literăCUliteră

Longman English Grammar-L G.Alexander

2012-03-01T18:19:00.000+02:00

Grammatical descriptions of English which are addressed to learners

are often oversimplified and inaccurate This is the inevitable result of

lack of time in the classroom and lack of space in course books and

practice books Badly expressed and inaccurate rules, in turn, become

enshrined in grammar books directed at teachers and students The

misrepresentation of English grammar gives a false view of the

language, perpetuates inaccurate 'rules', and results in errors in

communication It is against this background that the Longman English

Grammar has been written

The primary aim of this book is to present a manageable coverage of

grammar at intermediate and advanced levels, which will serve two

purposes

1 To present information which can be consulted for reference

2 To suggest the range of structures that a student would need to be

familiar with receptively and (to a lesser extent) productively to be

able to communicate effectively

In other words, the book aims to be a true pedagogical grammar for

everyone concerned with English as a foreign language It attempts to

provide reasonable answers to reasonable questions about the

workings of the language and to define what English as a Foreign

Language is in terms of grammar

An illustred history of the U.S.A.- Bryn O'Callaghan (Longman)

2012-02-28T19:32:00.002+02:00

A fascinating history of the USA from the time of the Amerindians to the culturally diverse but united country of today.

CONTENTS

A NEW WORLD

1 The, first Americans
2 Explorers from Europe
3 Virginian beginnings
4 Puritan New England
5 Colonial life in America
6 The roots of revolution
7 Fighting for independence

A NEW NATION

8 Forming the, new nation

9 Years of growth

10 West to the Pacific

11 North and South

12 The civil War

13 Reconsrruction

YEARS OF GROWTH
14 Miners, railroads and cattlemen
15 Farming; the Great Plains
16 The Amerindians' last stand
17 Inventors and industries
18 The Golden Door
19 Reformers and progressives SO
20 An American empire

Twentieth Century Americans
21 A war and a peace
22 The Roaring Twenties
23 Crash and depression
24 Roosevelt's New Deal
25 The Arsenal of Democracy
26 Prosperity and problems
27 Black Americans

Superpower
28 Cold War and Korea
29 A balance of terror
30 The Vietnam years
31 America's back yard
32 An end to Cold War?
33 The American Century

English for Writing Research Papers

2012-02-26T17:17:00.000+02:00

Who is this book for?
This book is aimed at researchers in any discipline who wish to write a research
paper in English. If your first language is not English, you should find this book
particularly useful.

Who else will benefit from reading this book?
Proofreaders, those who work for editing services, referees, journal editors and
EFL, ESL and EAP trainers should also find this book useful. I hope to be able to
show you the reasons why the English of non-native speakers often does not com-
ply with the standards of international journals. Knowing these reasons should then
help you to give advice to authors on how to improve their manuscripts, and stu-
dents on how to improve their writing in general. It should also help you understand
the difficulties that non-natives have when writing in English.
Finally, if you are a tutor, supervisor or professor of any nationality, I hope that
you will use this book as a resource to help your students improve their scientific
writing skills. I imagine that you are generally able to identify the errors in writing
made by your students, but you may not have the time or knowledge to explain how
to rectify such mistakes.

READ THIS BOOK AT THE END OF THIS POST

Contents
The symbol # indicates that inexperienced writers should pay particular attention to
this subsection.
Part I Writing Skills
1 Planning and Preparation ........................................................................ 3
1.1 Think about why you want to publish your research #.................... 5
1.2 Give yourself enough time to plan and write your manuscript #..... 5
1.3 Choose an appropriate journal, preferably with a high
impact factor .................................................................................... 5
1.4 Download the instructions for authors from your chosen
journal AND from a high impact journal in the same field #.......... 6
1.5 Read and analyze papers for your literature review,
and note how they are structured ..................................................... 7
1.6 Identify what the editor is looking for ............................................. 8
1.7 Choose one paper as a model and note down useful phrases #........ 9
1.8 Think about the order in which to write the various sections # ....... 9
1.9 Create separate files for each section............................................... 10
1.10 Chat with non experts # ................................................................... 11
1.11 Give mini presentations to colleagues ............................................. 11
1.12 Decide what your key findings are and whether
you really have a contribution to make # ......................................... 11
1.13 For each section, think about how you can highlight
your key findings #........................................................................... 12
1.14 Always have the referees in mind # ................................................. 13
1.15 Referees and English level............................................................... 14
1.16 How to keep the referees happy....................................................... 14
1.17 Write directly in English and find ways
to improve your writing skills #....................................................... 15
1.18 Consult online resources #............................................................... 16
1.19 Summary .......................................................................................... 17
literaculitera.blogspot.comxiv Contents
2 Word Order ............................................................................................... 19
2.1 Basic word order in English #.......................................................... 21
2.2 Compare word order in your language with word order
in English ......................................................................................... 21
2.3 Choose the most relevant subject and put it at the beginning
of the sentence #............................................................................... 22
2.4 Choose the subject that leads to the most concise sentence............. 23
2.5 Don’t make the impersonal it the subject of the sentence................ 23
2.6 Don’t use a pronoun (it, they) before you introduce
the noun (i.e. the subject of the sentence)
that the pronoun refers to ................................................................. 23
2.7 Put the subject before the verb #...................................................... 24
2.8 Keep the subject and verb as close as possible to each other #........ 24
2.9 Avoid inserting parenthetical information between
the subject and the verb #................................................................. 25
2.10 Don’t separate the verb from its direct object #............................... 26
2.11 Put the direct object before the indirect object # ............................. 26
2.12 How to choose where to locate an adverb........................................ 27
2.13 Put adjectives before the noun they describe,
or use a relative clause # .................................................................. 29
2.14 Do not insert an adjective between two nouns
or before the wrong noun #.............................................................. 29
2.15 Avoid creating strings of nouns that describe other nouns # ........... 30
2.16 Ensure there is no ambiguity in the order of the words # ................ 30
2.17 Summary .......................................................................................... 32
3 Breaking Up Long Sentences ................................................................... 33
3.1 Think above all about the reader #................................................... 35
3.2 The longer your sentence, the greater the chance it will be
misunderstood # ............................................................................... 35
3.3 Short sentences are not a sign of inelegance and superficiality......... 36
3.4 Why and how long sentences are created # ..................................... 37
3.5 and #................................................................................................. 38
3.6 as well as.......................................................................................... 40
3.7 Other link words that introduce additional information:
moreover, in addition, furthermore .................................................. 40
3.8 Link words that compare and contrast:
whereas, on the other hand; although, however.............................. 41
3.9 Link words that give explanations: because, since, as, in fact ........... 42
3.10 Link words that express consequences: owing to,
due to, as a result of, consequently, thus etc. ................................... 42
3.11 which and relative clauses #............................................................. 43
3.12 - ing form ......................................................................................... 45
3.13 in order to......................................................................................... 46
3.14 Excessive numbers of commas # ..................................................... 47
3.15 Semicolons....................................................................................... 48
3.16 Semicolons in lists ........................................................................... 49
3.17 Phrases in parentheses...................................................................... 50
3.18 Summary .......................................................................................... 51
4 Structuring Paragraphs and Sentences .................................................. 53
4.1 The key to good writing: always think about the reader #............... 55
4.2 General structure of a paragraph #................................................... 56
4.3 How to structure a paragraph: an example #.................................... 57
4.4 First paragraph of a new section - begin with
a mini summary plus an indication of the structure......................... 59
4.5 First paragraph of a new section - go directly to the point .............. 60
4.6 Deciding where to put new and old information
within a paragraph #......................................................................... 61
4.7 Deciding where to put new and old information
within a sentence #........................................................................... 63
4.8 Link each sentence by moving from general
concepts to increasingly more specific concepts............................. 64
4.9 Present and explain ideas in the same (logical) sequence................ 65
4.10 Don’t force the reader to have to change their perspective.............. 67
4.11 Use a consistent numbering system to list phases,
states, parts etc. ................................................................................ 68
4.12 Begin a new paragraph when you talk about your
study and your key findings #.......................................................... 68
4.13 Break up long paragraphs # ............................................................. 69
4.14 Look for the markers that indicate where you could
begin a new sentence #..................................................................... 70
4.15 Concluding a paragraph: avoid redundancy..................................... 714.16 Summary .......................................................................................... 72
5 Being Concise and Removing Redundancy ............................................ 73
5.1 Cut, cut and then cut again #............................................................ 75
5.2 Write less, make less mistakes #...................................................... 75
5.3 Cut redundant words # ..................................................................... 76
5.4 Prefer verbs to nouns #..................................................................... 77
5.5 Use one verb (e.g. analyze) instead of a verb + noun
(e.g. make an analysis) #.................................................................. 77
5.6 Reduce the number of link words .................................................... 78
5.7 Choose the shortest words ............................................................... 79
5.8 Choose the shortest expressions....................................................... 80
5.9 Use the shortest adverbial expression .............................................. 81
5.10 Avoid pointless introductory phrases............................................... 81
5.11 Avoid impersonal expressions.......................................................... 82
5.12 Reduce your authorial voice ............................................................ 83
5.13 Be concise when referring to figures and tables.............................. 83
5.14 Use the infinitive when expressing an aim....................................... 84
5.15 Redundancy versus Conciseness: an example ................................. 84
5.16 Constantly ask yourself - does what I am writing
add value for the reader?.................................................................. 86
5.17 Summary .......................................................................................... 87
6 Avoiding Ambiguity and Vagueness ........................................................ 89
6.1 which / who vs. that # ...................................................................... 91
6.2 which, that and who # ...................................................................... 92
6.3 -ing form vs. that #........................................................................... 92
6.4 - ing form vs. subject + verb # ......................................................... 93
6.5 - ing form with by and thus # ........................................................... 94
6.6 a, one and the # ................................................................................ 95
6.7 Uncountable nouns........................................................................... 96
6.8 Pronouns # ....................................................................................... 97
6.9 Referring backwards: the former, the latter ..................................... 99
6.10 above and below............................................................................... 100
6.11 Use of respectively to disambiguate................................................. 100
6.12 and #................................................................................................. 101
6.13 both … and, either … or .................................................................. 101
6.14 False friends ..................................................................................... 102
6.15 Latin words - i.e. versus e.g. ............................................................ 102
6.16 Monologophobia - the constant search for synonyms # .................. 103
6.17 Be as precise as possible # ............................................................... 104
6.18 Choose the least generic word ......................................................... 106
6.19 Summary .......................................................................................... 107
7 Clarifying Who Did What........................................................................ 109
7.1 Check your journal’s style - first person or passive #...................... 111
7.2 How to form the passive and when to use it # ................................. 111
7.3 Ensure you use the right tenses to differentiate your work
from others, particularly when your journal prohibits
the use of we..................................................................................... 112
7.4 For journals that allow personal forms,
use we to distinguish yourself from other authors ........................... 114
7.5 Do not use we to explain your thought process ............................... 115
7.6 When we is acceptable, even when you are not
distinguishing yourself from other authors...................................... 115
7.7 Make good use of references # ........................................................ 116
7.8 Ensure that readers understand what you mean
when you write the authors #........................................................... 117
7.9 Use short paragraphs #..................................................................... 118
7.10 Make logical connections between other authors’
findings and yours #......................................................................... 118
7.11 Summary .......................................................................................... 119
8 Highlighting Your Findings...................................................................... 121
8.1 Ensure that referees can find and understand
the importance of your contribution #.............................................. 123
8.2 Help your findings to stand out visually
on the page by beginning a new paragraph #................................... 123
8.3 Make your sentences shorter than normal ....................................... 124
8.4 Present your key findings in a very short sentence
and list the implications ................................................................... 125
8.5 Consider using bullets and headings................................................ 126
8.6 Use tables and figures to attract attention........................................ 127
8.7 Signal to the reader that you are about to say something
important by using more dynamic language.................................... 127
8.8 Only use specific terms when describing your key findings #......... 128
8.9 Avoid flat phrases when discussing key findings #.......................... 128
8.10 Be explicit about your findings, so that even a non-expert
can understand them ........................................................................ 129
8.11 Convincing readers to believe your interpretation
of your data ...................................................................................... 130
8.12 Show your paper to a non-expert and get him / her
to underline your key findings......................................................... 131
8.13 Beware of overstating your project’s achievements
and significance................................................................................ 132
8.14 Summary .......................................................................................... 132
9 Hedging and Criticising............................................................................ 133
9.1 Why and when to hedge #................................................................ 135
9.2 Highlighting and hedging ................................................................ 137
9.3 Toning down verbs........................................................................... 138
9.4 Toning down adjectives and adverbs................................................ 138
9.5 Toning down strong claims by inserting adverbs............................. 139
9.6 Toning down the level of probability ............................................... 140
9.7 Anticipating alternative interpretations of your data ....................... 141
9.8 Telling the reader from what standpoint you
wish them to view your data ............................................................ 142
9.9 Dealing with the limitations of your research.................................. 143
9.10 Saving your own face: revealing and obscuring
your identity as the author in humanist subjects.............................. 144
9.11 Saving other author’s faces: put their research
in a positive light.............................................................................. 145
9.12 Saving other author’s faces: say their findings
are open to another interpretation .................................................... 146
9.13 Don’t overhedge............................................................................... 146
9.14 Hedging: An extended example from a Discussion section ............ 147
9.15 Summary .......................................................................................... 149
10 Paraphrasing and Plagiarism ................................................................ 151
10.1 Plagiarism is not difficult to spot # .............................................. 153
10.2 You can copy generic phrases # ................................................... 153
10.3 How to quote directly from other papers ..................................... 154
10.4 How to quote from another paper by paraphrasing #................... 155
10.5 Examples of how and how not to paraphrase #............................ 157
10.6 Paraphrasing the work of a third author....................................... 158
10.7 How to check whether you have inadvertently
committed plagiarism................................................................... 158
10.8 Summary...................................................................................... 159
Part II Sections of a Paper
11 Titles ......................................................................................................... 163
11.1 How can I generate a title? #........................................................ 165
11.2 How can I make my title more dynamic? .................................... 165
11.3 Can I use my title to make a claim?............................................. 166
11.4 Are questions in titles a good way to attract attention? ............... 166
11.5 When is a two-part title a good idea?........................................... 167
11.6 How should I punctuate my title? ................................................ 167
11.7 What words should I capitalize? .................................................. 167
11.8 What types of words should I try to include? .............................. 168
11.9 What other criteria should I use to decide whether
to include certain words or not?................................................... 168
11.10 Will adjectives such as innovative and novel
attract attention?........................................................................... 169
11.11 How can I make my title shorter? ................................................ 170
11.12 Is it a good idea to make my title concise by having
a string of nouns? # ...................................................................... 170
11.13 Should I use prepositions? # ........................................................ 172
11.14 Are articles (a / an, the) necessary? # .......................................... 172
11.15 How do I know whether to use a or an? ...................................... 174
11.16 Is using an automatic spell check enough? # ............................... 175
11.17 Summary: How can I assess the quality of my title? # ................ 176
12 Abstracts .................................................................................................. 177
12.1 What is an abstract? How long should it be? # ............................ 179
12.2 When should I write the Abstract?............................................... 179
12.3 How should I structure my Abstract? # ....................................... 180
12.4 Formal, natural and applied sciences.
How should I structure my abstract? How much
background information? ............................................................. 180
12.5 Social and behavioral sciences. How should I structure
my abstract? How much background information? ..................... 181
12.6 I am a historian. We don’t necessarily get ‘results’
or follow a specific methodology. What should I do? ................. 182
12.7 I am writing a review. How should I structure
my Abstract? ................................................................................ 183
12.8 How should I begin my Abstract?................................................ 184
12.9 What style should I use: personal or impersonal? ....................... 185
12.10 What tenses should I use? ............................................................ 186
12.11 How do I write a structured abstract? .......................................... 187
12.12 How do I write an abstract for a conference? .............................. 188
12.13 How do I write an abstract for a work in progress
that will be presented at a conference? ........................................ 189
12.14 How should I select my key words? How often should
I repeat them?............................................................................... 190
12.15 Should I mention any limitations in my research?....................... 190
12.16 What should I not mention in my Abstract? ................................ 191
12.17 How can I ensure that my Abstract has maximum impact?......... 191
12.18 What are some of the typical characteristics
of poor abstracts? # ...................................................................... 191
12.19 Summary: How can I assess the quality of my Abstract? #......... 193
13 Introduction............................................................................................. 195
13.1 How should I structure the Introduction? # ................................. 197
13.2 How should I begin my Introduction? # ...................................... 197
13.3 How should I structure the rest of the Introduction? # ................ 199
13.4 I do not work in the field of a ‘hard’ science.
Are there any other ways of beginning an Introduction?............. 200
13.5 What typical phrases should I avoid in my Introduction?............ 201
13.6 How does an Introduction differ from an Abstract? .................... 201
13.7 What tenses should I use? # ......................................................... 203
13.8 How should I outline the structure of my paper?......................... 204
13.9 Summary: How can I assess the quality
of my Introduction? #................................................................... 205
14 Review of the Literature......................................................................... 207
14.1 How should I structure my Review of the Literature? # .............. 209
14.2 How should I begin my literature review?
How can I structure it to show the progress
through the years? # ..................................................................... 209
14.3 What is the clearest way to refer to other authors?
Should I focus on the authors or their ideas? #............................ 210
14.4 What tenses should I use? # ......................................................... 211
14.5 How can I reduce the amount I write when reporting
the literature? ............................................................................... 213
14.6 How can I talk about the limitations of previous work
and the novelty of my work in a constructive
and diplomatic way? .................................................................... 214
14.7 Summary: How can I assess the quality
of my Literature Review? #.......................................................... 215
literaculitera.blogspot.comxx Contents
15 Methods.................................................................................................... 217
15.1 How should I structure the Methods? # ....................................... 219
15.2 How should I begin the Methods? # ............................................ 219
15.3 What tense should I use? Should I use the active
or passive? #................................................................................. 220
15.4 How many actions can I refer to in a single sentence? # ............. 221
15.5 How can I avoid my Methods appearing like
a series of lists? ............................................................................ 222
15.6 Can I use bullets? ......................................................................... 223
15.7 How can I reduce the word count?............................................... 223
15.8 How should I designate my study parameters
in a way that my readers do not have to constantly
refer backwards? .......................................................................... 223
15.9 Should I describe everything in chronological order? ................. 224
15.10 What grammatical constructions can I use to justify
my aims and choices? .................................................................. 225
15.11 What grammatical construction is used with allow,
enable and permit? #.................................................................... 225
15.12 How can I indicate the consequences of my
choices and actions?..................................................................... 227
15.13 How should I use the definite and indefinite articles
in the Methods?............................................................................ 227
15.14 Should I write numbers as digits (e.g. 5, 7) or as words
(e.g. five, seven)? ......................................................................... 228
15.15 How can I avoid ambiguity? ........................................................ 229
15.16 What other points should I include in the Methods?
How should I end the Methods? # ............................................... 230
15.17 Summary: How can I assess the quality
of my Methods section? # ............................................................ 231
16 Results ...................................................................................................... 233
16.1 How should I structure the Results? # ......................................... 235
16.2 How should I begin the Results? #............................................... 235
16.3 How should I structure the rest of the Results?
How should I end the Results? #.................................................. 235
16.4 Should I report any negative results? # ........................................ 236
16.5 What tenses should I use when reporting my Results? #............. 236
16.6 What style should I use when reporting my Results? # ............... 237
16.7 Can I use a more personal style?.................................................. 238
16.8 How can I show my readers the value of my data,
rather than just telling them?........................................................ 238
16.9 How should I comment on my tables and figures? ...................... 239
16.10 What is the difference between reporting and interpreting? ........ 240
16.11 How can I make it clear that I am talking about
my findings and not the findings of others? #.............................. 241
16.12 Summary: How can I assess the quality
of my Results section? # .............................................................. 242
17 Discussion................................................................................................. 243
17.1 How should I structure the Discussion? #.................................... 245
17.2 How should I begin the Discussion? #......................................... 246
17.3 Why should I compare my work with that of others? #............... 246
17.4 How should I compare my work with that of others? #............... 247
17.5 How should I end the Discussion if I do have
a Conclusions section?................................................................. 249
17.6 How should I end the Discussion if I do not
have a Conclusions section? ........................................................ 250
17.7 Active or passive? What kind of writing style should I use? # .... 250
17.8 How can I give my interpretation of my data while
taking into account other possible interpretations
that I do not agree with?............................................................... 251
17.9 How can I bring a little excitement to my Discussion? ............... 252
17.10 How can I use seems and appears to admit that I have
not investigated all possible cases? .............................................. 254
17.11 How can I show the pitfalls of other works
in the literature? ........................................................................... 254
17.12 How should I discuss the limitations of my research? #.............. 254
17.13 What other ways are there to lessen the negative
impact of the limitations of my study? ........................................ 256
17.14 Summary: How can I assess the quality
of my Discussion?........................................................................ 257
18 Conclusions.............................................................................................. 259
18.1 How should I structure the Conclusions? # ................................. 261
18.2 How should I begin my Conclusions?
How can I increase the impact of my Conclusions? # ................. 262
18.3 How can I differentiate my Conclusions
from my Abstract? ....................................................................... 263
18.4 How can I differentiate my Conclusions
from my Introduction and from the last paragraph
of my Discussion?........................................................................ 265
18.5 I don’t have any clear Conclusions, what can I do?..................... 265
18.6 How can I end my Conclusions? #............................................... 266
18.7 What tenses should I use? ............................................................ 268
18.8 Summary: How can I assess the quality
of my Conclusions? #................................................................... 269
19 Useful Phrases ......................................................................................... 271
19.1 Index of Useful Phrases # ............................................................ 273
19.2 How to use the Useful Phrases #.................................................. 274
20 The Final Check ...................................................................................... 295
20.1 Ensure your paper is as good as it could possibly
be the first time you submit it # ................................................... 297
20.2 Print out your paper. Don’t just correct it directly
on your computer # ...................................................................... 297
literaculitera.blogspot.comxxii Contents
20.3 Always have the referee in mind #............................................... 297
20.4 Anticipate referees’ comments on your English #....................... 298
20.5 Judge your writing in English in the same way
as you would judge it if you had written the paper
in your native language ................................................................ 300
20.6 Cut, cut, cut and keep cutting #.................................................... 301
20.7 Check your paper for readability ................................................. 302
20.8 Check for clarity in the logical order of your
argumentation............................................................................... 303
20.9 Do a ‘quality control’ on your paper............................................ 303
20.10 Be careful with cut and pastes ..................................................... 303
20.11 Double check that you have followed the journal’s
style guide # ................................................................................. 304
20.12 Make sure that everything is completely accurate # .................... 304
20.13 Make sure everything is consistent # ........................................... 304
20.14 Dealing with rejections ................................................................ 305
20.15 Take editorial comments seriously............................................... 306
20.16 Consider using a professional editing service #........................... 306
20.17 Don’t forget the Acknowledgements ........................................... 306
20.18 Write a good letter / email to accompany
your manuscript ........................................................................... 307
20.19 Final check: spelling. Don’t underestimate
the importance of spelling mistakes #.......................................... 307
20.20 Summary #................................................................................... 308
Links and References...................................................................................... 309
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... 315
About the Author ............................................................................................ 317
Contact the Author ......................................................................................... 319
Index................................................................................................................. 321

AP English Literature & Composition For Dummies

2012-02-26T13:21:00.000+02:00

Ap English Literature & Composition For Dummies prepares you for — you guessed it —

the AP Literature and Composition Exam (not to be confused with the AP English

Language and Composition exam, which covers all-purpose, general writing on current

events, personal experience, and culture). This exam is a product of the College Board,

a not-for-profit outfit based in Princeton, New Jersey. The College Board is the group of edu-

cators and educational institutions that administers the SAT, the PSAT/NMSQT, and other

laugh-a-minute hurdles that you face before entering college. “AP” stands for “advanced

placement,” which means that anyone passing the exam has demonstrated college-level

achievement before actually entering an ivy-covered building. In other words, the AP label

is for serious brainwork.

Did I scare you? Calm down. AP material is tough, but it’s also teachable. You don’t have to

be a natural-born literary genius to score well on the AP English exam. You just have to

scrape the rust off your thinking cap and do some of the exercises in this book. In fact, you

don’t even have to go through all the exercises. (You’ll still have some time to download

some music and chat with your friends.) After you get acquainted with the AP exam format

and brush up on your reading and writing skills, you can score big on the AP English

Literature and Composition exam.

After a quick overview of the exam and a crash course on timelines and strategies for test
preparation, this book hits each of the genres (types) of literature covered on the exam.
Within each genre, I review the basic elements and tell you what to look for when you’re read-
ing. I also show you how to keep track of what you found — important events, characters,
themes, and elements of style. To improve your literary skills — and grades! — even more,
I detail the easiest strategies for writing an essay about poetry, prose, and dramatic works.

Contents at a Glance
Introduction.................................................................................1
Part I: Hamlet Hits the Answer Grid: An Overview of
the AP Lit Exam and Prep .............................................................7
Chapter 1: Flying Over the AP Lit Exam: An Overview............................................................................9
Chapter 2: “The Readiness Is All”: Preparing for the Exam ..................................................................21
Chapter 3: Getting the Most Out of English Class ..................................................................................31
Part II: Poetry in Motion.............................................................53
Chapter 4: Sorting Out Poetic Devices ....................................................................................................55
Chapter 5: Unraveling Poetic Meaning ....................................................................................................67
Chapter 6: Acing Multiple-Choice Poetry Questions .............................................................................77
Chapter 7: Mastering Essay Questions on Poetic Passages..................................................................89
Chapter 8: Flexing Your Poetry Muscles: Practice Questions ............................................................101
Part III: Getting the Story from Prose and Drama .......................121
Chapter 9: Reading Fiction and Drama Passages .................................................................................123
Chapter 10: . . . And Nothing but the Truth: Reading Nonfiction Passages ......................................141
Chapter 11: Conquering Multiple-Choice Prose and Drama Questions ............................................151
Chapter 12: Writing Stellar Essays on Prose and Drama Passages....................................................165
Chapter 13: Practice Makes Perfect: Prose and Drama Questions ....................................................179
Part IV: Paired Passages and the Open-Ended Essay...................203
Chapter 14: Free at Last: The Open-Ended Essay ................................................................................205
Chapter 15: Double Trouble: Paired-Passage Essays...........................................................................219
Part V: Dress Rehearsal: Practice Exams ....................................235
Chapter 16: Killing Three Perfectly Innocent Hours: Practice Exam 1 ..............................................239
Chapter 17: The Moment of Truth: Scoring Practice Exam 1 .............................................................253
Chapter 18: Spoiling Three More Hours: Practice Exam 2 ..................................................................279
Chapter 19: Checking In: Scoring Practice Exam 2...............................................................................295
Part VI: The Part of Tens...........................................................317
Chapter 20: Ten Mistakes That Kill Your Essay Score .........................................................................319
Chapter 21: Ten Ways to Increase Your Know-How Without Studying..............................................325
Part VII: Appendixes.................................................................331
Appendix A: Literary Works....................................................................................................................333
Appendix B: Quick Grammar Review.....................................................................................................339
Index.......................................................................................347

ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD THROUGH THE RENAISSANCE (The Britannica Guide to World Literature)

2012-02-23T10:45:00.002+02:00

Perhaps the best way to start appreciating early English literature is to not think of it as literature at all. The earliest stories in the English language were not written for academic study but as an extension of the oral tradition of relating grand and fanciful tales for entertainment.

These stories, then, were the blockbuster summer movies of their day--tales of adventure and romance, with brave knights, beautiful women, horrible monsters, and mysterious spirits.

Over the centuries these stories became a part of English literature, and along the way, the gripping manner in which they were told made the leap from word of mouth to the page. This book will show how that transition was made as it takes you on a journey through time and literary development.

To study English literature from the Old English period to the Renaissance is to witness the movement from one-dimensional action stories and religious lessons to stories with more subtleties of plot and character development and the development of language usage from simple conventions to new uses of sound and meaning. In short, this period began the rich tradition of English literature that continues to grow today.

CONTENT

Introduction: 10

Chapter 1: The Old

English Period 21

Poetry 24

The Major Manuscripts 25

Problems of Dating 25

Religious Verse 26

Elegiac and Heroic Verse 27

Prose 29

Early Translations

into English 30

Late 10th- and

11th-Century Prose 32

Signiﬁ cant Figures

and Texts 33

Notable Old

English Writers 33

Notable Old

English Texts 39

Chapter 2: The Middle

English Period 50

Early Middle

English Poetry 50

Inﬂ uence of French

Poetry 51

Fabliau 53

Didactic Poetry 54

Verse Romance 54

Beast Epic 55

Arthurian Legend 56

Breton Lay 59

The Lyric 59

Early Middle English Prose 61

Later Middle

English Poetry 63

Alliterative Poetry 63

Courtly Poetry 68

Popular and

Secular Verse 72

Political Verse 73

Later Middle English Prose 73

Religious Prose 74

Secular Prose 75

Middle English Drama 77

Mystery Plays 77

Morality Plays 81

Everyman 83

Miracle Plays 83

The Transition from

Medieval to Renaissance 84

Signiﬁ cant Middle English

Literary Figures 86

William Caxton 86

Geoﬀ rey Chaucer 88

John Gower 102

Lawamon 104

Robert Mannyng 104

Orm 106

Richard Rolle 107

Chapter 3: The Renaissance

Period (1550–1660) 108

Social Conditions 109

Intellectual and Religious

Revolution 109

The Race for Cultural

Development 111

Elizabethan Poetry

and Prose 114

Development of the

English Language 115

Sir Philip Sidney and

Edmund Spenser 117

Elizabethan Lyric 121

The Sonnet Sequence 122

Other Poetic Styles 123

Prose Styles, 1550–1600 127

Early Stuart Poetry

and Prose 130

House of Stuart 131

The Metaphysical Poets 133

The Metaphysicals 133

Ben Jonson and the

Cavalier Poets 138

Continued Inﬂ uence of

Spenser 140

Spenserian Stanza 141

The Eﬀ ect of Religion

and Science on Early

Stuart Prose 142

Prose Styles 144

John Milton and the

Renaissance 146

Milton’s Life

and Works 148

Milton’s Inﬂ uence 173

Chapter 4: Elizabethan

and Early Stuart Drama 177

Theatres in London

and the Provinces 178

Professional Playwrights 180

Blank Verse 181

Christopher Marlowe 182

Marlowe’s Works 184

Literary Career 188

Assessment 189

William Shakespeare 191

Shakespeare the Man 191

Shakespeare’s

Early Plays 197

Plays of the Middle

and Late Years 207

The Poems 233

Collaborations and

Spurious Attributions 236

Questions of

Authorship 237

Playwrights after

Shakespeare 240

Ben Jonson 241

Other Jacobean

Dramatists 244

The Last Renaissance

Dramatists 246

Epilogue 249

Glossary 251

Bibliography 253

Index 257

offline,further reading,book,pdf,practice

Focus on Advanced English CAE Grammar Practice (Longman)

2012-02-21T18:55:00.000+02:00

The Grammar Practice Book includes study tips to help with common grammatical problems Exam style exercises and progress tests keep students focussed on the demands of the CAE exam

AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM 1600 THROUGH THE 1850s (The Britannica Guide to World Literature)

2012-02-21T15:45:00.002+02:00

The roots of American literature lie in the 17th century—before there actually was an America. Early texts that originated in North American settlements throughout the 1600s consisted of religious tracts that explored the relationship between church and state, as well as works that could be referred to as “utilitarian,” since they consisted of descriptions of everyday life. These fi rsthand accounts of traders, explorers, and colonists soon gave way to more compelling material, and the canon of American literature began to take shape. This volume traces the progress of the written word in a land that itself was evolving as a nation.

The works of Jamestown leader John Smith, who wrote about his experiences in the fi rst permanent English settlement in North America, are considered to be where American literature originated. Smith’s works, which include A Description of New England (1616) and The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624), were intended to interest other Englishmen in emigrating to the colonies. Other colonial leaders added their own volumes to America’s early literary history. Among the most notable is William Penn’s Brief Account of the Province of Pennsylvania (1682).

CONTENTS

Introduction: 10

Chapter 1: Early American

Literature 21

John Smith 25

The State of Verse 25

Michael Wigglesworth 26

Bay Psalm Book 29

The Story of Mary

Rowlandson 29

Chapter 2: The 18th Century 33

Great Awakening 34

Writers of the Revolution 36

Poor Richard 37

Thomas Paine 38

The New Nation 45

Notable Works of

the Period 49

Poetry 49

Drama and the Novel 49

Other Signiﬁ cant Figures

of the Century 50

Joel Barlow 50

Robert Montgomery Bird 52

Hugh Henry

Brackenridge 53

Charles Brockden Brown 54

William Hill Brown 56

William Byrd of

Westover 57

Timothy Dwight 58

Olaudah Equiano 59

Elizabeth Graeme

Ferguson 62

Hannah Webster Foster 63

Philip Freneau 64

Sarah Kemble Knight 65

Sarah Wentworth

Apthorp Morton 67

Susanna Rowson 68

Mercy Otis Warren 69

Phillis Wheatley 70

Chapter 3: Early 19th-

Century Literature 73

Willliam Cullen Bryant 73

The North American

Review 75

Washington Irving 76

James Fenimore Cooper 79

Early Years 79

Novels 82

Cultural and Political

Involvement 85

Return to America 86

Edgar Allan Poe 100

Life and Writings 102

Appraisal 105

Sarah Helen Power

Whitman 108

Other Signiﬁ cant Writers

of the Age 109

Maria Gowen Brooks 110

Joseph Dennie 111

Joseph Rodman Drake 112

James Hall 113

John P. Kennedy 114

James Kirke Paulding 115

John Howard Payne 116

William Gilmore Simms 117

Chapter 4: The American

Renaissance 120

New England Brahmins 121

Oliver Wendell Holmes 121

Brahmin 122

Henry Wadsworth

Longfellow 123

James Russell Lowell 127

Seba Smith 130

The Transcendentalists 130

Unitarianism 132

Ralph Waldo Emerson 132

Transcendentalism 139

Henry David Thoreau 140

Bronson Alcott 148

Orestes Augustus

Brownson 150

George Ripley 152

Jones Very 153

New England Reformers

and Historians 153

George Bancroft 154

Richard Henry Dana 157

Margaret Fuller 158

William Lloyd Garrison 160

Slave Narrative 164

Edward Everett Hale 167

Julia Ward Howe 168

John Lothrop Motley 169

Francis Parkman 170

Harriet Beecher Stowe 174

John Greenleaf Whittier 176

Hawthorne, Melville,

and Whitman 179

Nathaniel Hawthorne 181

Herman Melville 189

Walt Whitman 198

Free Verse 206

Epilogue 222

Glossary 223

Bibliography 225

Index 228

Virginia Woolf – An Unwritten Novel (read online)

2012-02-18T13:00:00.001+02:00

SUCH AN EXPRESSION of unhappiness was enough by itself to make one's eyes slide above the paper's edge to the poor woman's faceinsignificant without that look, almost a symbol of human destiny with it. Life's what you see in people's eyes; life's what they learn, and, having learnt it, never, though they seek to hide it, cease to be aware ofwhat? That life's like that, it seems. Five faces oppositefive mature facesand the knowledge in each face. Strange, though, how people want to conceal it! Marks of reticence are on all those faces: lips shut, eyes shaded, each one of the five doing something to hide or stultify his knowledge. One smokes; another reads; a third checks entries in a pocket book; a fourth stares at the map of the line framed opposite; and the fifththe terrible thing about the fifth is that she does nothing at all. She looks at life. Ah, but my poor, unfortunate woman, do play the gamedo, for all our sakes, conceal it!

As if she heard me, she looked up, shifted slightly in her seat and sighed. She seemed to apologise and at the same time to say to me, "If only you knew!" Then she looked at life again. "But I do know," I answered silently, glancing at the Times for manners' sake. "I know the whole business. 'Peace between Germany and the Allied Powers was yesterday officially ushered in at ParisSignor Nitti, the Italian Prime Ministera passenger train at Doncaster was in collision with a goods train...' We all knowthe Times knowsbut we pretend we don't." My eyes had once more crept over the paper's rim. She shuddered, twitched her arm queerly to the middle of her back and shook her head. Again I dipped into my great reservoir of life. "Take what you like," I continued, "births, death, marriages, Court Circular, the habits of birds, Leonardo da Vinci, the Sandhills murder, high wages and the cost of livingoh, take what you like," I repeated, "it's all in the Times!" Again with infinite weariness she moved her head from side to side until, like a top exhausted with spinning, it settled on her neck.

The Times was no protection against such sorrow as hers. But other human beings forbade intercourse. The best thing to do against life was to fold the paper so that it made a perfect square, crisp, thick, impervious even to life. This done, I glanced up quickly, armed with a shield of my own. She pierced through my shield; she gazed into my eyes as if searching any sediment of courage at the depths of them and damping it to clay. Her twitch alone denied all hope, discounted all illusion.

So we rattled through Surrey and across the border into Sussex. But with my eyes upon life I did not see that the other travellers had left, one by one, till, save for the man who read, we were alone together. Here was Three Bridges station. We drew slowly down the platform and stopped. Was he going to leave us? I prayed both waysI prayed last that he might stay. At that instant he roused himself, crumpled his paper contemptuously, like a thing done with, burst open the door, and left us alone.

The unhappy woman, leaning a little forward, palely and colourlessly addressed metalked of stations and holidays, of brothers at Eastbourne, and the time of the year, which was, I forget now, early or late. But at last looking from the window and seeing, I knew, only life, she breathed, "Staying awaythat's the drawback of it" Ah, now we approached the catastrophe, "My sister-in-law"the bitterness of her tone was like lemon on cold steel, and speaking, not to me, but to herself, she muttered, "nonsense, she would saythat's what they all say," and while she spoke she fidgeted as though the skin on her back were as a plucked fowl's in a poulterer's shop-window.

"Oh, that cow!" she broke off nervously, as though the great wooden cow in the meadow had shocked her and saved her from some indiscretion. Then she shuddered, and then she made the awkward, angular movement that I had seen before, as if, after the spasm, some spot between the shoulders burnt or itched. Then again she looked the most unhappy woman in the world, and I once more reproached her, though not with the same conviction, for if there were a reason, and if I knew the reason, the stigma was removed from life.

"Sisters-in-law," I said

Her lips pursed as if to spit venom at the word; pursed they remained. All she did was to take her glove and rub hard at a spot on the window-pane. She rubbed as if she would rub something out for eversome stain, some indelible contamination. Indeed, the spot remained for all her rubbing, and back she sank with the shudder and the clutch of the arm I had come to expect. Something impelled me to take my glove and rub my window. There, too, was a little speck on the glass. For all my rubbing, it remained. And then the spasm went through me; I crooked my arm and plucked at the middle of my back. My skin, too, felt like the damp chicken's skin in the poulterer's shop-window; one spot between the shoulders itched and irritated, felt clammy, felt raw. Could I reach it? Surreptitiously I tried. She saw me. A smile of infinite irony, infinite sorrow, flitted and faded from her face. But she had communicated, shared her secret, passed her poison; she would speak no more. Leaning back in my corner, shielding my eyes from her eyes, seeing only the slopes and hollows, greys and purples, of the winter's landscape, I read her message, deciphered her secret, reading it beneath her gaze.

Hilda's the sister-in-law. Hilda? Hilda? Hilda MarshHilda the blooming, the full bosomed, the matronly. Hilda stands at the door as the cab draws up, holding a coin. "Poor Minnie, more of a grasshopper than everold cloak she had last year. Well, well, with two children these days one can't do more. No, Minnie, I've got it; here you are, cabbynone of your ways with me. Come in, Minnie. Oh, I could carry you, let alone your basket!" So they go into the dining-room. "Aunt Minnie, children."

Slowly the knives and forks sink from the upright. Down they get (Bob and Barbara), hold out hands stiffly; back again to their chairs, staring between the resumed mouthfuls. [But this we'll skip; ornaments, curtains, trefoil china plate, yellow oblongs of cheese, white squares of biscuitskipoh, but wait! Half-way through luncheon one of those shivers; Bob stares at her, spoon in mouth. "Get on with your pudding, Bob;" but Hilda disapproves. "Why should she twitch?" Skip, skip, till we reach the landing on the upper floor; stairs brass-bound; linoleum worn; oh, yes! little bedroom looking out over the roofs of Eastbournezigzagging roofs like the spines of caterpillars, this way, that way, striped red and yellow, with blue-black slating]. Now, Minnie, the door's shut; Hilda heavily descends to the basement; you unstrap the straps of your basket, lay on the bed a meagre nightgown, stand side by side furred felt slippers. The looking-glassno, you avoid the looking-glass. Some methodical disposition of hat-pins. Perhaps the shell box has something in it? You shake it; it's the pearl stud there was last yearthat's all. And then the sniff, the sigh, the sitting by the window. Three o'clock on a December afternoon; the rain drizzling; one light low in the skylight of a drapery emporium; another high in a servant's bedroomthis one goes out. That gives her nothing to look at. A moment's blanknessthen, what are you thinking? (Let me peep across at her opposite; she's asleep or pretending it; so what would she think about sitting at the window at three o'clock in the afternoon? Health, money, hills, her God?) Yes, sitting on the very edge of the chair looking over the roofs of Eastbourne, Minnie Marsh prays to God. That's all very well; and she may rub the pane too, as though to see God better; but what God does she see? Who's the God of Minnie Marsh, the God of the back streets of Eastbourne, the God of three o'clock in the afternoon? I, too, see roofs, I see sky; but, oh, dearthis seeing of Gods! More like President Kruger than Prince Albertthat's the best I can do for him; and I see him on a chair, in a black frock-coat, not so very high up either; I can manage a cloud or two for him to sit on; and then his hand trailing in the clouds holds a rod, a truncheon is it?black, thick, horneda brutal old bullyMinnie's God! Did he send the itch and the patch and the twitch? Is that why she prays? What she rubs on the window is the stain of sin. Oh, she committed some crime!

I have my choice of crimes. The woods flit and flyin summer there are bluebells; in the opening there, when Spring comes, primroses. A parting, was it, twenty years ago? Vows broken? Not Minnie's!...She was faithful. How she nursed her mother! All her savings on the tombstonewreaths under glassdaffodils in jars. But I'm off the track. A crime...They would say she kept her sorrow, suppressed her secrether sex, they'd saythe scientific people. But what flummery to saddle her with sex! Nomore like this. Passing down the streets of Croyden twenty years ago, the violet loops of ribbon in the draper's window spangled in the electric light catch her eye. She lingerspast six. Still by running she can reach home. She pushes through the glass swing door. It's sale-time. Shallow trays brim with ribbons. She pauses, pulls this, fingers that with the raised roses on itno need to choose, no need to buy, and each tray with its surprises. "We don't shut till seven," and then it is seven. She runs, she rushes, home she reaches, but too late. Neighboursthe doctorbaby brotherthe kettlescaldedhospitaldeador only the shock of it, the blame? Ah, but the detail matters nothing! It's what she carries with her; the spot, the crime, the thing to expiate, always there between her shoulders. "Yes," she seems to nod to me, "it's the thing I did."

Whether you did, or what you did, I don't mind; it's not the thing I want. The draper's window looped with violetthat'll do; a little cheap perhaps, a little commonplacesince one has a choice of crimes, but then so many (let me peep across againstill sleeping, or pretending to sleep! white, worn, the mouth closeda touch of obstinacy, more than one would thinkno hint of sex)so many crimes aren't your crime; your crime was cheap; only the retribution solemn; for now the church door opens, the hard wooden pew receives her; on the brown tiles she kneels; every day, winter, summer, dusk, dawn (here she's at it) prays. All her sins fall, fall, for ever fall. The spot receives them. It's raised, it's red, it's burning. Next she twitches. Small boys point. "Bob at lunch to-day"But elderly women are the worst.

Indeed now you can't sit praying any longer. Kruger's sunk beneath the cloudswashed over as with a painter's brush of liquid grey, to which he adds a tinge of blackeven the tip of the truncheon gone now. That's what always happens! Just as you've seen him, felt him, someone interrupts. It's Hilda now.

How you hate her! She'll even lock the bathroom door overnight, too, though it's only cold water you want, and sometimes when the night's been bad it seems as if washing helped. And John at breakfastthe childrenmeals are worst, and sometimes there are friendsferns don't altogether hide 'emthey guess, too; so out you go along the front, where the waves are grey, and the papers blow, and the glass shelters green and draughty, and the chairs cost tuppencetoo muchfor there must be preachers along the sands. Ah, that's a niggerthat's a funny manthat's a man with parakeetspoor little creatures! Is there no one here who thinks of God?just up there, over the pier, with his rodbut nothere's nothing but grey in the sky or if it's blue the white clouds hide him, and the musicit's military musicand what are they fishing for? Do they catch them? How the children stare! Well, then home a back way"Home a back way!" The words have meaning; might have been spoken by the old man with whiskersno, no, he didn't really speak; but everything has meaningplacards leaning against doorwaysnames above shop-windowsred fruit in basketswomen's heads in the hairdresser'sall say "Minnie Marsh!" But here's a jerk. "Eggs are cheaper!" That's what always happens! I was heading her over the waterfall, straight for madness, when, like a flock of dream sheep, she turns t'other way and runs between my fingers. Eggs are cheaper. Tethered to the shores of the world, none of the crimes, sorrows, rhapsodies, or insanities for poor Minnie Marsh; never late for luncheon; never caught in a storm without a mackintosh; never utterly unconscious of the cheapness of eggs. So she reaches homescrapes her boots.

Have I read you right? But the human facethe human face at the top of the fullest sheet of print holds more, withholds more. Now, eyes open, she looks out; and in the human eyehow d'you define it?there's a breaka divisionso that when you've grasped the stem the butterfly's offthe moth that hangs in the evening over the yellow flowermove, raise your hand, off, high, away. I won't raise my hand. Hang still, then, quiver, life, soul, spirit, whatever you are of Minnie MarshI, too, on my flowerthe hawk over the downalone, or what were the worth of life? To rise; hang still in the evening, in the midday; hang still over the down. The flicker of a handoff, up! then poised again. Alone, unseen; seeing all so still down there, all so lovely. None seeing, none caring. The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages. Air above, air below. And the moon and immortality...Oh, but I drop to the turf! Are you down too, you in the corner, what's your namewomanMinnie Marsh; some such name as that? There she is, tight to her blossom; opening her hand-bag, from which she takes a hollow shellan eggwho was saying that eggs were cheaper? You or I? Oh, it was you who said it on the way home, you remember, when the old gentleman, suddenly opening his umbrellaor sneezing was it? Anyhow, Kruger went, and you came "home a back way," and scraped your boots. Yes. And now you lay across your knees a pocket-handkerchief into which drop little angular fragments of eggshellfragments of a mapa puzzle. I wish I could piece them together! If you would only sit still. She's moved her kneesthe map's in bits again. Down the slopes of the Andes the white blocks of marble go bounding and hurtling, crushing to death a whole troop of Spanish muleteers, with their convoyDrake's booty, gold and silver. But to return

To what, to where? She opened the door, and, putting her umbrella in the standthat goes without saying; so, too, the whiff of beef from the basement; dot, dot, dot. But what I cannot thus eliminate, what I must, head down, eyes shut, with the courage of a battalion and the blindness of a bull, charge and disperse are, indubitably, the figures behind the ferns, commercial travellers. There I've hidden them all this time in the hope that somehow they'd disappear, or better still emerge, as indeed they must, if the story's to go on gathering richness and rotundity, destiny and tragedy, as stories should, rolling along with it two, if not three, commercial travellers and a whole grove of aspidistra. "The fronds of the aspidistra only partly concealed the commercial traveller" Rhododendrons would conceal him utterly, and into the bargain give me my fling of red and white, for which I starve and strive; but rhododendrons in Eastbournein Decemberon the Marshes' tableno, no, I dare not; it's all a matter of crusts and cruets, frills and ferns. Perhaps there'll be a moment later by the sea. Moreover, I feel, pleasantly pricking through the green fretwork and over the glacis of cut glass, a desire to peer and peep at the man oppositeone's as much as I can manage. James Moggridge is it, whom the Marshes call Jimmy? [Minnie, you must promise not to twitch till I've got this straight]. James Moggridge travels inshall we say buttons?but the time's not come for bringing them inthe big and the little on the long cards, some peacock-eyed, others dull gold; cairngorms some, and others coral spraysbut I say the time's not come. He travels, and on Thursdays, his Eastbourne day, takes his meals with the Marshes. His red face, his little steady eyesby no means altogether commonplacehis enormous appetite (that's safe; he won't look at Minnie till the bread's swamped the gravy dry), napkin tucked diamond-wisebut this is primitive, and whatever it may do the reader, don't take me in. Let's dodge to the Moggridge household, set that in motion. Well, the family boots are mended on Sundays by James himself. He reads Truth. But his passion? Rosesand his wife a retired hospital nurseinterestingfor God's sake let me have one woman with a name I like! But no; she's of the unborn children of the mind, illicit, none the less loved, like my rhododendrons. How many die in every novel that's writtenthe best, the dearest, while Moggridge lives. It's life's fault. Here's Minnie eating her egg at the moment opposite and at t'other end of the lineare we past Lewes?there must be Jimmyor what's her twitch for?

There must be Moggridgelife's fault. Life imposes her laws; life blocks the way; life's behind the fern; life's the tyrant; oh, but not the bully! No, for I assure you I come willingly; I come wooed by Heaven knows what compulsion across ferns and cruets, tables splashed and bottles smeared. I come irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the firm flesh, in the robust spine, wherever I can penetrate or find foothold on the person, in the soul, of Moggridge the man. The enormous stability of the fabric; the spine tough as whalebone, straight as oak-tree; the ribs radiating branches; the flesh taut tarpaulin; the red hollows; the suck and regurgitation of the heart; while from above meat falls in brown cubes and beer gushes to be churned to blood againand so we reach the eyes. Behind the aspidistra they see something; black, white, dismal; now the plate again; behind the aspidistra they see elderly woman; "Marsh's sister, Hilda's more my sort;" the tablecloth now. "Marsh would know what's wrong with Morrises..." talk that over; cheese has come; the plate again; turn it roundthe enormous fingers; now the woman opposite. "Marsh's sisternot a bit like Marsh; wretched, elderly female....You should feed your hens....God's truth, what's set her twitching? Not what I said? Dear, dear, dear! These elderly women. Dear, dear!"

[Yes, Minnie; I know you've twitched, but one momentJames Moggridge].

"Dear, dear, dear!" How beautiful the sound is! like the knock of a mallet on seasoned timber, like the throb of the heart of an ancient whaler when the seas press thick and the green is clouded. "Dear, dear!" what a passing bell for the souls of the fretful to soothe them and solace them, lap them in linen, saying, "So long. Good luck to you!" and then, "What's your pleasure?" for though Moggridge would pluck his rose for her, that's done, that's over. Now what's the next thing? "Madam, you'll miss your train," for they don't linger.

That's the man's way; that's the sound that reverberates; that's St. Paul's and the motor-omnibuses. But we're brushing the crumbs off. Oh, Moggridge, you won't stay? You must be off? Are you driving through Eastbourne this afternoon in one of those little carriages? Are you the man who's walled up in green cardboard boxes, and sometimes has the blinds down, and sometimes sits so solemn staring like a sphinx, and always there's a look of the sepulchral, something of the undertaker, the coffin, and the dusk about horse and driver? Do tell mebut the doors slammed. We shall never meet again. Moggridge, farewell!

Yes, yes, I'm coming. Right up to the top of the house. One moment I'll linger. How the mud goes round in the mindwhat a swirl these monsters leave, the waters rocking, the weeds waving and green here, black there, striking to the sand, till by degrees the atoms reassemble, the deposit sifts itself, and again through the eyes one sees clear and still, and there comes to the lips some prayer for the departed, some obsequy for the souls of those one nods to, the people one never meets again.

James Moggridge is dead now, gone for ever. Well, Minnie"I can face it no longer." If she said that(Let me look at her. She is brushing the eggshell into deep declivities). She said it certainly, leaning against the wall of the bedroom, and plucking at the little balls which edge the claret-coloured curtain. But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking?the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the worlda coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors. "I can bear it no longer," her spirit says. "That man at lunchHildathe children." Oh, heavens, her sob! It's the spirit wailing its destiny, the spirit driven hither, thither, lodging on the diminishing carpetsmeagre footholdsshrunken shreds of all the vanishing universelove, life, faith, husband, children, I know not what splendours and pageantries glimpsed in girlhood. "Not for menot for me."

But thenthe muffins, the bald elderly dog? Bead mats I should fancy and the consolation of underlinen. If Minnie Marsh were run over and taken to hospital, nurses and doctors themselves would exclaim....There's the vista and the visionthere's the distancethe blue blot at the end of the avenue, while, after all, the tea is rich, the muffin hot, and the dog"Benny, to your basket, sir, and see what mother's brought you!" So, taking the glove with the worn thumb, defying once more the encroaching demon of what's called going in holes, you renew the fortifications, threading the grey wool, running it in and out.

Running it in and out, across and over, spinning a web through which God himselfhush, don't think of God! How firm the stitches are! You must be proud of your darning. Let nothing disturb her. Let the light fall gently, and the clouds show an inner vest of the first green leaf. Let the sparrow perch on the twig and shake the raindrop hanging to the twig's elbow.... Why look up? Was it a sound, a thought? Oh, heavens! Back again to the thing you did, the plate glass with the violet loops? But Hilda will come. Ignominies, humiliations, oh! Close the breach.

Having mended her glove, Minnie Marsh lays it in the drawer. She shuts the drawer with decision. I catch sight of her face in the glass. Lips are pursed. Chin held high. Next she laces her shoes. Then she touches her throat. What's your brooch? Mistletoe or merry-thought? And what is happening? Unless I'm much mistaken, the pulse's quickened, the moment's coming, the threads are racing, Niagara's ahead. Here's the crisis! Heaven be with you! Down she goes. Courage, courage! Face it, be it! For God's sake don't wait on the mat now! There's the door! I'm on your side. Speak! Confront her, confound her soul!

"Oh, I beg your pardon! Yes, this is Eastbourne. I'll reach it down for you. Let me try the handle." [But, Minnie, though we keep up pretences, I've read you rightI'm with you now].

"That's all your luggage?"

"Much obliged, I'm sure."

(But why do you look about you? Hilda won't come to the station, nor John; and Moggridge is driving at the far side of Eastbourne).

"I'll wait by my bag, ma'am, that's safest. He said he'd meet me....Oh, there he is! That's my son."

So they walked off together.

Well, but I'm confounded....Surely, Minnie, you know better! A strange young man....Stop! I'll tell himMinnie!Miss Marsh!I don't know though. There's something queer in her cloak as it blows. Oh, but it's untrue; it's indecent....Look how he bends as they reach the gateway. She finds her ticket. What's the joke? Off they go, down the road, side by side....Well, my world's done for! What do I stand on? What do I know? That's not Minnie. There never was Moggridge. Who am I? Life's bare as bone.

And yet the last look of themhe stepping from the kerb and she following him round the edge of the big building brims me with wonderfloods me anew. Mysterious figures! Mother and son. Who are you? Why do you walk down the street? Where to-night will you sleep, and then, to-morrow? Oh, how it whirls and surgesfloats me afresh! I start after them. People drive this way and that. The white light splutters and pours. Plate-glass windows. Carnations; chrysanthemums. Ivy in dark gardens. Milk carts at the door. Wherever I go, mysterious figures, I see you, turning the corner, mothers and sons; you, you, you. I hasten, I follow. This, I fancy, must be the sea. Grey is the landscape; dim as ashes; the water murmurs and moves. If I fall on my knees, if I go through the ritual, the ancient antics, it's you, unknown figures, you I adore; if I open my arms, it's you I embrace, you I draw to meadorable world!

Angela Carter - Peter and the wolf (read online)

2012-02-14T10:51:00.000+02:00

At length the grandeur of the mountains becomes monotonous; with familiarity, the landscape ceases to provoke awe and wonder and the traveller sees the alps with the indifferent eye of those who always live there. Above a certain line, no trees grow. Shadows of clouds move across the bare alps as freely as the clouds themselves move across the sky.

A girl from a village on the lower slopes left her widowed mother to marry a man who lived up in the empty places. Soon she was pregnant. In October, there was a severe storm. The old woman knew her daughter was near her time and waited for a message but none arrived. After the storm passed, the old woman went up to see for herself, taking her grown son with her because she was afraid.

From a long way off, they saw no smoke rising from the chimney. Solitude yawned round them. The open door banged backwards and forwards on its hinges. Solitude engulfed them. There were traces of wolf-dung on the floor so they knew wolves had been in the house but left the corpse of the young mother alone although of her baby nothing was left except some mess that showed it had been born. Nor was there a trace of the son-in-law but a gnawed foot in a boot.

They wrapped the dead in a quilt and took it home with them. Now it was late. The howling of the wolves mutilated the approaching silence of the night.

Winter came with icy blasts, when everyone stays indoors and stokes the fire. The old woman's son married the blacksmith's daughter and she moved in with them. The snow melted and it was spring. By the next Christmas, there was a bouncing grandson. Time passed. More children came.

When the eldest grandson, Peter, reached his seventh summer, he was old enough to go up the mountain with his father, as the men did every year, to let the goats feed on the young grass. There Peter sat in the new sunlight, plaiting the straw for baskets, until he saw the thing he had been taught most to fear advancing silently along the lea of an outcrop of rock. Then another wolf, following the first one.

If they had not been the first wolves he had ever seen, the boy would not have inspected them so closely, their plush, grey pelts, of which the hairs are tipped with white, giving them a ghostly look, as if they were on the point of dissolving at the edges; their sprightly, plumey tails; their acute, inquisitive masks.

Then Peter saw that the third wolf was a prodigy, a marvel, a naked one, going on all fours, as they did, but hairless as regards the body although hair grew around its head.

The sight of this bald wolf so fascinated him that he would have lost his flock, perhaps himself been eaten and certainly been beaten to the bone for negligence had not the goats themselves raised their heads, snuffed danger and run off, bleating and whinnying, so that the men came, firing guns, making hullabaloo, scaring the wolves away.

His father was too angry to listen to what Peter said. He cuffed Peter round the head and sent him home. His mother was feeding this year's baby. His grandmother sat at the table, shelling peas into a pot.

"There was a little girl with the wolves, granny," said Peter. Why was he so sure it had been a little girl? Perhaps because her hair was so long, so long and lively. "A little girl about my age, from her size," he said.

His grandmother threw a flat pod out of the door so the chickens could peck it up.

"I saw a little girl with the wolves," he said.

His grandmother tipped water into the pot, got up from the table and hung the pot of peas on the hook over the fire. There wasn't time, that night, but next morning, very early, she herself took the boy back up the mountain.

"Tell your father what you told me."

They went to look at the wolves' tracks. On a bit of dampish ground they found a print, not like that of a dog's pad, much less like that of a child's footprint, yet Peter worried and puzzled over it until he made sense of it.

"She was running on all fours with her arse stuck up in the air. . . therefore. . . she'd put all her weight on the ball of her foot, wouldn't she? And splay out her toes, see. . . like that."

He went barefoot in summer, like all the village children; he inserted the ball of his own foot in the print, to show his father what kind of mark he would have made if he, too, always ran on all fours.

"No use for a heel, if you run that way. So she doesn't have a heelprint. Stands to reason."

At last his father made a slow acknowledgement of Peter's powers of deduction, giving the child a veiled glance of disquiet. It was a clever child.

They soon found her. She was asleep. Her spine had grown so supple she could curl into a perfect C. She woke up when she heard them and ran, but somebody caught her with a sliding noose at the end of a rope; the noose over her head jerked tight and she fell to the ground with her eyes popping and rolling. A big, grey, angry bitch appeared out of nowhere but Peter's father blasted it to bits with his shotgun. The girl would have choked if the old woman hadn't taken her head on her lap and pulled the knot loose. The girl bit the grandmother's hand.

The girl scratched and fought until the men tied her wrists and ankles together with twine and slung her from a pole to carry her back to the village. Then she went limp. She didn't scream or shout, she didn't seem to be able to, she made only a few dull, guttural sounds in the back of her throat, and, though she did not seem to know how to cry, water trickled out of the corners of her eyes.

How burned she was by the weather! Bright brown all over; and how filthy she was! Caked with mud and dirt. And every inch of her chestnut hide was scored and scabbed with dozens of scars of sharp abrasions of rock and thorn. Her hair dragged on the ground as they carried her along; it was stuck with burrs and it was so dirty you could not see what colour it might be. She was dreadfully verminous. She stank. She was so thin that all her ribs stuck out. The fine, plump, potato-fed boy was far bigger than she, although she was a year or so older.

Solemn with curiosity, he trotted behind her. Granny stumped alongside with her bitten hand wrapped up in her apron. Once the girl was dumped on the earth floor of her grandmother's house, the boy secretly poked at her left buttock with his forefinger, out of curiosity, to see what she felt like. She felt warm but hard. She did not so much as twitch when he touched her. She had given up the struggle; she lay trussed on the floor and pretended to be dead.

Granny's house had the one large room which, in winter, they shared with the goats. As soon as it caught a whiff of her, the big tabby mouser hissed like a pricked balloon and bounded up the ladder that went to the hayloft above. Soup smoked on the fire and the table was laid. It was now about supper-time but still quite light; night comes late on the summer mountain.

"Untie her," said the grandmother.

Her son wasn't willing at first but the old woman would not be denied, so he got the breadknife and cut the rope round the girl's ankles. All she did was kick, but when he cut the rope round her wrists, it was if he had let a fiend loose. The onlookers ran out of the door, the rest of the family ran for the ladder to the hayloft but Granny and Peter both ran to the door, to shoot the bolt, so she could not get out.

The trapped one knocked round the room. Bang -- over went the table. Crash, tinkle -- the supper dishes smashed. Bang, crash tinkle -- the dresser fell forward upon the hard white shale of crockery it shed in falling. Over went the meal barrel and she coughed, she sneezed like a child sneezes, no different, and then she bounced around on fear-stiffened legs in a white cloud until the flour settled on everything like a magic powder that made everything strange. Her first frenzy over, she squatted a moment, questing with her long nose and then began to make little rushing sorties, now here, now there, snapping and yelping and tossing her bewildered head.

She never rose up on two legs; she crouched, all the time, on her hands and tiptoes, yet it was not quite like crouching, for you could see how all fours came naturally to her as though she had made a different pact with gravity than we have, and you could see, too, how strong the muscles in her thighs had grown on the mountain, how taut the twanging arches of her feet, and that indeed, she only used her heels when she sat back on her haunches. She growled; now and then she coughed out those intolerable, thick grunts of distress. All you could see of her rolling eyes were the whites, which were the bluish, glaring white of snow.

Several times, her bowels opened, apparently involuntarily. The kitchen smelled like a privy yet even her excrement was different to ours, the refuse of raw, strange, unguessable, wicked feeding, shit of a wolf.

Oh, horror!

She bumped into the hearth, knocked over the pan hanging from the hook and the spilled contents put out the fire. Hot soup scalded her forelegs. Shock of pain. Squatting on her hindquarters, holding the hurt paw dangling piteously from its wrist before her, she howled, in high, sobbing arcs.

Even the old woman, who had contracted with herself to love the child of her dead daughter, was frightened when she heard the girl howl.

Peter's heart gave a hop, a skip, so that he had a sensation of falling; he was not conscious of his own fear because he could not take his eyes off the sight of the crevice of her girl-child's sex, that was perfectly visible to him as she sat there square on the base of her spine. The night was now as dark as, at this season, it would go -- which is to say, not very dark; a white thread of moon hung in the blond sky at the top of the chimney so that it was neither dark nor light indoors yet the boy could see her intimacy clearly, as if by its own phosphorescence. It exercised an absolute fascination upon him.

Her lips opened up as she howled so that she offered him, without her own intention or volition, a view of a set of Chinese boxes of whorled flesh that seemed to open one upon another into herself, drawing him into an inner, secret place in which destination perpetually receded before him, his first, devastating, vertiginous intimation of infinity.

She howled.

And went on howling until, from the mountain, first singly, then in a complex polyphony, answered at last voices in the same language. She continued to howl, though now with a less tragic resonance. Soon it was impossible for the occupants of the house to deny to themselves that the wolves were descended on the village in a pack.

Then she was consoled, sank down, laid her head on her forepaws so that her hair trailed in the cooling soup, and so closed up her forbidden book without the least notion she had ever opened it or that it was banned. Her heavy eyelids closed on her brown, bloodshot eyes. The household gun hung on a nail over the fireplace where Peter's father had put it when he came in but when the man set his foot on the top rung of the ladder in order to come down for his weapon, the girl jumped up, snarling and showing her long yellow canines.

The howling outside was now mixed with the agitated dismay of the domestic beasts. All the other villagers were well locked up at home. The wolves were at the door.

The boy took hold of his grandmother's uninjured hand. First the old woman would not budge but he gave her a good tug and she came to herself. The girl raised her head suspiciously but let them by. The boy pushed his grandmother up the ladder in front of him and drew it up behind them. He was full of nervous dread. He would have given anything to turn time back, so that he might have run, shouting a warning, when he first caught sight of the wolves, and never seen her. The door shook as the wolves outside jumped up at it and the screws that held the socket of the bolt to the frame cracked, squeaked and started to give. The girl jumped up, at that, and began to make excited little sallies back and forth in front of the door. The screws tore out of the frame quite soon. The pack tumbled over one another to get inside.

Dissonance. Terror. The clamour within the house was that of all the winds of winter trapped in a box. That which they feared most, outside, was now indoors with them. The baby in the hayloft whimpered and its mother crushed it to her breast as if the wolves might snatch this one away, too; but the rescue party had arrived only in order to collect their fosterling.

They left behind a riotous stench in the house, and white tracks of flour everywhere. The broken door creaked backwards and forwards on its hinges. Black sticks of dead wood from the extinguished fire were scattered on the floor.

Peter thought the old woman would cry, now, but she seemed unmoved. When all was safe, they came down the ladder one by one and, as if released from a spell of silence, burst into excited speech except for the mute old woman and the distraught boy. Although it was well past midnight, the daughter-in-law went to the well for water to scrub the wild smell out of the house. The broken things were cleared up and thrown away. Peter's father nailed the table and the dresser back together. The neighbours came out of their houses, full of amazement; the wolves had not taken so much as a chicken from the hen-coops, not snatched even a single egg.

People brought beer into the starlight, and schnapps made from potatoes, and snacks, because the excitement had made them hungry. That terrible night ended up in one big party but the grandmother would eat or drink nothing and went to bed as soon as her house was clean.

Next day, she went to the graveyard and sat for a while beside her daughter's grave but she did not pray. Then she came home and started chopping cabbage for the evening meal but had to leave off because her bitten hand was festering.

That winter, during the leisure imposed by the snow, after his grandmother's death, Peter asked the village priest to teach him to read the Bible. The priest gladly complied; Peter was the first of his flock who had ever expressed any interest in learning to read.

The boy became very pious, so much so that his family were startled and impressed. The younger children teased him and called him "Saint Peter" but that did not stop him sneaking off to church to pray whenever he had a spare moment. In Lent, he fasted to the bone. On Good Friday, he lashed himself. It was as if he blamed himself for the death of the old lady, as if he believed he had brought into the house the fatal infection that had taken her out of it. He was consumed by an imperious passion for atonement. Each night, he pored over his book by the flimsy candlelight, looking for a clue to grace, until his mother shooed him off to sleep.

But, as if to spite the four evangelists he nightly invoked to protect his bed, the nightmare regularly disordered his sleeps. He tossed and turned on the rustling straw pallet he shared with two little ones.

Delighted with Peter's precocious intelligence, the priest started to teach him Latin. Peter visited the priest as his duties with the herd permitted. When he was fourteen, the priest told his parents that Peter should now go to the seminary in the town in the valley where the boy would learn to become a priest himself. Rich in sons, they spared one to God, since his books and his praying made him a stranger to them. After the goats came down from the high pasture for the winter, Peter set off. It was October.

At the end of his first day's travel, he reached a river that ran from the mountain into the valley. The nights were already chilly; he lit himself a fire, prayed, ate bread and cheese his mother had packed for him and slept as well as he could. In spite of his eagerness to plunge into the white world of penance and devotion that awaited him, he was anxious and troubled for reasons he could not explain to himself.

In the first light, the light that no more than clarifies darkness like egg shells dropped in cloudy liquid, he went down to the river to drink and to wash his face. It was so still he could have been the one thing living.

Her forearms, her loins and her legs were thick with hair and the hair on her head hung round her face in such a way that you could hardly make out her features. She crouched on the other side of the river. She was lapping up water so full of mauve light that it looked as if she were drinking up the dawn as fast as it appeared yet all the same the air grew pale while he was looking at her. Solitude and silence; all still.

She could never have acknowledged that the reflection beneath her in the river was that of herself. She did not know she had a face; she had never known she had a face and so her face itself was the mirror of a different kind of consciousness than ours is, just as her nakedness, without innocence or display, was that of our first parents, before the Fall. She was hairy as Magdalen in the wilderness and yet repentance was not within her comprehension.

Language crumbled into dust under the weight of her speechlessness. A pair of cubs rolled out of the bushes, cuffing one another. She did not pay them any heed.

The boy began to tremble and shake. His skin prickled. He felt he had been made of snow and now might melt. He mumbled something, or sobbed.

She cocked her head at the vague, river-washed sound and the cubs heard it, too, left off tumbling and ran to burrow their scared heads in her side. But she decided, after a moment, there was no danger and lowered her muzzle, again, to the surface of the water that took hold of her hair and spread it out around her head.

When she finished her drink, she backed a few paces, shaking her wet pelt. The little cubs fastened their mouths on her dangling breasts.

Peter could not help it, he burst out crying. He had not cried since his grandmother's funeral. Tears rolled down his face and splashed on the grass. He blundered forward a few steps into the river with his arms held open, intending to cross over to the other side to join her in her marvellous and private grace, impelled by the access of an almost visionary ecstasy. But his cousin took fright at the sudden movement, wrenched her teats away from the cubs and ran off. The squeaking cubs scampered behind. She ran on hands and feet as if that were the only way to run towards the high ground, into the bright maze of the uncompleted dawn.

When the boy recovered himself, he dried his tears on his sleeve, took off his soaked boots and dried his feet and legs on the tail of his shirt. Then he ate something from his pack, he scarcely knew what, and continued on the way to the town; but what would he do at the seminary, now? For now he knew there was nothing to be afraid of.

He experienced the vertigo of freedom.

He carried his boots slung over his shoulder by the laces. They were a great burden. He debated with himself whether or not to throw them away but, when he came to a paved road, he had to put them on, although they were still damp.

The birds woke up and sang. The cool, rational sun surprised him; morning had broken on his exhilaration and the mountain now lay behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw, how, with distance, the mountain began to acquire a flat, two-dimensional look. It was already turning into a picture of itself, into the postcard hastily bought as a souvenir of childhood at a railway station or a border post, the newspaper cutting, the snapshot he would show in strange towns, strange cities, other countries he could not, at this moment, imagine, whose names he did not yet know, places where he would say, in strange languages, "That was where I spent my childhood. Imagine!"

He turned and stared at the mountain for a long time. He had lived in it for fourteen years but he had never seen it before as it might look to someone who had not known it as almost a part of the self, so, for the first time, he saw the primitive, vast, magnificent, barren, unkind, simplicity of the mountain. As he said goodbye to it, he saw it turn into so much scenery, into the wonderful backcloth for an old country tale, tale of a child suckled by wolves, perhaps, or of wolves nursed by a woman.

Then he determinedly set his face towards the town and tramped onwards, into a different story.

"If I look back again," he thought with a last gasp of superstitious terror, "I shall turn into a pillar of salt."

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO AMERICAN MODERNISM

2012-02-14T10:32:00.000+02:00

Walter Kalaidjian

Slightly ahead of his time, Walt Whitman welcomed the new energies of American modernism with his 1876 poem “To a Locomotive in Winter.” In it, he hailed the steam engine as “type of the modern - emblem of motion and power - pulse of the continent.” Only seven years earlier at Promontory Summit, Utah, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads were linked by a golden spike driven into the final tie of the nation's first transcontinental rail network. Dynamic, transformative, and “unpent,” modernism's new social, cultural, and technological economies of scale would rapidly remap space, time, and distance in ways that were heretofore unimaginable. Such accelerating velocities of change would increasingly define the quickened “pulse of the continent.” Soon, American modernism would exceed the parochial limits of nation formation in the global reach of its imagined community. Such was the pace of modernization that by 1880 the steam locomotive would be eclipsed by Thomas Edison's demonstration of the electric train in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism
- Introduction by Walter Kalaidjian
- Nationalism and the modern American canonby Mark Morrisson
- Genre
  - Modern American fiction by Rita Barnard
  - Modern American poetry by Cary Nelson
  - Modern American drama by Stephen Watt
- Culture
  - American modernism and the New Negro Renaissance by Mark A. Sanders
  - Jazz and American modernism by Jed Rasula
  - Visual culture by Michael North
  - The avant-garde phase of American modernism by Marjorie Perloff
- Society
  - Gender and sexuality by Janet Lyon
  - Regionalism in American modernism byJohn N. Duvall
  - Social representations within American modernism by Paula Rabinowitz
  - Modern American literary criticism byDouglas Mao
- Further reading
- Supplementary Material

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offline,further reading,book,pdf,practice

Virginia Woolf - Kew Gardens (read online)

2012-02-13T12:07:00.000+02:00

Kew Gardens

FROM THE OVAL-SHAPED flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of colour raised upon the surface; and from the red, blue or yellow gloom of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with gold dust and slightly clubbed at the end. The petals were voluminous enough to be stirred by the summer breeze, and when they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights passed one over the other, staining an inch of the brown earth beneath with a spot of the most intricate colour. The light fell either upon the smooth, grey back of a pebble, or, the shell of a snail with its brown, circular veins, or falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one expected them to burst and disappear. Instead, the drop was left in a second silver grey once more, and the light now settled upon the flesh of a leaf, revealing the branching thread of fibre beneath the surface, and again it moved on and spread its illumination in the vast green spaces beneath the dome of the heart-shaped and tongue-shaped leaves. Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.

The figures of these men and women straggled past the flower-bed with a curiously irregular movement not unlike that of the white and blue butterflies who crossed the turf in zig-zag flights from bed to bed. The man was about six inches in front of the woman, strolling carelessly, while she bore on with greater purpose, only turning her head now and then to see that the children were not too far behind. The man kept this distance in front of the woman purposely, though perhaps unconsciously, for he wished to go on with his thoughts.

"Fifteen years ago I came here with Lily," he thought. "We sat somewhere over there by a lake and I begged her to marry me all through the hot afternoon. How the dragonfly kept circling round us: how clearly I see the dragonfly and her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe. All the time I spoke I saw her shoe and when it moved impatiently I knew without looking up what she was going to say: the whole of her seemed to be in her shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly; for some reason I thought that if it settled there, on that leaf, the broad one with the red flower in the middle of it, if the dragonfly settled on the leaf she would say 'Yes' at once. But the dragonfly went round and round: it never settled anywhereof course not, happily not, or I shouldn't be walking here with Eleanor and the childrenTell me, Eleanor. D'you ever think of the past?"

"Why do you ask, Simon?"

"Because I've been thinking of the past. I've been thinking of Lily, the woman I might have married.... Well, why are you silent? Do you mind my thinking of the past?"

"Why should I mind, Simon? Doesn't one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they one's past, all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under the trees,... one's happiness, one's reality?"

"For me, a square silver shoe buckle and a dragonfly"

"For me, a kiss. Imagine six little girls sitting before their easels twenty years ago, down by the side of a lake, painting the water-lilies, the first red water-lilies I'd ever seen. And suddenly a kiss, there on the back of my neck. And my hand shook all the afternoon so that I couldn't paint. I took out my watch and marked the hour when I would allow myself to think of the kiss for five minutes onlyit was so preciousthe kiss of an old grey-haired woman with a wart on her nose, the mother of all my kisses all my life. Come, Caroline, come, Hubert."

They walked on the past the flower-bed, now walking four abreast, and soon diminished in size among the trees and looked half transparent as the sunlight and shade swam over their backs in large trembling irregular patches.

In the oval flower bed the snail, whose shell had been stained red, blue, and yellow for the space of two minutes or so, now appeared to be moving very slightly in its shell, and next began to labour over the crumbs of loose earth which broke away and rolled down as it passed over them. It appeared to have a definite goal in front of it, differing in this respect from the singular high stepping angular green insect who attempted to cross in front of it, and waited for a second with its antennæ trembling as if in deliberation, and then stepped off as rapidly and strangely in the opposite direction. Brown cliffs with deep green lakes in the hollows, flat, blade-like trees that waved from root to tip, round boulders of grey stone, vast crumpled surfaces of a thin crackling textureall these objects lay across the snail's progress between one stalk and another to his goal. Before he had decided whether to circumvent the arched tent of a dead leaf or to breast it there came past the bed the feet of other human beings.

This time they were both men. The younger of the two wore an expression of perhaps unnatural calm; he raised his eyes and fixed them very steadily in front of him while his companion spoke, and directly his companion had done speaking he looked on the ground again and sometimes opened his lips only after a long pause and sometimes did not open them at all. The elder man had a curiously uneven and shaky method of walking, jerking his hand forward and throwing up his head abruptly, rather in the manner of an impatient carriage horse tired of waiting outside a house; but in the man these gestures were irresolute and pointless. He talked almost incessantly; he smiled to himself and again began to talk, as if the smile had been an answer. He was talking about spiritsthe spirits of the dead, who, according to him, were even now telling him all sorts of odd things about their experiences in Heaven.

"Heaven was known to the ancients as Thessaly, William, and now, with this war, the spirit matter is rolling between the hills like thunder." He paused, seemed to listen, smiled, jerked his head and continued:

"You have a small electric battery and a piece of rubber to insulate the wireisolate?insulate?well, we'll skip the details, no good going into details that wouldn't be understoodand in short the little machine stands in any convenient position by the head of the bed, we will say, on a neat mahogany stand. All arrangements being properly fixed by workmen under my direction, the widow applies her ear and summons the spirit by sign as agreed. Women! Widows! Women in black"

Here he seemed to have caught sight of a woman's dress in the distance, which in the shade looked a purple black. He took off his hat, placed his hand upon his heart, and hurried towards her muttering and gesticulating feverishly. But William caught him by the sleeve and touched a flower with the tip of his walking-stick in order to divert the old man's attention. After looking at it for a moment in some confusion the old man bent his ear to it and seemed to answer a voice speaking from it, for he began talking about the forests of Uruguay which he had visited hundreds of years ago in company with the most beautiful young woman in Europe. He could be heard murmuring about forests of Uruguay blanketed with the wax petals of tropical roses, nightingales, sea beaches, mermaids, and women drowned at sea, as he suffered himself to be moved on by William, upon whose face the look of stoical patience grew slowly deeper and deeper.

Following his steps so closely as to be slightly puzzled by his gestures came two elderly women of the lower middle class, one stout and ponderous, the other rosy cheeked and nimble. Like most people of their station they were frankly fascinated by any signs of eccentricity betokening a disordered brain, especially in the well-to-do; but they were too far off to be certain whether the gestures were merely eccentric or genuinely mad. After they had scrutinised the old man's back in silence for a moment and given each other a queer, sly look, they went on energetically piecing together their very complicated dialogue:

"Nell, Bert, Lot, Cess, Phil, Pa, he says, I says, she says, I says, I says, I says"

"My Bert, Sis, Bill, Grandad, the old man, sugar,

Sugar, flour, kippers, greens,
Sugar, sugar, sugar."
The ponderous woman looked through the pattern of falling words at the flowers standing cool, firm, and upright in the earth, with a curious expression. She saw them as a sleeper waking from a heavy sleep sees a brass candlestick reflecting the light in an unfamiliar way, and closes his eyes and opens them, and seeing the brass candlestick again, finally starts broad awake and stares at the candlestick with all his powers. So the heavy woman came to a standstill opposite the oval-shaped flower bed, and ceased even to pretend to listen to what the other woman was saying. She stood there letting the words fall over her, swaying the top part of her body slowly backwards and forwards, looking at the flowers. Then she suggested that they should find a seat and have their tea.
The snail had now considered every possible method of reaching his goal without going round the dead leaf or climbing over it. Let alone the effort needed for climbing a leaf, he was doubtful whether the thin texture which vibrated with such an alarming crackle when touched even by the tip of his horns would bear his weight; and this determined him finally to creep beneath it, for there was a point where the leaf curved high enough from the ground to admit him. He had just inserted his head in the opening and was taking stock of the high brown roof and was getting used to the cool brown light when two other people came past outside on the turf. This time they were both young, a young man and a young woman. They were both in the prime of youth, or even in that season which precedes the prime of youth, the season before the smooth pink folds of the flower have burst their gummy case, when the wings of the butterfly, though fully grown, are motionless in the sun.

"Lucky it isn't Friday," he observed.

"Why? D'you believe in luck?"

"They make you pay sixpence on Friday."

"What's sixpence anyway? Isn't it worth sixpence?"

"What's 'it'what do you mean by 'it'?"

"O, anythingI meanyou know what I mean."

Long pauses came between each of these remarks; they were uttered in toneless and monotonous voices. The couple stood still on the edge of the flower bed, and together pressed the end of her parasol deep down into the soft earth. The action and the fact that his hand rested on the top of hers expressed their feelings in a strange way, as these short insignificant words also expressed something, words with short wings for their heavy body of meaning, inadequate to carry them far and thus alighting awkwardly upon the very common objects that surrounded them, and were to their inexperienced touch so massive; but who knows (so they thought as they pressed the parasol into the earth) what precipices aren't concealed in them, or what slopes of ice don't shine in the sun on the other side? Who knows? Who has ever seen this before? Even when she wondered what sort of tea they gave you at Kew, he felt that something loomed up behind her words, and stood vast and solid behind them; and the mist very slowly rose and uncoveredO, Heavens, what were those shapes?little white tables, and waitresses who looked first at her and then at him; and there was a bill that he would pay with a real two shilling piece, and it was real, all real, he assured himself, fingering the coin in his pocket, real to everyone except to him and to her; even to him it began to seem real; and thenbut it was too exciting to stand and think any longer, and he pulled the parasol out of the earth with a jerk and was impatient to find the place where one had tea with other people, like other people.

"Come along, Trissie; it's time we had our tea."

"Wherever does one have one's tea?" she asked with the oddest thrill of excitement in her voice, looking vaguely round and letting herself be drawn on down the grass path, trailing her parasol, turning her head this way and that way, forgetting her tea, wishing to go down there and then down there, remembering orchids and cranes among wild flowers, a Chinese pagoda and a crimson crested bird; but he bore her on.

Thus one couple after another with much the same irregular and aimless movement passed the flower-bed and were enveloped in layer after layer of green blue vapour, in which at first their bodies had substance and a dash of colour, but later both substance and colour dissolved in the green-blue atmosphere. How hot it was! So hot that even the thrush chose to hop, like a mechanical bird, in the shadow of the flowers, with long pauses between one movement and the next; instead of rambling vaguely the white butterflies danced one above another, making with their white shifting flakes the outline of a shattered marble column above the tallest flowers; the glass roofs of the palm house shone as if a whole market full of shiny green umbrellas had opened in the sun; and in the drone of the aeroplane the voice of the summer sky murmured its fierce soul. Yellow and black, pink and snow white, shapes of all these colours, men, women, and children were spotted for a second upon the horizon, and then, seeing the breadth of yellow that lay upon the grass, they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees, dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere, staining it faintly with red and blue. It seemed as if all gross and heavy bodies had sunk down in the heat motionless and lay huddled upon the ground, but their voices went wavering from them as if they were flames lolling from the thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices, breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of desire, or, in the voices of children, such freshness of surprise; breaking the silence? But there was no silence; all the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels and changing their gear; like a vast nest of Chinese boxes all of wrought steel turning ceaselessly one within another the city murmured; on the top of which the voices cried aloud and the petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into the air.

The Dead - James Joyce (read online)

2012-02-13T12:02:00.001+02:00

THE DEAD
LILY, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought of that and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies' dressing-room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come.

It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan's annual dance. Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that were grown up enough, and even some of Mary Jane's pupils too. Never once had it fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in splendid style, as long as anyone could remember; ever since Kate and Julia, after the death of their brother Pat, had left the house in Stoney Batter and taken Mary Jane, their only niece, to live with them in the dark, gaunt house on Usher's Island, the upper part of which they had rented from Mr. Fulham, the corn-factor on the ground floor. That was a good thirty years ago if it was a day. Mary Jane, who was then a little girl in short clothes, was now the main prop of the household, for she had the organ in Haddington Road. She had been through the Academy and gave a pupils' concert every year in the upper room of the Antient Concert Rooms. Many of her pupils belonged to the better-class families on the Kingstown and Dalkey line. Old as they were, her aunts also did their share. Julia, though she was quite grey, was still the leading soprano in Adam and Eve's, and Kate, being too feeble to go about much, gave music lessons to beginners on the old square piano in the back room. Lily, the caretaker's daughter, did housemaid's work for them. Though their life was modest, they believed in eating well; the best of everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the best bottled stout. But Lily seldom made a mistake in the orders, so that she got on well with her three mistresses. They were fussy, that was all. But the only thing they would not stand was back answers.

Of course, they had good reason to be fussy on such a night. And then it was long after ten o'clock and yet there was no sign of Gabriel and his wife. Besides they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins might turn up screwed. They would not wish for worlds that any of Mary Jane's pupils should see him under the influence; and when he was like that it was sometimes very hard to manage him. Freddy Malins always came late, but they wondered what could be keeping Gabriel: and that was what brought them every two minutes to the banisters to ask Lily had Gabriel or Freddy come.

"O, Mr. Conroy," said Lily to Gabriel when she opened the door for him, "Miss Kate and Miss Julia thought you were never coming. Good-night, Mrs. Conroy."

"I'll engage they did," said Gabriel, "but they forget that my wife here takes three mortal hours to dress herself."

He stood on the mat, scraping the snow from his goloshes, while Lily led his wife to the foot of the stairs and called out:

"Miss Kate, here's Mrs. Conroy."

Kate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them kissed Gabriel's wife, said she must be perished alive, and asked was Gabriel with her.

"Here I am as right as the mail, Aunt Kate! Go on up. I'll follow," called out Gabriel from the dark.

He continued scraping his feet vigorously while the three women went upstairs, laughing, to the ladies' dressing-room. A light fringe of snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps on the toes of his goloshes; and, as the buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow-stiffened frieze, a cold, fragrant air from out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds.

"Is it snowing again, Mr. Conroy?" asked Lily.

She had preceded him into the pantry to help him off with his overcoat. Gabriel smiled at the three syllables she had given his surname and glanced at her. She was a slim; growing girl, pale in complexion and with hay-coloured hair. The gas in the pantry made her look still paler. Gabriel had known her when she was a child and used to sit on the lowest step nursing a rag doll.

"Yes, Lily," he answered, "and I think we're in for a night of it."

He looked up at the pantry ceiling, which was shaking with the stamping and shuffling of feet on the floor above, listened for a moment to the piano and then glanced at the girl, who was folding his overcoat carefully at the end of a shelf.

"Tell me. Lily," he said in a friendly tone, "do you still go to school?"

"O no, sir," she answered. "I'm done schooling this year and more."

"O, then," said Gabriel gaily, "I suppose we'll be going to your wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh? "

The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great bitterness:

"The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you."

Gabriel coloured, as if he felt he had made a mistake and, without looking at her, kicked off his goloshes and flicked actively with his muffler at his patent-leather shoes.

He was a stout, tallish young man. The high colour of his cheeks pushed upwards even to his forehead, where it scattered itself in a few formless patches of pale red; and on his hairless face there scintillated restlessly the polished lenses and the bright gilt rims of the glasses which screened his delicate and restless eyes. His glossy black hair was parted in the middle and brushed in a long curve behind his ears where it curled slightly beneath the groove left by his hat.

When he had flicked lustre into his shoes he stood up and pulled his waistcoat down more tightly on his plump body. Then he took a coin rapidly from his pocket.

"O Lily," he said, thrusting it into her hands, "it's Christmastime, isn't it? Just... here's a little...."

He walked rapidly towards the door.

"O no, sir!" cried the girl, following him. "Really, sir, I wouldn't take it."

"Christmas-time! Christmas-time!" said Gabriel, almost trotting to the stairs and waving his hand to her in deprecation.

The girl, seeing that he had gained the stairs, called out after him:

"Well, thank you, sir."

He waited outside the drawing-room door until the waltz should finish, listening to the skirts that swept against it and to the shuffling of feet. He was still discomposed by the girl's bitter and sudden retort. It had cast a gloom over him which he tried to dispel by arranging his cuffs and the bows of his tie. He then took from his waistcoat pocket a little paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning, for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they would recognise from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. The indelicate clacking of the men's heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior education. He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl in the pantry. He had taken up a wrong tone. His whole speech was a mistake from first to last, an utter failure.

Just then his aunts and his wife came out of the ladies' dressing-room. His aunts were two small, plainly dressed old women. Aunt Julia was an inch or so the taller. Her hair, drawn low over the tops of her ears, was grey; and grey also, with darker shadows, was her large flaccid face. Though she was stout in build and stood erect, her slow eyes and parted lips gave her the appearance of a woman who did not know where she was or where she was going. Aunt Kate was more vivacious. Her face, healthier than her sister's, was all puckers and creases, like a shrivelled red apple, and her hair, braided in the same old-fashioned way, had not lost its ripe nut colour.

They both kissed Gabriel frankly. He was their favourite nephew the son of their dead elder sister, Ellen, who had married T. J. Conroy of the Port and Docks.

"Gretta tells me you're not going to take a cab back to Monkstown tonight, Gabriel," said Aunt Kate.

"No," said Gabriel, turning to his wife, "we had quite enough of that last year, hadn't we? Don't you remember, Aunt Kate, what a cold Gretta got out of it? Cab windows rattling all the way, and the east wind blowing in after we passed Merrion. Very jolly it was. Gretta caught a dreadful cold."

Aunt Kate frowned severely and nodded her head at every word.

"Quite right, Gabriel, quite right," she said. "You can't be too careful."

"But as for Gretta there," said Gabriel, "she'd walk home in the snow if she were let."

Mrs. Conroy laughed.

"Don't mind him, Aunt Kate," she said. "He's really an awful bother, what with green shades for Tom's eyes at night and making him do the dumb-bells, and forcing Eva to eat the stirabout. The poor child! And she simply hates the sight of it!... O, but you'll never guess what he makes me wear now!"

She broke out into a peal of laughter and glanced at her husband, whose admiring and happy eyes had been wandering from her dress to her face and hair. The two aunts laughed heartily, too, for Gabriel's solicitude was a standing joke with them.

"Goloshes!" said Mrs. Conroy. "That's the latest. Whenever it's wet underfoot I must put on my galoshes. Tonight even, he wanted me to put them on, but I wouldn't. The next thing he'll buy me will be a diving suit."

Gabriel laughed nervously and patted his tie reassuringly, while Aunt Kate nearly doubled herself, so heartily did she enjoy the joke. The smile soon faded from Aunt Julia's face and her mirthless eyes were directed towards her nephew's face. After a pause she asked:

"And what are goloshes, Gabriel?"

"Goloshes, Julia!" exclaimed her sister "Goodness me, don't you know what goloshes are? You wear them over your... over your boots, Gretta, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Conroy. "Guttapercha things. We both have a pair now. Gabriel says everyone wears them on the Continent."

"O, on the Continent," murmured Aunt Julia, nodding her head slowly.

Gabriel knitted his brows and said, as if he were slightly angered:

"It's nothing very wonderful, but Gretta thinks it very funny because she says the word reminds her of Christy Minstrels."

"But tell me, Gabriel," said Aunt Kate, with brisk tact. "Of course, you've seen about the room. Gretta was saying..."

"0, the room is all right," replied Gabriel. "I've taken one in the Gresham."

"To be sure," said Aunt Kate, "by far the best thing to do. And the children, Gretta, you're not anxious about them?"

"0, for one night," said Mrs. Conroy. "Besides, Bessie will look after them."

"To be sure," said Aunt Kate again. "What a comfort it is to have a girl like that, one you can depend on! There's that Lily, I'm sure I don't know what has come over her lately. She's not the girl she was at all."

Gabriel was about to ask his aunt some questions on this point, but she broke off suddenly to gaze after her sister, who had wandered down the stairs and was craning her neck over the banisters.

"Now, I ask you," she said almost testily, "where is Julia going? Julia! Julia! Where are you going?"

Julia, who had gone half way down one flight, came back and announced blandly:

"Here's Freddy."

At the same moment a clapping of hands and a final flourish of the pianist told that the waltz had ended. The drawing-room door was opened from within and some couples came out. Aunt Kate drew Gabriel aside hurriedly and whispered into his ear:

"Slip down, Gabriel, like a good fellow and see if he's all right, and don't let him up if he's screwed. I'm sure he's screwed. I'm sure he is."

Gabriel went to the stairs and listened over the banisters. He could hear two persons talking in the pantry. Then he recognised Freddy Malins' laugh. He went down the stairs noisily.

"It's such a relief," said Aunt Kate to Mrs. Conroy, "that Gabriel is here. I always feel easier in my mind when he's here.... Julia, there's Miss Daly and Miss Power will take some refreshment. Thanks for your beautiful waltz, Miss Daly. It made lovely time."

A tall wizen-faced man, with a stiff grizzled moustache and swarthy skin, who was passing out with his partner, said:

"And may we have some refreshment, too, Miss Morkan?"

"Julia," said Aunt Kate summarily, "and here's Mr. Browne and Miss Furlong. Take them in, Julia, with Miss Daly and Miss Power."

"I'm the man for the ladies," said Mr. Browne, pursing his lips until his moustache bristled and smiling in all his wrinkles. "You know, Miss Morkan, the reason they are so fond of me is----"

He did not finish his sentence, but, seeing that Aunt Kate was out of earshot, at once led the three young ladies into the back room. The middle of the room was occupied by two square tables placed end to end, and on these Aunt Julia and the caretaker were straightening and smoothing a large cloth. On the sideboard were arrayed dishes and plates, and glasses and bundles of knives and forks and spoons. The top of the closed square piano served also as a sideboard for viands and sweets. At a smaller sideboard in one corner two young men were standing, drinking hop-bitters.

Mr. Browne led his charges thither and invited them all, in jest, to some ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. As they said they never took anything strong, he opened three bottles of lemonade for them. Then he asked one of the young men to move aside, and, taking hold of the decanter, filled out for himself a goodly measure of whisky. The young men eyed him respectfully while he took a trial sip.

"God help me," he said, smiling, "it's the doctor's orders."

His wizened face broke into a broader smile, and the three young ladies laughed in musical echo to his pleasantry, swaying their bodies to and fro, with nervous jerks of their shoulders. The boldest said:

"O, now, Mr. Browne, I'm sure the doctor never ordered anything of the kind."

Mr. Browne took another sip of his whisky and said, with sidling mimicry:

"Well, you see, I'm like the famous Mrs. Cassidy, who is reported to have said: 'Now, Mary Grimes, if I don't take it, make me take it, for I feel I want it.'"

His hot face had leaned forward a little too confidentially and he had assumed a very low Dublin accent so that the young ladies, with one instinct, received his speech in silence. Miss Furlong, who was one of Mary Jane's pupils, asked Miss Daly what was the name of the pretty waltz she had played; and Mr. Browne, seeing that he was ignored, turned promptly to the two young men who were more appreciative.

A red-faced young woman, dressed in pansy, came into the room, excitedly clapping her hands and crying:

"Quadrilles! Quadrilles!"

Close on her heels came Aunt Kate, crying:

"Two gentlemen and three ladies, Mary Jane!"

"O, here's Mr. Bergin and Mr. Kerrigan," said Mary Jane. "Mr. Kerrigan, will you take Miss Power? Miss Furlong, may I get you a partner, Mr. Bergin. O, that'll just do now."

"Three ladies, Mary Jane," said Aunt Kate.

The two young gentlemen asked the ladies if they might have the pleasure, and Mary Jane turned to Miss Daly.

"O, Miss Daly, you're really awfully good, after playing for the last two dances, but really we're so short of ladies tonight."

"I don't mind in the least, Miss Morkan."

"But I've a nice partner for you, Mr. Bartell D'Arcy, the tenor. I'll get him to sing later on. All Dublin is raving about him."

"Lovely voice, lovely voice!" said Aunt Kate.

As the piano had twice begun the prelude to the first figure Mary Jane led her recruits quickly from the room. They had hardly gone when Aunt Julia wandered slowly into the room, looking behind her at something.

"What is the matter, Julia?" asked Aunt Kate anxiously. "Who is it?"

Julia, who was carrying in a column of table-napkins, turned to her sister and said, simply, as if the question had surprised her:

"It's only Freddy, Kate, and Gabriel with him."

In fact right behind her Gabriel could be seen piloting Freddy Malins across the landing. The latter, a young man of about forty, was of Gabriel's size and build, with very round shoulders. His face was fleshy and pallid, touched with colour only at the thick hanging lobes of his ears and at the wide wings of his nose. He had coarse features, a blunt nose, a convex and receding brow, tumid and protruded lips. His heavy-lidded eyes and the disorder of his scanty hair made him look sleepy. He was laughing heartily in a high key at a story which he had been telling Gabriel on the stairs and at the same time rubbing the knuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye.

"Good-evening, Freddy," said Aunt Julia.

Freddy Malins bade the Misses Morkan good-evening in what seemed an offhand fashion by reason of the habitual catch in his voice and then, seeing that Mr. Browne was grinning at him from the sideboard, crossed the room on rather shaky legs and began to repeat in an undertone the story he had just told to Gabriel.

"He's not so bad, is he?" said Aunt Kate to Gabriel.

Gabriel's brows were dark but he raised them quickly and answered:

"O, no, hardly noticeable."

"Now, isn't he a terrible fellow!" she said. "And his poor mother made him take the pledge on New Year's Eve. But come on, Gabriel, into the drawing-room."

Before leaving the room with Gabriel she signalled to Mr. Browne by frowning and shaking her forefinger in warning to and fro. Mr. Browne nodded in answer and, when she had gone, said to Freddy Malins:

"Now, then, Teddy, I'm going to fill you out a good glass of lemonade just to buck you up."

Freddy Malins, who was nearing the climax of his story, waved the offer aside impatiently but Mr. Browne, having first called Freddy Malins' attention to a disarray in his dress, filled out and handed him a full glass of lemonade. Freddy Malins' left hand accepted the glass mechanically, his right hand being engaged in the mechanical readjustment of his dress. Mr. Browne, whose face was once more wrinkling with mirth, poured out for himself a glass of whisky while Freddy Malins exploded, before he had well reached the climax of his story, in a kink of high-pitched bronchitic laughter and, setting down his untasted and overflowing glass, began to rub the knuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye, repeating words of his last phrase as well as his fit of laughter would allow him.

Gabriel could not listen while Mary Jane was playing her Academy piece, full of runs and difficult passages, to the hushed drawing-room. He liked music but the piece she was playing had no melody for him and he doubted whether it had any melody for the other listeners, though they had begged Mary Jane to play something. Four young men, who had come from the refreshment-room to stand in the doorway at the sound of the piano, had gone away quietly in couples after a few minutes. The only persons who seemed to follow the music were Mary Jane herself, her hands racing along the key-board or lifted from it at the pauses like those of a priestess in momentary imprecation, and Aunt Kate standing at her elbow to turn the page.

Gabriel's eyes, irritated by the floor, which glittered with beeswax under the heavy chandelier, wandered to the wall above the piano. A picture of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet hung there and beside it was a picture of the two murdered princes in the Tower which Aunt Julia had worked in red, blue and brown wools when she was a girl. Probably in the school they had gone to as girls that kind of work had been taught for one year. His mother had worked for him as a birthday present a waistcoat of purple tabinet, with little foxes' heads upon it, lined with brown satin and having round mulberry buttons. It was strange that his mother had had no musical talent though Aunt Kate used to call her the brains carrier of the Morkan family. Both she and Julia had always seemed a little proud of their serious and matronly sister. Her photograph stood before the pierglass. She held an open book on her knees and was pointing out something in it to Constantine who, dressed in a man-o-war suit, lay at her feet. It was she who had chosen the name of her sons for she was very sensible of the dignity of family life. Thanks to her, Constantine was now senior curate in Balbrigan and, thanks to her, Gabriel himself had taken his degree in the Royal University. A shadow passed over his face as he remembered her sullen opposition to his marriage. Some slighting phrases she had used still rankled in his memory; she had once spoken of Gretta as being country cute and that was not true of Gretta at all. It was Gretta who had nursed her during all her last long illness in their house at Monkstown.

He knew that Mary Jane must be near the end of her piece for she was playing again the opening melody with runs of scales after every bar and while he waited for the end the resentment died down in his heart. The piece ended with a trill of octaves in the treble and a final deep octave in the bass. Great applause greeted Mary Jane as, blushing and rolling up her music nervously, she escaped from the room. The most vigorous clapping came from the four young men in the doorway who had gone away to the refreshment-room at the beginning of the piece but had come back when the piano had stopped.

Lancers were arranged. Gabriel found himself partnered with Miss Ivors. She was a frank-mannered talkative young lady, with a freckled face and prominent brown eyes. She did not wear a low-cut bodice and the large brooch which was fixed in the front of her collar bore on it an Irish device and motto.

When they had taken their places she said abruptly:

"I have a crow to pluck with you."

"With me?" said Gabriel.

She nodded her head gravely.

"What is it?" asked Gabriel, smiling at her solemn manner.

"Who is G. C.?" answered Miss Ivors, turning her eyes upon him.

Gabriel coloured and was about to knit his brows, as if he did not understand, when she said bluntly:

"O, innocent Amy! I have found out that you write for The Daily Express. Now, aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

"Why should I be ashamed of myself?" asked Gabriel, blinking his eyes and trying to smile.

"Well, I'm ashamed of you," said Miss Ivors frankly. "To say you'd write for a paper like that. I didn't think you were a West Briton."

A look of perplexity appeared on Gabriel's face. It was true that he wrote a literary column every Wednesday in The Daily Express, for which he was paid fifteen shillings. But that did not make him a West Briton surely. The books he received for review were almost more welcome than the paltry cheque. He loved to feel the covers and turn over the pages of newly printed books. Nearly every day when his teaching in the college was ended he used to wander down the quays to the second-hand booksellers, to Hickey's on Bachelor's Walk, to Web's or Massey's on Aston's Quay, or to O'Clohissey's in the bystreet. He did not know how to meet her charge. He wanted to say that literature was above politics. But they were friends of many years' standing and their careers had been parallel, first at the University and then as teachers: he could not risk a grandiose phrase with her. He continued blinking his eyes and trying to smile and murmured lamely that he saw nothing political in writing reviews of books.

When their turn to cross had come he was still perplexed and inattentive. Miss Ivors promptly took his hand in a warm grasp and said in a soft friendly tone:

"Of course, I was only joking. Come, we cross now."

When they were together again she spoke of the University question and Gabriel felt more at ease. A friend of hers had shown her his review of Browning's poems. That was how she had found out the secret: but she liked the review immensely. Then she said suddenly:

"O, Mr. Conroy, will you come for an excursion to the Aran Isles this summer? We're going to stay there a whole month. It will be splendid out in the Atlantic. You ought to come. Mr. Clancy is coming, and Mr. Kilkelly and Kathleen Kearney. It would be splendid for Gretta too if she'd come. She's from Connacht, isn't she?"

"Her people are," said Gabriel shortly.

"But you will come, won't you?" said Miss Ivors, laying her arm hand eagerly on his arm.

"The fact is," said Gabriel, "I have just arranged to go----"

"Go where?" asked Miss Ivors.

"Well, you know, every year I go for a cycling tour with some fellows and so----"

"But where?" asked Miss Ivors.

"Well, we usually go to France or Belgium or perhaps Germany," said Gabriel awkwardly.

"And why do you go to France and Belgium," said Miss Ivors, "instead of visiting your own land?"

"Well," said Gabriel, "it's partly to keep in touch with the languages and partly for a change."

"And haven't you your own language to keep in touch with -- Irish?" asked Miss Ivors.

"Well," said Gabriel, "if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my language."

Their neighbours had turned to listen to the cross- examination. Gabriel glanced right and left nervously and tried to keep his good humour under the ordeal which was making a blush invade his forehead.

"And haven't you your own land to visit," continued Miss Ivors, "that you know nothing of, your own people, and your own country?"

"0, to tell you the truth," retorted Gabriel suddenly, "I'm sick of my own country, sick of it!"

"Why?" asked Miss Ivors.

Gabriel did not answer for his retort had heated him.

"Why?" repeated Miss Ivors.

They had to go visiting together and, as he had not answered her, Miss Ivors said warmly:

"Of course, you've no answer."

Gabriel tried to cover his agitation by taking part in the dance with great energy. He avoided her eyes for he had seen a sour expression on her face. But when they met in the long chain he was surprised to feel his hand firmly pressed. She looked at him from under her brows for a moment quizzically until he smiled. Then, just as the chain was about to start again, she stood on tiptoe and whispered into his ear:

"West Briton!"

When the lancers were over Gabriel went away to a remote corner of the room where Freddy Malins' mother was sitting. She was a stout feeble old woman with white hair. Her voice had a catch in it like her son's and she stuttered slightly. She had been told that Freddy had come and that he was nearly all right. Gabriel asked her whether she had had a good crossing. She lived with her married daughter in Glasgow and came to Dublin on a visit once a year. She answered placidly that she had had a beautiful crossing and that the captain had been most attentive to her. She spoke also of the beautiful house her daughter kept in Glasgow, and of all the friends they had there. While her tongue rambled on Gabriel tried to banish from his mind all memory of the unpleasant incident with Miss Ivors. Of course the girl or woman, or whatever she was, was an enthusiast but there was a time for all things. Perhaps he ought not to have answered her like that. But she had no right to call him a West Briton before people, even in joke. She had tried to make him ridiculous before people, heckling him and staring at him with her rabbit's eyes.

He saw his wife making her way towards him through the waltzing couples. When she reached him she said into his ear:

"Gabriel. Aunt Kate wants to know won't you carve the goose as usual. Miss Daly will carve the ham and I'll do the pudding."

"All right," said Gabriel.

"She's sending in the younger ones first as soon as this waltz is over so that we'll have the table to ourselves."

"Were you dancing?" asked Gabriel.

"Of course I was. Didn't you see me? What row had you with Molly Ivors?"

"No row. Why? Did she say so?"

"Something like that. I'm trying to get that Mr. D'Arcy to sing. He's full of conceit, I think."

"There was no row," said Gabriel moodily, "only she wanted me to go for a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn't."

His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.

"O, do go, Gabriel," she cried. "I'd love to see Galway again."

"You can go if you like," said Gabriel coldly.

She looked at him for a moment, then turned to Mrs. Malins and said:

"There's a nice husband for you, Mrs. Malins."

While she was threading her way back across the room Mrs. Malins, without adverting to the interruption, went on to tell Gabriel what beautiful places there were in Scotland and beautiful scenery. Her son-in-law brought them every year to the lakes and they used to go fishing. Her son-in-law was a splendid fisher. One day he caught a beautiful big fish and the man in the hotel cooked it for their dinner.

Gabriel hardly heard what she said. Now that supper was coming near he began to think again about his speech and about the quotation. When he saw Freddy Malins coming across the room to visit his mother Gabriel left the chair free for him and retired into the embrasure of the window. The room had already cleared and from the back room came the clatter of plates and knives. Those who still remained in the drawing room seemed tired of dancing and were conversing quietly in little groups. Gabriel's warm trembling fingers tapped the cold pane of the window. How cool it must be outside! How pleasant it would be to walk out alone, first along by the river and then through the park! The snow would be lying on the branches of the trees and forming a bright cap on the top of the Wellington Monument. How much more pleasant it would be there than at the supper-table!

He ran over the headings of his speech: Irish hospitality, sad memories, the Three Graces, Paris, the quotation from Browning. He repeated to himself a phrase he had written in his review: "One feels that one is listening to a thought- tormented music." Miss Ivors had praised the review. Was she sincere? Had she really any life of her own behind all her propagandism? There had never been any ill-feeling between them until that night. It unnerved him to think that she would be at the supper-table, looking up at him while he spoke with her critical quizzing eyes. Perhaps she would not be sorry to see him fail in his speech. An idea came into his mind and gave him courage. He would say, alluding to Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia: "Ladies and Gentlemen, the generation which is now on the wane among us may have had its faults but for my part I think it had certain qualities of hospitality, of humour, of humanity, which the new and very serious and hypereducated generation that is growing up around us seems to me to lack." Very good: that was one for Miss Ivors. What did he care that his aunts were only two ignorant old women?

A murmur in the room attracted his attention. Mr. Browne was advancing from the door, gallantly escorting Aunt Julia, who leaned upon his arm, smiling and hanging her head. An irregular musketry of applause escorted her also as far as the piano and then, as Mary Jane seated herself on the stool, and Aunt Julia, no longer smiling, half turned so as to pitch her voice fairly into the room, gradually ceased. Gabriel recognised the prelude. It was that of an old song of Aunt Julia's -- Arrayed for the Bridal. Her voice, strong and clear in tone, attacked with great spirit the runs which embellish the air and though she sang very rapidly she did not miss even the smallest of the grace notes. To follow the voice, without looking at the singer's face, was to feel and share the excitement of swift and secure flight. Gabriel applauded loudly with all the others at the close of the song and loud applause was borne in from the invisible supper-table. It sounded so genuine that a little colour struggled into Aunt Julia's face as she bent to replace in the music-stand the old leather-bound songbook that had her initials on the cover. Freddy Malins, who had listened with his head perched sideways to hear her better, was still applauding when everyone else had ceased and talking animatedly to his mother who nodded her head gravely and slowly in acquiescence. At last, when he could clap no more, he stood up suddenly and hurried across the room to Aunt Julia whose hand he seized and held in both his hands, shaking it when words failed him or the catch in his voice proved too much for him.

"I was just telling my mother," he said, "I never heard you sing so well, never. No, I never heard your voice so good as it is tonight. Now! Would you believe that now? That's the truth. Upon my word and honour that's the truth. I never heard your voice sound so fresh and so... so clear and fresh, never."

Aunt Julia smiled broadly and murmured something about compliments as she released her hand from his grasp. Mr. Browne extended his open hand towards her and said to those who were near him in the manner of a showman introducing a prodigy to an audience:

"Miss Julia Morkan, my latest discovery!"

He was laughing very heartily at this himself when Freddy Malins turned to him and said:

"Well, Browne, if you're serious you might make a worse discovery. All I can say is I never heard her sing half so well as long as I am coming here. And that's the honest truth."

"Neither did I," said Mr. Browne. "I think her voice has greatly improved."

Aunt Julia shrugged her shoulders and said with meek pride:

"Thirty years ago I hadn't a bad voice as voices go."

"I often told Julia," said Aunt Kate emphatically, "that she was simply thrown away in that choir. But she never would be said by me."

She turned as if to appeal to the good sense of the others against a refractory child while Aunt Julia gazed in front of her, a vague smile of reminiscence playing on her face.

"No," continued Aunt Kate, "she wouldn't be said or led by anyone, slaving there in that choir night and day, night and day. Six o'clock on Christmas morning! And all for what?"

"Well, isn't it for the honour of God, Aunt Kate?" asked Mary Jane, twisting round on the piano-stool and smiling.

Aunt Kate turned fiercely on her niece and said:

"I know all about the honour of God, Mary Jane, but I think it's not at all honourable for the pope to turn out the women out of the choirs that have slaved there all their lives and put little whipper-snappers of boys over their heads. I suppose it is for the good of the Church if the pope does it. But it's not just, Mary Jane, and it's not right."

She had worked herself into a passion and would have continued in defence of her sister for it was a sore subject with her but Mary Jane, seeing that all the dancers had come back, intervened pacifically:

"Now, Aunt Kate, you're giving scandal to Mr. Browne who is of the other persuasion."

Aunt Kate turned to Mr. Browne, who was grinning at this allusion to his religion, and said hastily:

"O, I don't question the pope's being right. I'm only a stupid old woman and I wouldn't presume to do such a thing. But there's such a thing as common everyday politeness and gratitude. And if I were in Julia's place I'd tell that Father Healey straight up to his face..."

"And besides, Aunt Kate," said Mary Jane, "we really are all hungry and when we are hungry we are all very quarrelsome."

"And when we are thirsty we are also quarrelsome," added Mr. Browne.

"So that we had better go to supper," said Mary Jane, "and finish the discussion afterwards."

On the landing outside the drawing-room Gabriel found his wife and Mary Jane trying to persuade Miss Ivors to stay for supper. But Miss Ivors, who had put on her hat and was buttoning her cloak, would not stay. She did not feel in the least hungry and she had already overstayed her time.

"But only for ten minutes, Molly," said Mrs. Conroy. "That won't delay you."

"To take a pick itself," said Mary Jane, "after all your dancing."

"I really couldn't," said Miss Ivors.

"I am afraid you didn't enjoy yourself at all," said Mary Jane hopelessly.

"Ever so much, I assure you," said Miss Ivors, "but you really must let me run off now."

"But how can you get home?" asked Mrs. Conroy.

"O, it's only two steps up the quay."

Gabriel hesitated a moment and said:

"If you will allow me, Miss Ivors, I'll see you home if you are really obliged to go."

But Miss Ivors broke away from them.

"I won't hear of it," she cried. "For goodness' sake go in to your suppers and don't mind me. I'm quite well able to take care of myself."

"Well, you're the comical girl, Molly," said Mrs. Conroy frankly.

"Beannacht libh," cried Miss Ivors, with a laugh, as she ran down the staircase.

Mary Jane gazed after her, a moody puzzled expression on her face, while Mrs. Conroy leaned over the banisters to listen for the hall-door. Gabriel asked himself was he the cause of her abrupt departure. But she did not seem to be in ill humour: she had gone away laughing. He stared blankly down the staircase.

At the moment Aunt Kate came toddling out of the supper-room, almost wringing her hands in despair.

"Where is Gabriel?" she cried. "Where on earth is Gabriel? There's everyone waiting in there, stage to let, and nobody to carve the goose!"

"Here I am, Aunt Kate!" cried Gabriel, with sudden animation, "ready to carve a flock of geese, if necessary."

A fat brown goose lay at one end of the table and at the other end, on a bed of creased paper strewn with sprigs of parsley, lay a great ham, stripped of its outer skin and peppered over with crust crumbs, a neat paper frill round its shin and beside this was a round of spiced beef. Between these rival ends ran parallel lines of side-dishes: two little minsters of jelly, red and yellow; a shallow dish full of blocks of blancmange and red jam, a large green leaf-shaped dish with a stalk-shaped handle, on which lay bunches of purple raisins and peeled almonds, a companion dish on which lay a solid rectangle of Smyrna figs, a dish of custard topped with grated nutmeg, a small bowl full of chocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver papers and a glass vase in which stood some tall celery stalks. In the centre of the table there stood, as sentries to a fruit-stand which upheld a pyramid of oranges and American apples, two squat old-fashioned decanters of cut glass, one containing port and the other dark sherry. On the closed square piano a pudding in a huge yellow dish lay in waiting and behind it were three squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals, drawn up according to the colours of their uniforms, the first two black, with brown and red labels, the third and smallest squad white, with transverse green sashes.

Gabriel took his seat boldly at the head of the table and, having looked to the edge of the carver, plunged his fork firmly into the goose. He felt quite at ease now for he was an expert carver and liked nothing better than to find himself at the head of a well-laden table.

"Miss Furlong, what shall I send you?" he asked. "A wing or a slice of the breast?"

"Just a small slice of the breast."

"Miss Higgins, what for you?"

"O, anything at all, Mr. Conroy."

While Gabriel and Miss Daly exchanged plates of goose and plates of ham and spiced beef Lily went from guest to guest with a dish of hot floury potatoes wrapped in a white napkin. This was Mary Jane's idea and she had also suggested apple sauce for the goose but Aunt Kate had said that plain roast goose without any apple sauce had always been good enough for her and she hoped she might never eat worse. Mary Jane waited on her pupils and saw that they got the best slices and Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia opened and carried across from the piano bottles of stout and ale for the gentlemen and bottles of minerals for the ladies. There was a great deal of confusion and laughter and noise, the noise of orders and counter-orders, of knives and forks, of corks and glass-stoppers. Gabriel began to carve second helpings as soon as he had finished the first round without serving himself. Everyone protested loudly so that he compromised by taking a long draught of stout for he had found the carving hot work. Mary Jane settled down quietly to her supper but Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia were still toddling round the table, walking on each other's heels, getting in each other's way and giving each other unheeded orders. Mr. Browne begged of them to sit down and eat their suppers and so did Gabriel but they said there was time enough, so that, at last, Freddy Malins stood up and, capturing Aunt Kate, plumped her down on her chair amid general laughter.

When everyone had been well served Gabriel said, smiling:

"Now, if anyone wants a little more of what vulgar people call stuffing let him or her speak."

A chorus of voices invited him to begin his own supper and Lily came forward with three potatoes which she had reserved for him.

"Very well," said Gabriel amiably, as he took another preparatory draught, "kindly forget my existence, ladies and gentlemen, for a few minutes."

He set to his supper and took no part in the conversation with which the table covered Lily's removal of the plates. The subject of talk was the opera company which was then at the Theatre Royal. Mr. Bartell D'Arcy, the tenor, a dark- complexioned young man with a smart moustache, praised very highly the leading contralto of the company but Miss Furlong thought she had a rather vulgar style of production. Freddy Malins said there was a Negro chieftain singing in the second part of the Gaiety pantomime who had one of the finest tenor voices he had ever heard.

"Have you heard him?" he asked Mr. Bartell D'Arcy across the table.

"No," answered Mr. Bartell D'Arcy carelessly.

"Because," Freddy Malins explained, "now I'd be curious to hear your opinion of him. I think he has a grand voice."

"It takes Teddy to find out the really good things," said Mr. Browne familiarly to the table.

"And why couldn't he have a voice too?" asked Freddy Malins sharply. "Is it because he's only a black?"

Nobody answered this question and Mary Jane led the table back to the legitimate opera. One of her pupils had given her a pass for Mignon. Of course it was very fine, she said, but it made her think of poor Georgina Burns. Mr. Browne could go back farther still, to the old Italian companies that used to come to Dublin -- Tietjens, Ilma de Murzka, Campanini, the great Trebelli, Giuglini, Ravelli, Aramburo. Those were the days, he said, when there was something like singing to be heard in Dublin. He told too of how the top gallery of the old Royal used to be packed night after night, of how one night an Italian tenor had sung five encores to Let me like a Soldier fall, introducing a high C every time, and of how the gallery boys would sometimes in their enthusiasm unyoke the horses from the carriage of some great prima donna and pull her themselves through the streets to her hotel. Why did they never play the grand old operas now, he asked, Dinorah, Lucrezia Borgia? Because they could not get the voices to sing them: that was why.

"Oh, well," said Mr. Bartell D'Arcy, "I presume there are as good singers today as there were then."

"Where are they?" asked Mr. Browne defiantly.

"In London, Paris, Milan," said Mr. Bartell D'Arcy warmly. "I suppose Caruso, for example, is quite as good, if not better than any of the men you have mentioned."

"Maybe so," said Mr. Browne. "But I may tell you I doubt it strongly."

"O, I'd give anything to hear Caruso sing," said Mary Jane.

"For me," said Aunt Kate, who had been picking a bone, "there was only one tenor. To please me, I mean. But I suppose none of you ever heard of him."

"Who was he, Miss Morkan?" asked Mr. Bartell D'Arcy politely.

"His name," said Aunt Kate, "was Parkinson. I heard him when he was in his prime and I think he had then the purest tenor voice that was ever put into a man's throat."

"Strange," said Mr. Bartell D'Arcy. "I never even heard of him."

"Yes, yes, Miss Morkan is right," said Mr. Browne. "I remember hearing of old Parkinson but he's too far back for me."

"A beautiful, pure, sweet, mellow English tenor," said Aunt Kate with enthusiasm.

Gabriel having finished, the huge pudding was transferred to the table. The clatter of forks and spoons began again. Gabriel's wife served out spoonfuls of the pudding and passed the plates down the table. Midway down they were held up by Mary Jane, who replenished them with raspberry or orange jelly or with blancmange and jam. The pudding was of Aunt Julia's making and she received praises for it from all quarters She herself said that it was not quite brown enough.

"Well, I hope, Miss Morkan," said Mr. Browne, "that I'm brown enough for you because, you know, I'm all brown."

All the gentlemen, except Gabriel, ate some of the pudding out of compliment to Aunt Julia. As Gabriel never ate sweets the celery had been left for him. Freddy Malins also took a stalk of celery and ate it with his pudding. He had been told that celery was a capital thing for the blood and he was just then under doctor's care. Mrs. Malins, who had been silent all through the supper, said that her son was going down to Mount Melleray in a week or so. The table then spoke of Mount Melleray, how bracing the air was down there, how hospitable the monks were and how they never asked for a penny-piece from their guests.

"And do you mean to say," asked Mr. Browne incredulously, "that a chap can go down there and put up there as if it were a hotel and live on the fat of the land and then come away without paying anything?"

"O, most people give some donation to the monastery when they leave." said Mary Jane.

"I wish we had an institution like that in our Church," said Mr. Browne candidly.

He was astonished to hear that the monks never spoke, got up at two in the morning and slept in their coffins. He asked what they did it for.

"That's the rule of the order," said Aunt Kate firmly.

"Yes, but why?" asked Mr. Browne.

Aunt Kate repeated that it was the rule, that was all. Mr. Browne still seemed not to understand. Freddy Malins explained to him, as best he could, that the monks were trying to make up for the sins committed by all the sinners in the outside world. The explanation was not very clear for Mr. Browne grinned and said:

"I like that idea very much but wouldn't a comfortable spring bed do them as well as a coffin?"

"The coffin," said Mary Jane, "is to remind them of their last end."

As the subject had grown lugubrious it was buried in a silence of the table during which Mrs. Malins could be heard saying to her neighbour in an indistinct undertone:

"They are very good men, the monks, very pious men."

The raisins and almonds and figs and apples and oranges and chocolates and sweets were now passed about the table and Aunt Julia invited all the guests to have either port or sherry. At first Mr. Bartell D'Arcy refused to take either but one of his neighbours nudged him and whispered something to him upon which he allowed his glass to be filled. Gradually as the last glasses were being filled the conversation ceased. A pause followed, broken only by the noise of the wine and by unsettlings of chairs. The Misses Morkan, all three, looked down at the tablecloth. Someone coughed once or twice and then a few gentlemen patted the table gently as a signal for silence. The silence came and Gabriel pushed back his chair

The patting at once grew louder in encouragement and then ceased altogether. Gabriel leaned his ten trembling fingers on the tablecloth and smiled nervously at the company. Meeting a row of upturned faces he raised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune and he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing-room door. People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing up at the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music. The air was pure there. In the distance lay the park where the trees were weighted with snow. The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that flashed westward over the white field of Fifteen Acres.

He began:

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

"It has fallen to my lot this evening, as in years past, to perform a very pleasing task but a task for which I am afraid my poor powers as a speaker are all too inadequate."

"No, no!" said Mr. Browne.

"But, however that may be, I can only ask you tonight to take the will for the deed and to lend me your attention for a few moments while I endeavour to express to you in words what my feelings are on this occasion.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, it is not the first time that we have gathered together under this hospitable roof, around this hospitable board. It is not the first time that we have been the recipients -- or perhaps, I had better say, the victims -- of the hospitality of certain good ladies."

He made a circle in the air with his arm and paused. Everyone laughed or smiled at Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia and Mary Jane who all turned crimson with pleasure. Gabriel went on more boldly:

"I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has no tradition which does it so much honour and which it should guard so jealously as that of its hospitality. It is a tradition that is unique as far as my experience goes (and I have visited not a few places abroad) among the modern nations. Some would say, perhaps, that with us it is rather a failing than anything to be boasted of. But granted even that, it is, to my mind, a princely failing, and one that I trust will long be cultivated among us. Of one thing, at least, I am sure. As long as this one roof shelters the good ladies aforesaid -- and I wish from my heart it may do so for many and many a long year to come -- the tradition of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality, which our forefathers have handed down to us and which we in turn must hand down to our descendants, is still alive among us."

A hearty murmur of assent ran round the table. It shot through Gabriel's mind that Miss Ivors was not there and that she had gone away discourteously: and he said with confidence in himself:

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

"A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day. Listening tonight to the names of all those great singers of the past it seemed to me, I must confess, that we were living in a less spacious age. Those days might, without exaggeration, be called spacious days: and if they are gone beyond recall let us hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die."

"Hear, hear!" said Mr. Browne loudly.

"But yet," continued Gabriel, his voice falling into a softer inflection, "there are always in gatherings such as this sadder thoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of youth, of changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight. Our path through life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon them always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work among the living. We have all of us living duties and living affections which claim, and rightly claim, our strenuous endeavours.

"Therefore, I will not linger on the past. I will not let any gloomy moralising intrude upon us here tonight. Here we are gathered together for a brief moment from the bustle and rush of our everyday routine. We are met here as friends, in the spirit of good-fellowship, as colleagues, also to a certain extent, in the true spirit of camaraderie, and as the guests of -- what shall I call them? -- the Three Graces of the Dublin musical world."

The table burst into applause and laughter at this allusion. Aunt Julia vainly asked each of her neighbours in turn to tell her what Gabriel had said.

"He says we are the Three Graces, Aunt Julia," said Mary Jane.

Aunt Julia did not understand but she looked up, smiling, at Gabriel, who continued in the same vein:

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

"I will not attempt to play tonight the part that Paris played on another occasion. I will not attempt to choose between them. The task would be an invidious one and one beyond my poor powers. For when I view them in turn, whether it be our chief hostess herself, whose good heart, whose too good heart, has become a byword with all who know her, or her sister, who seems to be gifted with perennial youth and whose singing must have been a surprise and a revelation to us all tonight, or, last but not least, when I consider our youngest hostess, talented, cheerful, hard-working and the best of nieces, I confess, Ladies and Gentlemen, that I do not know to which of them I should award the prize."

Gabriel glanced down at his aunts and, seeing the large smile on Aunt Julia's face and the tears which had risen to Aunt Kate's eyes, hastened to his close. He raised his glass of port gallantly, while every member of the company fingered a glass expectantly, and said loudly:

"Let us toast them all three together. Let us drink to their health, wealth, long life, happiness and prosperity and may they long continue to hold the proud and self-won position which they hold in their profession and the position of honour and affection which they hold in our hearts."

All the guests stood up, glass in hand, and turning towards the three seated ladies, sang in unison, with Mr. Browne as leader:

For they are jolly gay fellows,
For they are jolly gay fellows,
For they are jolly gay fellows,
Which nobody can deny.

Aunt Kate was making frank use of her handkerchief and even Aunt Julia seemed moved. Freddy Malins beat time with his pudding-fork and the singers turned towards one another, as if in melodious conference, while they sang with emphasis:

Unless he tells a lie,
Unless he tells a lie,

Then, turning once more towards their hostesses, they sang:

For they are jolly gay fellows,
For they are jolly gay fellows,
For they are jolly gay fellows,
Which nobody can deny.

The acclamation which followed was taken up beyond the door of the supper-room by many of the other guests and renewed time after time, Freddy Malins acting as officer with his fork on high.

The piercing morning air came into the hall where they were standing so that Aunt Kate said:

"Close the door, somebody. Mrs. Malins will get her death of cold."

"Browne is out there, Aunt Kate," said Mary Jane.

"Browne is everywhere," said Aunt Kate, lowering her voice.

Mary Jane laughed at her tone.

"Really," she said archly, "he is very attentive."

"He has been laid on here like the gas," said Aunt Kate in the same tone, "all during the Christmas."

She laughed herself this time good-humouredly and then added quickly:

"But tell him to come in, Mary Jane, and close the door. I hope to goodness he didn't hear me."

At that moment the hall-door was opened and Mr. Browne came in from the doorstep, laughing as if his heart would break. He was dressed in a long green overcoat with mock astrakhan cuffs and collar and wore on his head an oval fur cap. He pointed down the snow-covered quay from where the sound of shrill prolonged whistling was borne in.

"Teddy will have all the cabs in Dublin out," he said.

Gabriel advanced from the little pantry behind the office, struggling into his overcoat and, looking round the hall, said:

"Gretta not down yet?"

"She's getting on her things, Gabriel," said Aunt Kate.

"Who's playing up there?" asked Gabriel.

"Nobody. They're all gone."

"O no, Aunt Kate," said Mary Jane. "Bartell D'Arcy and Miss O'Callaghan aren't gone yet."

"Someone is fooling at the piano anyhow," said Gabriel.

Mary Jane glanced at Gabriel and Mr. Browne and said with a shiver:

"It makes me feel cold to look at you two gentlemen muffled up like that. I wouldn't like to face your journey home at this hour."

"I'd like nothing better this minute," said Mr. Browne stoutly, "than a rattling fine walk in the country or a fast drive with a good spanking goer between the shafts."

"We used to have a very good horse and trap at home," said Aunt Julia sadly.

"The never-to-be-forgotten Johnny," said Mary Jane, laughing.

Aunt Kate and Gabriel laughed too.

"Why, what was wonderful about Johnny?" asked Mr. Browne.

"The late lamented Patrick Morkan, our grandfather, that is," explained Gabriel, "commonly known in his later years as the old gentleman, was a glue-boiler."

"O, now, Gabriel," said Aunt Kate, laughing, "he had a starch mill."

"Well, glue or starch," said Gabriel, "the old gentleman had a horse by the name of Johnny. And Johnny used to work in the old gentleman's mill, walking round and round in order to drive the mill. That was all very well; but now comes the tragic part about Johnny. One fine day the old gentleman thought he'd like to drive out with the quality to a military review in the park."

"The Lord have mercy on his soul," said Aunt Kate compassionately.

"Amen," said Gabriel. "So the old gentleman, as I said, harnessed Johnny and put on his very best tall hat and his very best stock collar and drove out in grand style from his ancestral mansion somewhere near Back Lane, I think."

Everyone laughed, even Mrs. Malins, at Gabriel's manner and Aunt Kate said:

"O, now, Gabriel, he didn't live in Back Lane, really. Only the mill was there."

"Out from the mansion of his forefathers," continued Gabriel, "he drove with Johnny. And everything went on beautifully until Johnny came in sight of King Billy's statue: and whether he fell in love with the horse King Billy sits on or whether he thought he was back again in the mill, anyhow he began to walk round the statue."

Gabriel paced in a circle round the hall in his goloshes amid the laughter of the others.

"Round and round he went," said Gabriel, "and the old gentleman, who was a very pompous old gentleman, was highly indignant. 'Go on, sir! What do you mean, sir? Johnny! Johnny! Most extraordinary conduct! Can't understand the horse!"

The peal of laughter which followed Gabriel's imitation of the incident was interrupted by a resounding knock at the hall door. Mary Jane ran to open it and let in Freddy Malins. Freddy Malins, with his hat well back on his head and his shoulders humped with cold, was puffing and steaming after his exertions.

"I could only get one cab," he said.

"O, we'll find another along the quay," said Gabriel.

"Yes," said Aunt Kate. "Better not keep Mrs. Malins standing in the draught."

Mrs. Malins was helped down the front steps by her son and Mr. Browne and, after many manoeuvres, hoisted into the cab. Freddy Malins clambered in after her and spent a long time settling her on the seat, Mr. Browne helping him with advice. At last she was settled comfortably and Freddy Malins invited Mr. Browne into the cab. There was a good deal of confused talk, and then Mr. Browne got into the cab. The cabman settled his rug over his knees, and bent down for the address. The confusion grew greater and the cabman was directed differently by Freddy Malins and Mr. Browne, each of whom had his head out through a window of the cab. The difficulty was to know where to drop Mr. Browne along the route, and Aunt Kate, Aunt Julia and Mary Jane helped the discussion from the doorstep with cross-directions and contradictions and abundance of laughter. As for Freddy Malins he was speechless with laughter. He popped his head in and out of the window every moment to the great danger of his hat, and told his mother how the discussion was progressing, till at last Mr. Browne shouted to the bewildered cabman above the din of everybody's laughter:

"Do you know Trinity College?"

"Yes, sir," said the cabman.

"Well, drive bang up against Trinity College gates," said Mr. Browne, "and then we'll tell you where to go. You understand now?"

"Yes, sir," said the cabman.

"Make like a bird for Trinity College."

"Right, sir," said the cabman.

The horse was whipped up and the cab rattled off along the quay amid a chorus of laughter and adieus.

Gabriel had not gone to the door with the others. He was in a dark part of the hall gazing up the staircase. A woman was standing near the top of the first flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her face but he could see the terra-cotta and salmon-pink panels of her skirt which the shadow made appear black and white. It was his wife. She was leaning on the banisters, listening to something. Gabriel was surprised at her stillness and strained his ear to listen also. But he could hear little save the noise of laughter and dispute on the front steps, a few chords struck on the piano and a few notes of a man's voice singing.

He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that the voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her hair against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show off the light ones. Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a painter.

The hall-door was closed; and Aunt Kate, Aunt Julia and Mary Jane came down the hall, still laughing.

"Well, isn't Freddy terrible?" said Mary Jane. "He's really terrible."

Gabriel said nothing but pointed up the stairs towards where his wife was standing. Now that the hall-door was closed the voice and the piano could be heard more clearly. Gabriel held up his hand for them to be silent. The song seemed to be in the old Irish tonality and the singer seemed uncertain both of his words and of his voice. The voice, made plaintive by distance and by the singer's hoarseness, faintly illuminated the cadence of the air with words expressing grief:

O, the rain falls on my heavy locks
And the dew wets my skin,
My babe lies cold...

"O," exclaimed Mary Jane. "It's Bartell D'Arcy singing and he wouldn't sing all the night. O, I'll get him to sing a song before he goes."

"O, do, Mary Jane," said Aunt Kate.

Mary Jane brushed past the others and ran to the staircase, but before she reached it the singing stopped and the piano was closed abruptly.

"O, what a pity!" she cried. "Is he coming down, Gretta?"

Gabriel heard his wife answer yes and saw her come down towards them. A few steps behind her were Mr. Bartell D'Arcy and Miss O'Callaghan.

"O, Mr. D'Arcy," cried Mary Jane, "it's downright mean of you to break off like that when we were all in raptures listening to you."

"I have been at him all the evening," said Miss O'Callaghan, "and Mrs. Conroy, too, and he told us he had a dreadful cold and couldn't sing."

"O, Mr. D'Arcy," said Aunt Kate, "now that was a great fib to tell."

"Can't you see that I'm as hoarse as a crow?" said Mr. D'Arcy roughly.

He went into the pantry hastily and put on his overcoat. The others, taken aback by his rude speech, could find nothing to say. Aunt Kate wrinkled her brows and made signs to the others to drop the subject. Mr. D'Arcy stood swathing his neck carefully and frowning.

"It's the weather," said Aunt Julia, after a pause.

"Yes, everybody has colds," said Aunt Kate readily, "everybody."

"They say," said Mary Jane, "we haven't had snow like it for thirty years; and I read this morning in the newspapers that the snow is general all over Ireland."

"I love the look of snow," said Aunt Julia sadly.

"So do I," said Miss O'Callaghan. "I think Christmas is never really Christmas unless we have the snow on the ground."

"But poor Mr. D'Arcy doesn't like the snow," said Aunt Kate, smiling.

Mr. D'Arcy came from the pantry, fully swathed and buttoned, and in a repentant tone told them the history of his cold. Everyone gave him advice and said it was a great pity and urged him to be very careful of his throat in the night air. Gabriel watched his wife, who did not join in the conversation. She was standing right under the dusty fanlight and the flame of the gas lit up the rich bronze of her hair, which he had seen her drying at the fire a few days before. She was in the same attitude and seemed unaware of the talk about her At last she turned towards them and Gabriel saw that there was colour on her cheeks and that her eyes were shining. A sudden tide of joy went leaping out of his heart.

"Mr. D'Arcy," she said, "what is the name of that song you were singing?"

"It's called The Lass of Aughrim," said Mr. D'Arcy, "but I couldn't remember it properly. Why? Do you know it?"

"The Lass of Aughrim," she repeated. "I couldn't think of the name."

"It's a very nice air," said Mary Jane. "I'm sorry you were not in voice tonight."

"Now, Mary Jane," said Aunt Kate, "don't annoy Mr. D'Arcy. I won't have him annoyed."

Seeing that all were ready to start she shepherded them to the door, where good-night was said:

"Well, good-night, Aunt Kate, and thanks for the pleasant evening."

"Good-night, Gabriel. Good-night, Gretta!"

"Good-night, Aunt Kate, and thanks ever so much. Goodnight, Aunt Julia."

"O, good-night, Gretta, I didn't see you."

"Good-night, Mr. D'Arcy. Good-night, Miss O'Callaghan."

"Good-night, Miss Morkan."

"Good-night, again."

"Good-night, all. Safe home."

"Good-night. Good night."

The morning was still dark. A dull, yellow light brooded over the houses and the river; and the sky seemed to be descending. It was slushy underfoot; and only streaks and patches of snow lay on the roofs, on the parapets of the quay and on the area railings. The lamps were still burning redly in the murky air and, across the river, the palace of the Four Courts stood out menacingly against the heavy sky.

She was walking on before him with Mr. Bartell D'Arcy, her shoes in a brown parcel tucked under one arm and her hands holding her skirt up from the slush. She had no longer any grace of attitude, but Gabriel's eyes were still bright with happiness. The blood went bounding along his veins; and the thoughts went rioting through his brain, proud, joyful, tender, valorous.

She was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to run after her noiselessly, catch her by the shoulders and say something foolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail that he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with her. Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory. A heliotrope envelope was lying beside his breakfast-cup and he was caressing it with his hand. Birds were twittering in the ivy and the sunny web of the curtain was shimmering along the floor: he could not eat for happiness. They were standing on the crowded platform and he was placing a ticket inside the warm palm of her glove. He was standing with her in the cold, looking in through a grated window at a man making bottles in a roaring furnace. It was very cold. Her face, fragrant in the cold air, was quite close to his; and suddenly he called out to the man at the furnace:

"Is the fire hot, sir?"

But the man could not hear with the noise of the furnace. It was just as well. He might have answered rudely.

A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing in warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fire of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together and remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had not quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her household cares had not quenched all their souls' tender fire. In one letter that he had written to her then he had said: "Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?"

Like distant music these words that he had written years before were borne towards him from the past. He longed to be alone with her. When the others had gone away, when he and she were in the room in the hotel, then they would be alone together. He would call her softly:

"Gretta!"

Perhaps she would not hear at once: she would be undressing. Then something in his voice would strike her. She would turn and look at him....

At the corner of Winetavern Street they met a cab. He was glad of its rattling noise as it saved him from conversation. She was looking out of the window and seemed tired. The others spoke only a few words, pointing out some building or street. The horse galloped along wearily under the murky morning sky, dragging his old rattling box after his heels, and Gabriel was again in a cab with her, galloping to catch the boat, galloping to their honeymoon.

As the cab drove across O'Connell Bridge Miss O'Callaghan said:

"They say you never cross O'Connell Bridge without seeing a white horse."

"I see a white man this time," said Gabriel.

"Where?" asked Mr. Bartell D'Arcy.

Gabriel pointed to the statue, on which lay patches of snow. Then he nodded familiarly to it and waved his hand.

"Good-night, Dan," he said gaily.

When the cab drew up before the hotel, Gabriel jumped out and, in spite of Mr. Bartell D'Arcy's protest, paid the driver. He gave the man a shilling over his fare. The man saluted and said:

"A prosperous New Year to you, sir."

"The same to you," said Gabriel cordially.

She leaned for a moment on his arm in getting out of the cab and while standing at the curbstone, bidding the others good- night. She leaned lightly on his arm, as lightly as when she had danced with him a few hours before. He had felt proud and happy then, happy that she was his, proud of her grace and wifely carriage. But now, after the kindling again of so many memories, the first touch of her body, musical and strange and perfumed, sent through him a keen pang of lust. Under cover of her silence he pressed her arm closely to his side; and, as they stood at the hotel door, he felt that they had escaped from their lives and duties, escaped from home and friends and run away together with wild and radiant hearts to a new adventure.

An old man was dozing in a great hooded chair in the hall. He lit a candle in the office and went before them to the stairs. They followed him in silence, their feet falling in soft thuds on the thickly carpeted stairs. She mounted the stairs behind the porter, her head bowed in the ascent, her frail shoulders curved as with a burden, her skirt girt tightly about her. He could have flung his arms about her hips and held her still, for his arms were trembling with desire to seize her and only the stress of his nails against the palms of his hands held the wild impulse of his body in check. The porter halted on the stairs to settle his guttering candle. They halted, too, on the steps below him. In the silence Gabriel could hear the falling of the molten wax into the tray and the thumping of his own heart against his ribs.

The porter led them along a corridor and opened a door. Then he set his unstable candle down on a toilet-table and asked at what hour they were to be called in the morning.

"Eight," said Gabriel.

The porter pointed to the tap of the electric-light and began a muttered apology, but Gabriel cut him short.

"We don't want any light. We have light enough from the street. And I say," he added, pointing to the candle, "you might remove that handsome article, like a good man."

The porter took up his candle again, but slowly, for he was surprised by such a novel idea. Then he mumbled good-night and went out. Gabriel shot the lock to.

A ghastly light from the street lamp lay in a long shaft from one window to the door. Gabriel threw his overcoat and hat on a couch and crossed the room towards the window. He looked down into the street in order that his emotion might calm a little. Then he turned and leaned against a chest of drawers with his back to the light. She had taken off her hat and cloak and was standing before a large swinging mirror, unhooking her waist. Gabriel paused for a few moments, watching her, and then said:

"Gretta! "

She turned away from the mirror slowly and walked along the shaft of light towards him. Her face looked so serious and weary that the words would not pass Gabriel's lips. No, it was not the moment yet.

"You looked tired," he said.

"I am a little," she answered.

"You don't feel ill or weak?"

"No, tired: that's all."

She went on to the window and stood there, looking out. Gabriel waited again and then, fearing that diffidence was about to conquer him, he said abruptly:

"By the way, Gretta!"

"What is it?"

"You know that poor fellow Malins?" he said quickly.

"Yes. What about him?"

"Well, poor fellow, he's a decent sort of chap, after all," continued Gabriel in a false voice. "He gave me back that sovereign I lent him, and I didn't expect it, really. It's a pity he wouldn't keep away from that Browne, because he's not a bad fellow, really."

He was trembling now with annoyance. Why did she seem so abstracted? He did not know how he could begin. Was she annoyed, too, about something? If she would only turn to him or come to him of her own accord! To take her as she was would be brutal. No, he must see some ardour in her eyes first. He longed to be master of her strange mood.

"When did you lend him the pound?" she asked, after a pause.

Gabriel strove to restrain himself from breaking out into brutal language about the sottish Malins and his pound. He longed to cry to her from his soul, to crush her body against his, to overmaster her. But he said:

"O, at Christmas, when he opened that little Christmas-card shop in Henry Street."

He was in such a fever of rage and desire that he did not hear her come from the window. She stood before him for an instant, looking at him strangely. Then, suddenly raising herself on tiptoe and resting her hands lightly on his shoulders, she kissed him.

"You are a very generous person, Gabriel," she said.

Gabriel, trembling with delight at her sudden kiss and at the quaintness of her phrase, put his hands on her hair and began smoothing it back, scarcely touching it with his fingers. The washing had made it fine and brilliant. His heart was brimming over with happiness. Just when he was wishing for it she had come to him of her own accord. Perhaps her thoughts had been running with his. Perhaps she had felt the impetuous desire that was in him, and then the yielding mood had come upon her. Now that she had fallen to him so easily, he wondered why he had been so diffident.

He stood, holding her head between his hands. Then, slipping one arm swiftly about her body and drawing her towards him, he said softly:

"Gretta, dear, what are you thinking about?"

She did not answer nor yield wholly to his arm. He said again, softly:

"Tell me what it is, Gretta. I think I know what is the matter. Do I know?"

She did not answer at once. Then she said in an outburst of tears:

"O, I am thinking about that song, The Lass of Aughrim."

She broke loose from him and ran to the bed and, throwing her arms across the bed-rail, hid her face. Gabriel stood stockstill for a moment in astonishment and then followed her. As he passed in the way of the cheval-glass he caught sight of himself in full length, his broad, well-filled shirt-front, the face whose expression always puzzled him when he saw it in a mirror, and his glimmering gilt-rimmed eyeglasses. He halted a few paces from her and said:

"What about the song? Why does that make you cry?"

She raised her head from her arms and dried her eyes with the back of her hand like a child. A kinder note than he had intended went into his voice.

"Why, Gretta?" he asked.

"I am thinking about a person long ago who used to sing that song."

"And who was the person long ago?" asked Gabriel, smiling.

"It was a person I used to know in Galway when I was living with my grandmother," she said.

The smile passed away from Gabriel's face. A dull anger began to gather again at the back of his mind and the dull fires of his lust began to glow angrily in his veins.

"Someone you were in love with?" he asked ironically.

"It was a young boy I used to know," she answered, "named Michael Furey. He used to sing that song, The Lass of Aughrim. He was very delicate."

Gabriel was silent. He did not wish her to think that he was interested in this delicate boy.

"I can see him so plainly," she said, after a moment. "Such eyes as he had: big, dark eyes! And such an expression in them -- an expression!"

"O, then, you are in love with him?" said Gabriel.

"I used to go out walking with him," she said, "when I was in Galway."

A thought flew across Gabriel's mind.

"Perhaps that was why you wanted to go to Galway with that Ivors girl?" he said coldly.

She looked at him and asked in surprise:

"What for?"

Her eyes made Gabriel feel awkward. He shrugged his shoulders and said:

"How do I know? To see him, perhaps."

She looked away from him along the shaft of light towards the window in silence.

"He is dead," she said at length. "He died when he was only seventeen. Isn't it a terrible thing to die so young as that?"

"What was he?" asked Gabriel, still ironically.

"He was in the gasworks," she said.

Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the evocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his forehead.

He tried to keep up his tone of cold interrogation, but his voice when he spoke was humble and indifferent.

"I suppose you were in love with this Michael Furey, Gretta," he said.

"I was great with him at that time," she said.

Her voice was veiled and sad. Gabriel, feeling now how vain it would be to try to lead her whither he had purposed, caressed one of her hands and said, also sadly:

"And what did he die of so young, Gretta? Consumption, was it?"

"I think he died for me," she answered.

A vague terror seized Gabriel at this answer, as if, at that hour when he had hoped to triumph, some impalpable and vindictive being was coming against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world. But he shook himself free of it with an effort of reason and continued to caress her hand. He did not question her again, for he felt that she would tell him of herself. Her hand was warm and moist: it did not respond to his touch, but he continued to caress it just as he had caressed her first letter to him that spring morning.

"It was in the winter," she said, "about the beginning of the winter when I was going to leave my grandmother's and come up here to the convent. And he was ill at the time in his lodgings in Galway and wouldn't be let out, and his people in Oughterard were written to. He was in decline, they said, or something like that. I never knew rightly."

She paused for a moment and sighed.

"Poor fellow," she said. "He was very fond of me and he was such a gentle boy. We used to go out together, walking, you know, Gabriel, like the way they do in the country. He was going to study singing only for his health. He had a very good voice, poor Michael Furey."

"Well; and then?" asked Gabriel.

"And then when it came to the time for me to leave Galway and come up to the convent he was much worse and I wouldn't be let see him so I wrote him a letter saying I was going up to Dublin and would be back in the summer, and hoping he would be better then."

She paused for a moment to get her voice under control, and then went on:

"Then the night before I left, I was in my grandmother's house in Nuns' Island, packing up, and I heard gravel thrown up against the window. The window was so wet I couldn't see, so I ran downstairs as I was and slipped out the back into the garden and there was the poor fellow at the end of the garden, shivering."

"And did you not tell him to go back?" asked Gabriel.

"I implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get his death in the rain. But he said he did not want to live. I can see his eyes as well as well! He was standing at the end of the wall where there was a tree."

"And did he go home?" asked Gabriel.

"Yes, he went home. And when I was only a week in the convent he died and he was buried in Oughterard, where his people came from. O, the day I heard that, that he was dead!"

She stopped, choking with sobs, and, overcome by emotion, flung herself face downward on the bed, sobbing in the quilt. Gabriel held her hand for a moment longer, irresolutely, and then, shy of intruding on her grief, let it fall gently and walked quietly to the window.

She was fast asleep.

Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death.

Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt's supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon.

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

E. M. Forster – The Celestial Omnibus (read online)

2012-02-13T11:52:00.002+02:00

The Celestial Omnibus

THE CELESTIAL OMNIBUS


I


The boy who resided at Agathox Lodge, 28, Buckingham Park Road,
Surbiton, had often been puzzled by the old sign-post that stood almost
opposite. He asked his mother about it, and she replied that it was a
joke, and not a very nice one, which had been made many years back by
some naughty young men, and that the police ought to remove it. For
there were two strange things about this sign-post: firstly, it pointed
up a blank alley, and, secondly, it had painted on it in faded
characters, the words, "To Heaven."

"What kind of young men were they?" he asked.

"I think your father told me that one of them wrote verses, and was
expelled from the University and came to grief in other ways. Still, it
was a long time ago. You must ask your father about it. He will say the
same as I do, that it was put up as a joke."

"So it doesn't mean anything at all?"

She sent him upstairs to put on his best things, for the Bonses were
coming to tea, and he was to hand the cake-stand.

It struck him, as he wrenched on his tightening trousers, that he might
do worse than ask Mr. Bons about the sign-post. His father, though very
kind, always laughed at him--shrieked with laughter whenever he or any
other child asked a question or spoke. But Mr. Bons was serious as well
as kind. He had a beautiful house and lent one books, he was a
churchwarden, and a candidate for the County Council; he had donated to
the Free Library enormously, he presided over the Literary Society, and
had Members of Parliament to stop with him--in short, he was probably
the wisest person alive.

Yet even Mr. Bons could only say that the sign-post was a joke--the joke
of a person named Shelley.

"Off course!" cried the mother; "I told you so, dear. That was the
name."

"Had you never heard of Shelley?" asked Mr. Bons.

"No," said the boy, and hung his head.

"But is there no Shelley in the house?"

"Why, yes!" exclaimed the lady, in much agitation. "Dear Mr. Bons, we
aren't such Philistines as that. Two at the least. One a wedding
present, and the other, smaller print, in one of the spare rooms."

"I believe we have seven Shelleys," said Mr. Bons, with a slow smile.
Then he brushed the cake crumbs off his stomach, and, together with his
daughter, rose to go.

The boy, obeying a wink from his mother, saw them all the way to the
garden gate, and when they had gone he did not at once return to the
house, but gazed for a little up and down Buckingham Park Road.

His parents lived at the right end of it. After No. 39 the quality of
the houses dropped very suddenly, and 64 had not even a separate
servants' entrance. But at the present moment the whole road looked
rather pretty, for the sun had just set in splendour, and the
inequalities of rent were drowned in a saffron afterglow. Small birds
twittered, and the breadwinners' train shrieked musically down through
the cutting--that wonderful cutting which has drawn to itself the whole
beauty out of Surbiton, and clad itself, like any Alpine valley, with
the glory of the fir and the silver birch and the primrose. It was this
cutting that had first stirred desires within the boy--desires for
something just a little different, he knew not what desires that would
return whenever things were sunlit, as they were this evening, running
up and down inside him, up and down, up and down, till he would feel
quite unusual all over, and as likely as not would want to cry. This
evening he was even sillier, for he slipped across the road towards the
sign-post and began to run up the blank alley.

The alley runs between high walls--the walls of the gardens of "Ivanhoe"
and "Belle Vista" respectively. It smells a little all the way, and is
scarcely twenty yards long, including the turn at the end. So not
unnaturally the boy soon came to a standstill. "I'd like to kick that
Shelley," he exclaimed, and glanced idly at a piece of paper which was
pasted on the wall. Rather an odd piece of paper, and he read it
carefully before he turned back. This is what he read:

            S. AND C.R.C.C.
      _Alteration in Service._

Owing to lack of patronage the Company are regretfully compelled to
suspend the hourly service, and to retain only the

       _Sunrise and Sunset Omnibuses,_

which will run as usual. It is to be hoped that the public will
patronize an arrangement which is intended for their convenience. As an
extra inducement, the Company will, for the first time, now issue

               Return Tickets!

(available one day only), which may be obtained of the driver.
Passengers are again reminded that _no tickets are issued at the other
end_, and that no complaints in this connection will receive
consideration from the Company. Nor will the Company be responsible for
any negligence or stupidity on the part of Passengers, nor for
Hailstorms, Lightning, Loss of Tickets, nor for any Act of God.

                                For the Direction.

Now he had never seen this notice before, nor could he imagine where the
omnibus went to. S. of course was for Surbiton, and R.C.C. meant Road
Car Company. But what was the meaning or the other C.? Coombe and
Maiden, perhaps, of possibly "City." Yet it could not hope to compete
with the South-Western. The whole thing, the boy reflected, was run on
hopelessly unbusiness-like lines. Why no tickets from the other end? And
what an hour to start! Then he realized that unless the notice was a
hoax, an omnibus must have been starting just as he was wishing the
Bonses good-bye. He peered at the ground through the gathering dusk, and
there he saw what might or might not be the marks of wheels. Yet nothing
had come out of the alley. And he had never seen an omnibus at any time
in the Buckingham Park Road. No: it must be a hoax, like the sign-posts,
like the fairy tales, like the dreams upon which he would wake suddenly
in the night. And with a sigh he stepped from the alley--right into the
arms of his father.

Oh, how his father laughed! "Poor, poor Popsey!" he cried. "Diddums!
Diddums! Diddums think he'd walky-palky up to Evvink!" And his mother,
also convulsed with laughter, appeared on the steps of Agathox Lodge.
"Don't, Bob!" she gasped. "Don't be so naughty! Oh, you'll kill me! Oh,
leave the boy alone!"

But all that evening the joke was kept up. The father implored to be
taken too. Was it a very tiring walk? Need one wipe one's shoes on the
door-mat? And the boy went to bed feeling faint and sore, and thankful
for only one thing--that he had not said a word about the omnibus. It
was a hoax, yet through his dreams it grew more and more real, and the
streets of Surbiton, through which he saw it driving, seemed instead to
become hoaxes and shadows. And very early in the morning he woke with a
cry, for he had had a glimpse of its destination.

He struck a match, and its light fell not only on his watch but also on
his calendar, so that he knew it to be half-an-hour to sunrise. It was
pitch dark, for the fog had come down from London in the night, and all
Surbiton was wrapped in its embraces. Yet he sprang out and dressed
himself, for he was determined to settle once for all which was real:
the omnibus or the streets. "I shall be a fool one way or the other," he
thought, "until I know." Soon he was shivering in the road under the gas
lamp that guarded the entrance to the alley.

To enter the alley itself required some courage. Not only was it
horribly dark, but he now realized that it was an impossible terminus
for an omnibus. If it had not been for a policeman, whom he heard
approaching through the fog, he would never have made the attempt. The
next moment he had made the attempt and failed. Nothing. Nothing but a
blank alley and a very silly boy gaping at its dirty floor. It _was_ a
hoax. "I'll tell papa and mamma," he decided. "I deserve it. I deserve
that they should know. I am too silly to be alive." And he went back to
the gate of Agathox Lodge.

There he remembered that his watch was fast. The sun was not risen; it
would not rise for two minutes. "Give the bus every chance," he thought
cynically, and returned into the alley.

But the omnibus was there.



II


It had two horses, whose sides were still smoking from their journey,
and its two great lamps shone through the fog against the alley's walls,
changing their cobwebs and moss into tissues of fairyland. The driver
was huddled up in a cape. He faced the blank wall, and how he had
managed to drive in so neatly and so silently was one of the many things
that the boy never discovered. Nor could he imagine how ever he would
drive out.

"Please," his voice quavered through the foul brown air, "Please, is
that an omnibus?"

"Omnibus est," said the driver, without turning round. There was a
moment's silence. The policeman passed, coughing, by the entrance of the
alley. The boy crouched in the shadow, for he did not want to be found
out. He was pretty sure, too, that it was a Pirate; nothing else, he
reasoned, would go from such odd places and at such odd hours.

"About when do you start?" He tried to sound nonchalant.

"At sunrise."

"How far do you go?"

"The whole way."

"And can I have a return ticket which will bring me all the way back?"

"You can."

"Do you know, I half think I'll come." The driver made no answer. The
sun must have risen, for he unhitched the brake. And scarcely had the
boy jumped in before the omnibus was off.

How? Did it turn? There was no room. Did it go forward? There was a
blank wall. Yet it was moving--moving at a stately pace through the fog,
which had turned from brown to yellow. The thought of warm bed and
warmer breakfast made the boy feel faint. He wished he had not come. His
parents would not have approved. He would have gone back to them if the
weather had not made it impossible. The solitude was terrible; he was
the only passenger. And the omnibus, though well-built, was cold and
somewhat musty. He drew his coat round him, and in so doing chanced to
feel his pocket. It was empty. He had forgotten his purse.

"Stop!" he shouted. "Stop!" And then, being of a polite disposition, he
glanced up at the painted notice-board so that he might call the driver
by name. "Mr. Browne! stop; O, do please stop!"

Mr. Browne did not stop, but he opened a little window and looked in at
the boy. His face was a surprise, so kind it was and modest.

"Mr. Browne, I've left my purse behind. I've not got a penny. I can't
pay for the ticket. Will you take my watch, please? I am in the most
awful hole."

"Tickets on this line," said the driver, "whether single or return, can
be purchased by coinage from no terrene mint. And a chronometer, though
it had solaced the vigils of Charlemagne, or measured the slumbers of
Laura, can acquire by no mutation the double-cake that charms the
fangless Cerberus of Heaven!" So saying, he handed in the necessary
ticket, and, while the boy said "Thank you," continued: "Titular
pretensions, I know it well, are vanity. Yet they merit no censure when
uttered on a laughing lip, and in an homonymous world are in some sort
useful, since they do serve to distinguish one Jack from his fellow.
Remember me, therefore, as Sir Thomas Browne."

"Are you a Sir? Oh, sorry!" He had heard of these gentlemen drivers. "It
_is_ good of you about the ticket. But if you go on at this rate,
however does your bus pay?"

"It does not pay. It was not intended to pay. Many are the faults of my
equipage; it is compounded too curiously of foreign woods; its cushions
tickle erudition rather than promote repose; and my horses are nourished
not on the evergreen pastures of the moment, but on the dried bents and
clovers of Latinity. But that it pays!--that error at all events was
never intended and never attained."

"Sorry again," said the boy rather hopelessly. Sir Thomas looked sad,
fearing that, even for a moment, he had been the cause of sadness. He
invited the boy to come up and sit beside him on the box, and together
they journeyed on through the fog, which was now changing from yellow to
white. There were no houses by the road; so it must be either Putney
Heath or Wimbledon Common.

"Have you been a driver always?"

"I was a physician once."

"But why did you stop? Weren't you good?"

"As a healer of bodies I had scant success, and several score of my
patients preceded me. But as a healer of the spirit I have succeeded
beyond my hopes and my deserts. For though my draughts were not better
nor subtler than those of other men, yet, by reason of the cunning
goblets wherein I offered them, the queasy soul was ofttimes tempted to
sip and be refreshed."

"The queasy soul," he murmured; "if the sun sets with trees in front of
it, and you suddenly come strange all over, is that a queasy soul?"

"Have you felt that?"

"Why yes."

After a pause he told the boy a little, a very little, about the
journey's end. But they did not chatter much, for the boy, when he liked
a person, would as soon sit silent in his company as speak, and this, he
discovered, was also the mind of Sir Thomas Browne and of many others
with whom he was to be acquainted. He heard, however, about the young
man Shelley, who was now quite a famous person, with a carriage of his
own, and about some of the other drivers who are in the service of the
Company. Meanwhile the light grew stronger, though the fog did not
disperse. It was now more like mist than fog, and at times would travel
quickly across them, as if it was part of a cloud. They had been
ascending, too, in a most puzzling way; for over two hours the horses
had been pulling against the collar, and even if it were Richmond Hill
they ought to have been at the top long ago. Perhaps it was Epsom, or
even the North Downs; yet the air seemed keener than that which blows on
either. And as to the name of their destination, Sir Thomas Browne was
silent.

Crash!

"Thunder, by Jove!" said the boy, "and not so far off either. Listen to
the echoes! It's more like mountains."

He thought, not very vividly, of his father and mother. He saw them
sitting down to sausages and listening to the storm. He saw his own
empty place. Then there would be questions, alarms, theories, jokes,
consolations. They would expect him back at lunch. To lunch he would not
come, nor to tea, but he would be in for dinner, and so his day's
truancy would be over. If he had had his purse he would have bought them
presents--not that he should have known what to get them.

Crash!

The peal and the lightning came together. The cloud quivered as if it
were alive, and torn streamers of mist rushed past. "Are you afraid?"
asked Sir Thomas Browne.

"What is there to be afraid of? Is it much farther?"

The horses of the omnibus stopped just as a ball of fire burst up and
exploded with a ringing noise that was deafening but clear, like the
noise of a blacksmith's forge. All the cloud was shattered.

"Oh, listen. Sir Thomas Browne! No, I mean look; we shall get a view at
last. No, I mean listen; that sounds like a rainbow!"

The noise had died into the faintest murmur, beneath which another
murmur grew, spreading stealthily, steadily, in a curve that widened but
did not vary. And in widening curves a rainbow was spreading from the
horses' feet into the dissolving mists.

"But how beautiful! What colours! Where will it stop? It is more like
the rainbows you can tread on. More like dreams."

The colour and the sound grew together. The rainbow spanned an enormous
gulf. Clouds rushed under it and were pierced by it, and still it grew,
reaching forward, conquering the darkness, until it touched something
that seemed more solid than a cloud.

The boy stood up. "What is that out there?" he called. "What does it
rest on, out at that other end?"

In the morning sunshine a precipice shone forth beyond the gulf A
precipice--or was it a castle? The horses moved. They set their feet
upon the rainbow.

"Oh, look!" the boy shouted. "Oh, listen! Those caves--or are they
gateways? Oh, look between those cliffs at those ledges. I see people! I
see trees!"

"Look also below," whispered Sir Thomas. "Neglect not the diviner
Acheron."

The boy looked below, past the flames of the rainbow that licked against
their wheels. The gulf also had cleared, and in its depths there flowed
an everlasting river. One sunbeam entered and struck a green pool, and
as they passed over he saw three maidens rise to the surface of the
pool, singing, and playing with something that glistened like a ring.

"You down in the water----" he called.

They answered, "You up on the bridge----" There was a burst of music.
"You up on the bridge, good luck to you. Truth in the depth, truth on
the height."

"You down in the water, what are you doing?"

Sir Thomas Browne replied: "They sport in the mancipiary possession of
their gold"; and the omnibus arrived.



III


The boy was in disgrace. He sat locked up in the nursery of Agathox
Lodge, learning poetry for a punishment. His father had said, "My boy! I
can pardon anything but untruthfulness," and had caned him, saying at
each stroke, "There is _no_ omnibus, _no_ driver, _no_ bridge, _no_
mountain; you are a _truant_, _guttersnipe_, a _liar_." His father
could be very stern at times. His mother had begged him to say he was
sorry. But he could not say that. It was the greatest day of his life,
in spite of the caning, and the poetry at the end of it.

He had returned punctually at sunset--driven not by Sir Thomas Browne,
but by a maiden lady who was full of quiet fun. They had talked of
omnibuses and also of barouche landaus. How far away her gentle voice
seemed now! Yet it was scarcely three hours since he had left her up the
alley.

His mother called through the door. "Dear, you are to come down and to
bring your poetry with you."

He came down, and found that Mr. Bons was in the smoking-room with his
father. It had been a dinner party.

"Here is the great traveller!" said his father grimly. "Here is the
young gentleman who drives in an omnibus over rainbows, while young
ladies sing to him." Pleased with his wit, he laughed.

"After all," said Mr. Bons, smiling, "there is something a little like
it in Wagner. It is odd how, in quite illiterate minds, you will find
glimmers of Artistic Truth. The case interests me. Let me plead for the
culprit. We have all romanced in our time, haven't we?"

"Hear how kind Mr. Bons is," said his mother, while his father said,
"Very well. Let him say his Poem, and that will do. He is going away to
my sister on Tuesday, and she will cure him of this alley-slopering."
(Laughter.) "Say your Poem."

The boy began. "'Standing aloof in giant ignorance.'"

His father laughed again--roared. "One for you, my son! 'Standing aloof
in giant ignorance!' I never knew these poets talked sense. Just
describes you. Here, Bons, you go in for poetry. Put him through it,
will you, while I fetch up the whisky?"

"Yes, give me the Keats," said Mr. Bons. "Let him say his Keats to me."

So for a few moments the wise man and the ignorant boy were left alone
in the smoking-room.

"'Standing aloof in giant ignorance, of thee I dream and of the
Cyclades, as one who sits ashore and longs perchance to visit----'"

"Quite right. To visit what?"

"'To visit dolphin coral in deep seas,'" said the boy, and burst into
tears.

"Come, come! why do you cry?"

"Because--because all these words that only rhymed before, now that I've
come back they're me."

Mr. Bons laid the Keats down. The case was more interesting than he had
expected. "_You?_" he exclaimed, "This sonnet, _you_?"

"Yes--and look further on: 'Aye, on the shores of darkness there is
light, and precipices show untrodden green.' It _is_ so, sir. All these
things are true."

"I never doubted it," said Mr. Bons, with closed eyes.

"You--then you believe me? You believe in the omnibus and the driver and
the storm and that return ticket I got for nothing and----"

"Tut, tut! No more of your yarns, my boy. I meant that I never doubted
the essential truth of Poetry. Some day, when you read more, you will
understand what I mean."

"But Mr. Bons, it _is_ so. There _is_ light upon the shores of darkness.
I have seen it coming. Light and a wind."

"Nonsense," said Mr. Bons.

"If I had stopped! They tempted me. They told me to give up my
ticket--for you cannot come back if you lose your ticket. They called
from the river for it, and indeed I was tempted, for I have never been
so happy as among those precipices. But I thought of my mother and
father, and that I must fetch them. Yet they will not come, though the
road starts opposite our house. It has all happened as the people up
there warned me, and Mr. Bons has disbelieved me like every one else. I
have been caned. I shall never see that mountain again."

"What's that about me?" said Mr. Bons, sitting up in his chair very
suddenly.

"I told them about you, and how clever you were, and how many books you
had, and they said, 'Mr. Bons will certainly disbelieve you.'"

"Stuff and nonsense, my young friend. You grow impertinent. I--well--I
will settle the matter. Not a word to your father. I will cure you.
To-morrow evening I will myself call here to take you for a walk, and at
sunset we will go up this alley opposite and hunt for your omnibus, you
silly little boy."

His face grew serious, for the boy was not disconcerted, but leapt about
the room singing, "Joy! joy! I told them you would believe me. We will
drive together over the rainbow. I told them that you would come." After
all, could there be anything in the story? Wagner? Keats? Shelley? Sir
Thomas Browne? Certainly the case was interesting.

And on the morrow evening, though it was pouring with rain, Mr. Bons did
not omit to call at Agathox Lodge.

The boy was ready, bubbling with excitement, and skipping about in a way
that rather vexed the President of the Literary Society. They took a
turn down Buckingham Park Road, and then--having seen that no one was
watching them--slipped up the alley. Naturally enough (for the sun was
setting) they ran straight against the omnibus.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Mr. Bons. "Good gracious heavens!"

It was not the omnibus in which the boy had driven first, nor yet that
in which he had returned. There were three horses--black, gray, and
white, the gray being the finest. The driver, who turned round at the
mention of goodness and of heaven, was a sallow man with terrifying jaws
and sunken eyes. Mr. Bons, on seeing him, gave a cry as if of
recognition, and began to tremble violently.

The boy jumped in.

"Is it possible?" cried Mr. Bons. "Is the impossible possible?"

"Sir; come in, sir. It is such a fine omnibus. Oh, here is his name--Dan
some one."

Mr. Bons sprang in too. A blast of wind immediately slammed the omnibus
door, and the shock jerked down all the omnibus blinds, which were very
weak on their springs.

"Dan.... Show me. Good gracious heavens! we're moving."

"Hooray!" said the boy.

Mr. Bons became flustered. He had not intended to be kidnapped. He could
not find the door-handle, nor push up the blinds. The omnibus was quite
dark, and by the time he had struck a match, night had come on outside
also. They were moving rapidly.

"A strange, a memorable adventure," he said, surveying the interior of
the omnibus, which was large, roomy, and constructed with extreme
regularity, every part exactly answering to every other part. Over the
door (the handle of which was outside) was written, "Lasciate ogni
baldanza voi che entrate"--at least, that was what was written, but Mr.
Bons said that it was Lashy arty something, and that baldanza was a
mistake for speranza. His voice sounded as if he was in church.
Meanwhile, the boy called to the cadaverous driver for two return
tickets. They were handed in without a word. Mr. Bons covered his face
with his hand and again trembled. "Do you know who that is!" he
whispered, when the little window had shut upon them. "It is the
impossible."

"Well, I don't like him as much as Sir Thomas Browne, though I shouldn't
be surprised if he had even more in him."

"More in him?" He stamped irritably. "By accident you have made the
greatest discovery of the century, and all you can say is that there is
more in this man. Do you remember those vellum books in my library,
stamped with red lilies? This--sit still, I bring you stupendous
news!--_this is the man who wrote them_."

The boy sat quite still. "I wonder if we shall see Mrs. Gamp?" he asked,
after a civil pause.

"Mrs. ----?"

"Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris. I like Mrs. Harris. I came upon them quite
suddenly. Mrs. Gamp's bandboxes have moved over the rainbow so badly.
All the bottoms have fallen out, and two of the pippins off her bedstead
tumbled into the stream."

"Out there sits the man who wrote my vellum books!" thundered Mr. Bons,
"and you talk to me of Dickens and of Mrs. Gamp?"

"I know Mrs. Gamp so well," he apologized. "I could not help being glad
to see her. I recognized her voice. She was telling Mrs. Harris about
Mrs. Prig."

"Did you spend the whole day in her elevating company?"

"Oh, no. I raced. I met a man who took me out beyond to a race-course.
You run, and there are dolphins out at sea."

"Indeed. Do you remember the man's name?"

"Achilles. No; he was later. Tom Jones."

Mr. Bons sighed heavily. "Well, my lad, you have made a miserable mess
of it. Think of a cultured person with your opportunities! A cultured
person would have known all these characters and known what to have said
to each. He would not have wasted his time with a Mrs. Gamp or a Tom
Jones. The creations of Homer, of Shakespeare, and of Him who drives us
now, would alone have contented him. He would not have raced. He would
have asked intelligent questions."

"But, Mr. Bons," said the boy humbly, "you will be a cultured person. I
told them so."

"True, true, and I beg you not to disgrace me when we arrive. No
gossiping. No running. Keep close to my side, and never speak to these
Immortals unless they speak to you. Yes, and give me the return tickets.
You will be losing them."

The boy surrendered the tickets, but felt a little sore. After all, he
had found the way to this place. It was hard first to be disbelieved and
then to be lectured. Meanwhile, the rain had stopped, and moonlight
crept into the omnibus through the cracks in the blinds.

"But how is there to be a rainbow?" cried the boy.

"You distract me," snapped Mr. Bons. "I wish to meditate on beauty. I
wish to goodness I was with a reverent and sympathetic person."

The lad bit his lip. He made a hundred good resolutions. He would
imitate Mr. Bons all the visit. He would not laugh, or run, or sing, or
do any of the vulgar things that must have disgusted his new friends
last time. He would be very careful to pronounce their names properly,
and to remember who knew whom. Achilles did not know Tom Jones--at
least, so Mr. Bons said. The Duchess of Malfi was older than Mrs.
Gamp--at least, so Mr. Bons said. He would be self-conscious, reticent,
and prim. He would never say he liked any one. Yet when the Wind flew up
at a chance touch of his head, all these good resolutions went to the
winds, for the omnibus had reached the summit of a moonlit hill, and
there was the chasm, and there, across it, stood the old precipices,
dreaming, with their feet in the everlasting river. He exclaimed, "The
mountain! Listen to the new tune in the water! Look at the camp fires in
the ravines," and Mr. Bons, after a hasty glance, retorted, "Water? Camp
fires? Ridiculous rubbish. Hold your tongue. There is nothing at all."

Yet, under his eyes, a rainbow formed, compounded not of sunlight and
storm, but of moonlight and the spray of the river. The three horses put
their feet upon it. He thought it the finest rainbow he had seen, but
did not dare to say so, since Mr. Bons said that nothing was there. He
leant out--the window had opened--and sang the tune that rose from the
sleeping waters.

"The prelude to Rhinegold?" said Mr. Bons suddenly. "Who taught you
these _leit motifs_?" He, too, looked out of the window. Then he behaved
very oddly. He gave a choking cry, and fell back on to the omnibus
floor. He writhed and kicked. His face was green.

"Does the bridge make you dizzy?" the boy asked.

"Dizzy!" gasped Mr. Bons. "I want to go back. Tell the driver."

But the driver shook his head.

"We are nearly there," said the boy, "They are asleep. Shall I call?
They will be so pleased to see you, for I have prepared them."

Mr. Bons moaned. They moved over the lunar rainbow, which ever and ever
broke away behind their wheels. How still the night was! Who would be
sentry at the Gate?

"I am coming," he shouted, again forgetting the hundred resolutions. "I
am returning--I, the boy."

"The boy is returning," cried a voice to other voices, who repeated,
"The boy is returning."

"I am bringing Mr. Bons with me."

Silence.

"I should have said Mr. Bons is bringing me with him."

Profound silence.

"Who stands sentry?"

"Achilles."

And on the rocky causeway, close to the springing of the rainbow bridge,
he saw a young man who carried a wonderful shield.

"Mr. Bons, it is Achilles, armed."

"I want to go back," said Mr. Bons.

The last fragment of the rainbow melted, the wheels sang upon the living
rock, the door of the omnibus burst open. Out leapt the boy--he could
not resist--and sprang to meet the warrior, who, stooping suddenly,
caught him on his shield.

"Achilles!" he cried, "let me get down, for I am ignorant and vulgar,
and I must wait for that Mr. Bons of whom I told you yesterday."

But Achilles raised him aloft. He crouched on the wonderful shield, on
heroes and burning cities, on vineyards graven in gold, on every dear
passion, every joy, on the entire image of the Mountain that he had
discovered, encircled, like it, with an everlasting stream. "No, no," he
protested, "I am not worthy. It is Mr. Bons who must be up here."

But Mr. Bons was whimpering, and Achilles trumpeted and cried, "Stand
upright upon my shield!"

"Sir, I did not mean to stand! something made me stand. Sir, why do you
delay? Here is only the great Achilles, whom you knew."

Mr. Bons screamed, "I see no one. I see nothing. I want to go back."
Then he cried to the driver, "Save me! Let me stop in your chariot. I
have honoured you. I have quoted you. I have bound you in vellum. Take
me back to my world."

The driver replied, "I am the means and not the end. I am the food and
not the life. Stand by yourself, as that boy has stood. I cannot save
you. For poetry is a spirit; and they that would worship it must worship
in spirit and in truth."

Mr. Bons--he could not resist--crawled out of the beautiful omnibus. His
face appeared, gaping horribly. His hands followed, one gripping the
step, the other beating the air. Now his shoulders emerged, his chest,
his stomach. With a shriek of "I see London," he fell--fell against the
hard, moonlit rock, fell into it as if it were water, fell through it,
vanished, and was seen by the boy no more.

"Where have you fallen to, Mr. Bons? Here is a procession arriving to
honour you with music and torches. Here come the men and women whose
names you know. The mountain is awake, the river is awake, over the
race-course the sea is awaking those dolphins, and it is all for you.
They want you----"

There was the touch of fresh leaves on his forehead. Some one had
crowned him.

                 TELOS

       *       *       *       *       *

From the _Kingston Gazette, Surbiton Times,_ and _Paynes Park Observer_.

The body of Mr. Septimus Bons has been found in a shockingly mutilated
condition in the vicinity of the Bermondsey gas-works. The deceased's
pockets contained a sovereign-purse, a silver cigar-case, a bijou
pronouncing dictionary, and a couple of omnibus tickets. The unfortunate
gentleman had apparently been hurled from a considerable height. Foul
play is suspected, and a thorough investigation is pending by the
authorities.

THE END