.
+
+"Pooh," he said, "Christopher Robin is giving a party."
+
+"Oh!" said Pooh. And then seeing that Owl expected him to say something
+else, he said "Will there be those little cake things with pink sugar
+icing?"
+
+Owl felt that it was rather beneath him to talk about little cake things
+with pink sugar icing, so he told Pooh exactly what Christopher Robin
+had said, and flew off to Eeyore.
+
+"A party for Me?" thought Pooh to himself. "How grand!" And he began to
+wonder if all the other animals would know that it was a special Pooh
+Party, and if Christopher Robin had told them about _The Floating Bear_
+and the _Brain of Pooh_ and all the wonderful ships he had invented and
+sailed on, and he began to think how awful it would be if everybody had
+forgotten about it, and nobody quite knew what the party was for; and
+the more he thought like this, the more the party got muddled in his
+mind, like a dream when nothing goes right. And the dream began to sing
+itself over in his head until it became a sort of song. It was an
+
+                           ANXIOUS POOH SONG.
+
+    3 Cheers for Pooh!
+    (_For Who?_)
+    For Pooh--
+    (_Why what did he do?_)
+    I thought you knew;
+    He saved his friend from a wetting!
+    3 Cheers for Bear!
+    (_For where?_)
+    For Bear--
+    He couldn't swim,
+    But he rescued him!
+    (_He rescued who?_)
+    Oh, listen, do!
+    I am talking of Pooh--
+    (_Of who?_)
+    Of Pooh!
+    (_I'm sorry I keep forgetting_).
+    Well, Pooh was a Bear of Enormous Brain
+    (_Just say it again!_)
+    Of enormous brain--
+    (_Of enormous what?_)
+    Well, he ate a lot,
+    And I don't know if he could swim or not,
+    But he managed to float
+    On a sort of boat
+    (_On a sort of what?_)
+    Well, a sort of pot--
+    So now let's give him three hearty cheers
+    (_So now let's give him three hearty whiches?_)
+    And hope he'll be with us for years and years,
+    And grow in health and wisdom and riches!
+    3 Cheers for Pooh!
+    (_For who?_)
+    For Pooh--
+    3 Cheers for Bear!
+    (_For where?_)
+    For Bear--
+    3 Cheers for the wonderful Winnie-the-Pooh!
+    (_Just tell me, somebody_--WHAT DID HE DO?)
+
+While this was going on inside him, Owl was talking to Eeyore.
+
+"Eeyore," said Owl, "Christopher Robin is giving a party."
+
+"Very interesting," said Eeyore. "I suppose they will be sending me down
+the odd bits which got trodden on. Kind and Thoughtful. Not at all,
+don't mention it."
+
+"There is an Invitation for you."
+
+"What's that like?"
+
+"An Invitation!"
+
+"Yes, I heard you. Who dropped it?"
+
+"This isn't anything to eat, it's asking you to the party. To-morrow."
+
+Eeyore shook his head slowly.
+
+"You mean Piglet. The little fellow with the excited ears. That's
+Piglet. I'll tell him."
+
+"No, no!" said Owl, getting quite fussy. "It's you!"
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Of course I'm sure. Christopher Robin said 'All of them! Tell all of
+them.'"
+
+"All of them, except Eeyore?"
+
+"All of them," said Owl sulkily.
+
+"Ah!" said Eeyore. "A mistake, no doubt, but still, I shall come. Only
+don't blame _me_ if it rains."
+
+But it didn't rain. Christopher Robin had made a long table out of some
+long pieces of wood, and they all sat round it. Christopher Robin sat at
+one end, and Pooh sat at the other, and between them on one side were
+Owl and Eeyore and Piglet, and between them on the other side were
+Rabbit, and Roo and Kanga. And all Rabbit's friends and relations spread
+themselves about on the grass, and waited hopefully in case anybody
+spoke to them, or dropped anything, or asked them the time.
+
+It was the first party to which Roo had ever been, and he was very
+excited. As soon as ever they had sat down he began to talk.
+
+"Hallo, Pooh!" he squeaked.
+
+"Hallo, Roo!" said Pooh.
+
+Roo jumped up and down in his seat for a little while and then began
+again.
+
+"Hallo, Piglet!" he squeaked.
+
+Piglet waved a paw at him, being too busy to say anything.
+
+"Hallo, Eeyore!" said Roo.
+
+Eeyore nodded gloomily at him. "It will rain soon, you see if it
+doesn't," he said.
+
+Roo looked to see if it didn't, and it didn't, so he said "Hallo,
+Owl!"--and Owl said "Hallo, my little fellow," in a kindly way, and went
+on telling Christopher Robin about an accident which had nearly happened
+to a friend of his whom Christopher Robin didn't know, and Kanga said to
+Roo, "Drink up your milk first, dear, and talk afterwards." So Roo, who
+was drinking his milk, tried to say that he could do both at once ...
+and had to be patted on the back and dried for quite a long time
+afterwards.
+
+When they had all nearly eaten enough, Christopher Robin banged on the
+table with his spoon, and everybody stopped talking and was very silent,
+except Roo who was just finishing a loud attack of hiccups and trying to
+look as if it was one of Rabbit's relations.
+
+"This party," said Christopher Robin, "is a party because of what
+someone did, and we all know who it was, and it's his party, because of
+what he did, and I've got a present for him and here it is." Then he
+felt about a little and whispered, "Where is it?"
+
+While he was looking, Eeyore coughed in an impressive way and began to
+speak.
+
+"Friends," he said, "including oddments, it is a great pleasure, or
+perhaps I had better say it has been a pleasure so far, to see you at my
+party. What I did was nothing. Any of you--except Rabbit and Owl and
+Kanga--would have done the same. Oh, and Pooh. My remarks do not, of
+course, apply to Piglet and Roo, because they are too small. Any of you
+would have done the same. But it just happened to be Me. It was not, I
+need hardly say, with an idea of getting what Christopher Robin is
+looking for now"--and he put his front leg to his mouth and said in a
+loud whisper, "Try under the table"--"that I did what I did--but because
+I feel that we should all do what we can to help. I feel that we should
+all----"
+
+"H--hup!" said Roo accidentally.
+
+"Roo, dear!" said Kanga reproachfully.
+
+"Was it me?" asked Roo, a little surprised.
+
+"What's Eeyore talking about?" Piglet whispered to Pooh.
+
+"I don't know," said Pooh rather dolefully.
+
+"I thought this was _your_ party."
+
+"I thought it was _once_. But I suppose it isn't."
+
+"I'd sooner it was yours than Eeyore's," said Piglet.
+
+"So would I," said Pooh.
+
+"H--hup!" said Roo again.
+
+"AS--I--WAS--SAYING," said Eeyore loudly and sternly, "as I was saying
+when I was interrupted by various Loud Sounds, I feel that----"
+
+"Here it is!" cried Christopher Robin excitedly. "Pass it down to silly
+old Pooh. It's for Pooh."
+
+"For Pooh?" said Eeyore.
+
+"Of course it is. The best bear in all the world."
+
+"I might have known," said Eeyore. "After all, one can't complain. I
+have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last
+week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said 'Bother!'
+The Social Round. Always something going on."
+
+Nobody was listening, for they were all saying "Open it, Pooh," "What is
+it, Pooh?" "I know what it is," "No, you don't" and other helpful
+remarks of this sort. And of course Pooh was opening it as quickly as
+ever he could, but without cutting the string, because you never know
+when a bit of string might be Useful. At last it was undone.
+
+When Pooh saw what it was, he nearly fell down, he was so pleased. It
+was a Special Pencil Case. There were pencils in it marked "B" for Bear,
+and pencils marked "HB" for Helping Bear, and pencils marked "BB" for
+Brave Bear. There was a knife for sharpening the pencils, and
+india-rubber for rubbing out anything which you had spelt wrong, and a
+ruler for ruling lines for the words to walk on, and inches marked on
+the ruler in case you wanted to know how many inches anything was, and
+Blue Pencils and Red Pencils and Green Pencils for saying special things
+in blue and red and green. And all these lovely things were in little
+pockets of their own in a Special Case which shut with a click when you
+clicked it. And they were all for Pooh.
+
+"Oh!" said Pooh.
+
+"Oh, Pooh!" said everybody else except Eeyore.
+
+"Thank-you," growled Pooh.
+
+But Eeyore was saying to himself, "This writing business. Pencils and
+what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it."
+
+Later on, when they had all said "Good-bye" and "Thank-you" to
+Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in
+the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent.
+
+"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's
+the first thing you say to yourself?"
+
+"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do _you_ say, Piglet?"
+
+"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting _to-day_?" said Piglet.
+
+Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
+
+"It's the same thing," he said.
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+"And what did happen?" asked Christopher Robin.
+
+"When?"
+
+"Next morning."
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Could you think and tell me and Pooh some time?"
+
+"If you wanted it very much."
+
+"Pooh does," said Christopher Robin.
+
+He gave a deep sigh, picked his bear up by the leg and walked off to the
+door, trailing Winnie-the-Pooh behind him. At the door he turned and
+said "Coming to see me have my bath?"
+
+"I might," I said.
+
+"Was Pooh's pencil case any better than mine?"
+
+"It was just the same," I said.
+
+He nodded and went out ... and in a moment I heard
+Winnie-the-Pooh--_bump, bump, bump_--going up the stairs behind him.
+
+
+
+
+                           Printed in Canada
+                   by Warwick Bros. & Rutter, Limited
+                        Printers and Bookbinders
+                                Toronto
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: Near the end of Chapter VI, the reference to
+Kanga was modified to read "...and every Tuesday Kanga spent the day
+with her great friend Pooh ..."]
+
+
+        
+            *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINNIE-THE-POOH ***
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