← catalogue

The World's Greatest Books — Volume 02 — Fiction

by unknown · English · Gutenberg #10643 · 636,274 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The World's Greatest Books — Volume 02 — Fiction
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The World's Greatest Books — Volume 02 — Fiction

Editor: Arthur Mee
        J. A. Hammerton


        
Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #10643]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10643

Credits: Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS — VOLUME 02 — FICTION ***

THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS

JOINT EDITORS

ARTHUR MEE Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge

J. A. HAMMERTON Editor of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia

VOL. II FICTION

MCMX



_Table of Contents_

BORROW, GEORGE
  Lavengro
  Romany Rye

BRADDON, M.E.
  Lady Audley's Secret

BRADLEY, EDWARD ("COTHBERT BEDE")
  Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green

BRONTË, CHARLOTTE
  Jane Eyre
  Shirley
  Villette

BRONTË, EMILY
  Wuthering Heights

BUCHANAN, ROBERT
  Shadow of the Sword

BUNYAN, JOHN
  Holy War
  Pilgrim's Progress

BURNEY, FANNY
  Evelina

CARLETON, WILLIAM
  The Black Prophet

CARROLL, LEWIS
  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

CERVANTES
  Don Quixote

CHAMISSO, ADALBERT VON
  Peter Schlemihl, the Shadowless Man

CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANÇOIS RENÉ DE
  Atala

CHERBULIEZ, CHARLES VICTOR
  Samuel Brohl & Co.

COLLINS, WILKIE
  No Name
  The Woman in White

CONWAY, HUGH
  Called Back

COOPER, FENIMORE
  Last of the Mohicans
  The Spy

CRAIK, MRS.
  John Halifax, Gentleman

CROLY, GEORGE
  Salathiel, or Tarry Thou Till I Come

DANA, RICHARD HENRY
  Two Years before the Mast

A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end
of Volume XX.

       *       *       *       *       *




GEORGE BORROW


Lavengro

      George Henry Borrow was born at East Dereham, Norfolk,
     England, July 5, 1803. His father was an army captain, and
     Borrow's boyhood was spent at military stations in various
     parts of the kingdom. From his earliest youth he had a taste
     for roving and fraternising with gipsies and other vagrants.
     In 1819 he entered a solicitor's office at Norwich. After a
     long spell of drudgery and literary effort, he went to London
     in 1824, but left a year later, and for some time afterwards
     his movements were obscure. For a period of about five years,
     beginning 1835, he acted as the Bible Society's agent, selling
     and distributing Bibles in Spain, and in 1842 he published
     "The Bible in Spain." which appears in another volume of THE
     WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS. (See TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE.)
     "Lavengro," written in 1851, enhanced the fame which Borrow
     had already secured by his earlier works. The book teems with
     character sketches drawn from real life in quarters which few
     could penetrate, and although they are often extremely
     eccentric, they are never grotesque, and never strike the mind
     with a sense of merely invented unreality. Here and there
     occur illuminating outbursts of reflection in philosophic
     accent which reveal in startling style the working of Borrow's
     mind. The linguistic lore is phenomenal, as in all his books.
     But though the wild, passionate scenes make the whole
     narrative an indescribable phantasmagoria, the diction is
     always free from turgidity, and from involved periods. Borrow
     died at Oulton, Suffolk, on July 26, 1881. A mighty athlete,
     an inveterate wanderer, a philological enthusiast, and a man
     of large-hearted simplicity mingled with violent prejudices,
     he was one of the most original and engaging personalities of
     nineteenth century English literature.


_I.--The Scholar, the Gipsy, the Priest_


On an evening of July, in the year 18--, at East D------, a beautiful
little town in East Anglia, I first saw the light. My father, a
Cornishman, after serving many years in the Line, at last entered as
captain in a militia regiment. My mother, a strikingly handsome woman,
was of the Huguenot race. I was not the only child of my parents, for I
had a brother three years older than myself. He was a beautiful boy with
much greater mental ability than I possessed, and he, with the greatest
affection, indulged me in every possible way. Alas, his was an early and
a foreign grave!

I have been a wanderer the greater part of my life, being the son of a
soldier, who, unable to afford the support of two homes, was accompanied
by his family wherever he went. A lover of books and of retired corners,
I was as a child in the habit of fleeing from society. The first book
that fascinated me was one of Defoe's. But those early days were
stirring times, for England was then engaged in the struggle with
Napoleon.

I remember strange sights, such as the scenes at Norman Cross, a station
or prison where some six thousand French prisoners were immured. And
vividly impressed on my memory is my intercourse with an extraordinary
old man, a snake-catcher, who thrilled me with the recitals of his
experiences. He declared that the vipers had a king, a terrible
creature, which he had encountered, and from which he had managed to
escape. After telling me that strange story of the king of the vipers,
he gave me a viper which he had tamed, and had rendered harmless by
extracting its fangs. I fed it with milk, and frequently carried it
abroad with me in my walks.

One day on my rambles I entered a green lane I had never seen before.
Seeing an odd-looking low tent or booth, I advanced towards it. Beside
it were two light carts, and near by two or three lean ponies cropped
the grass. Suddenly the two inmates, a man and a woman, both wild and
forbidding figures, rushed out, alarmed at my presence, and commenced
abusing me as an intruder. They threatened to fling me into the pond
over the hedge.

I defied them to touch me, and, as I did so, made a motion well
understood by the viper that lay hid in my bosom. The reptile instantly
lifted its head and stared at my enemies with its glittering eyes. The
woman, in amazed terror, retreated to the tent, and the man stood like
one transfixed. Presently the two commenced talking to each other in
what to me sounded like French, and next, in a conciliating tone, they
offered me a peculiar sweetmeat, which I accepted. A peaceable
conversation ensued, during which they cordially invited me to join
their party and to become one of them.

The interview was rudely interrupted. Hoofs were heard, and the next
moment a man rode up and addressed words to the gipsies which produced a
startling effect. In a few minutes, from different directions, came
swarthy men and women. Hastily they harnessed the ponies and took down
the tent, and packed the carts, and in a remarkably brief space of time
the party rode off with the utmost speed.

Three years passed, during which I increased considerably in stature and
strength, and, let us hope, improved in mind. For at school I had learnt
the whole of Lilly's "Latin Grammar"; but I was very ignorant of
figures. Our regiment was moved to Edinburgh, where the castle was a
garrison for soldiers. In that city I and my brother were sent to the
high school. Here the scholars were constantly fighting, though no great
harm was done. I had seen deaths happen through fights at school in
England.

I became a daring cragsman, a character to which an English lad can
seldom aspire, for in England there are neither crags nor mountains. The
Scots are expert climbers, and I was now a Scot in most things,
particularly the language. The castle in which I dwelt stood on a craggy
rock, to scale which was my favourite diversion.

In the autumn of 1815, when the war with Napoleon was ended, we were
ordered to Ireland, where at school I read Latin and Greek with a nice
old clergyman, and of an evening studied French and Italian with a
banished priest, Italian being my favourite.

It was in a horse fair I came across Jasper Petulengro, a young gipsy of
whom I had caught sight in the gipsy camp I have already alluded to. He
was amazed to see me, and in the most effusively friendly way claimed me
as a "pal," calling me Sapengro, or "snake-master," in allusion, he
said, to the viper incident. He said he was also called Pharaoh, and was
the horse-master of the camp.

From this time I had frequent interviews with Jasper. He taught me much
Romany, and introduced me to Tawno Chikno, the biggest man of the gipsy
nation, and to Mrs. Chikno. These stood to him as parents, for his own
were banished. I soon found that in the tents I had become acquainted
with a most interesting people. With their language I was fascinated,
though at first I had taken it for mere gibberish. My rapid progress
astonished and delighted Jasper. "We'll no longer call you Sapengro,
brother," said he, "but Lavengro, which in the language of the gorgios
meaneth word-master." And Jasper's wife actually proposed that I should
marry her sister.

The gipsies departed for England. I was now sixteen, and continued in
the house of my parents, passing my time chiefly in philological
pursuits. But it was high time that I should adopt some profession. My
father would gladly have seen me enter the Church, but feared I was too
erratic. So I was put to the law, but while remaining a novice at that
pursuit, I became a perfect master of the Welsh language. My father soon
began to feel that he had made a mistake in the choice of a profession
for me.

My elder brother, who had cultivated a great taste for painting, told me
one evening that father had given him £150 and his blessing, and that he
was going to London to improve himself in his art.

My father was taken ill with severe attacks of gout, and, in a touching
conversation, assured me that his end was approaching. Before that sad
event happened, my brother, whom he longed to see, arrived home. My
father died with the name of Christ on his lips. The brave old soldier,
during intervals between his attacks, had told me more of his life than
I had ever learned before, and I was amazed to find how much he knew and
had seen. He had talked with King George, and had known Wellington, and
was the friend of Townshend, who, when Wolfe fell, led the British
grenadiers against the shrinking regiments of Montcalm.


_II.--An Adventure with a Publisher_


One damp, misty March morning, I dismounted from the top of a coach in
the yard of a London inn. Delivering my scanty baggage to a porter, I
followed him to a lodging prepared for me by an acquaintance. It
consisted of a small room in which I was to sit, and a smaller one still
in which I was to sleep.

Having breakfasted comfortably by a good fire, I sallied forth and
easily found my way to the place I was in quest of, for it was scarcely
ten minutes' walk distant. I was cordially received by the big man to
whom some of my productions had been sent by a kind friend, and to whom
he had given me a letter of introduction, which was respectfully read.
But he informed me that he was selling his publishing business, and so
could not make use of my literary help. He gave me counsel, however,
especially advising me to write some evangelical tales, in the style of
the "Dairyman's Daughter." As I told him I had never heard of that work,
he said: "Then, sir, procure it by all means." Much more conversation
ensued, during which the publisher told me that he purposed continuing
to issue once a month his magazine, the "Oxford Review," and to this he
proposed that I should attempt to contribute. As I was going away he
invited me to dine with him on the ensuing Sunday.

On Sunday I was punctual to my appointment with the publisher. I found
that for twenty years he had taken no animal food and no wine. After
some talk he requested me to compile six volumes of Newgate lives and
trials, of a thousand pages each, the remuneration to be £50 at the
completion of the work. I was also to make myself generally useful to
the "Review," and, furthermore, to translate into German a book of
philosophy which he had written. Then he dismissed me, saying that,
though he never went to church, he spent much of every Sunday afternoon
alone, musing on the magnificence of Nature and the moral dignity of
man.

I compiled the "Chronicles of Newgate," reviewed books for the "Review,"
and occasionally tried my best to translate into German portions of the
publisher's philosophy. But the "Review" did not prove a successful
speculation, and with its decease its corps of writers broke up. I was
paid, not in cash, but in bills, one payable at twelve, the other at
eighteen months after date. It was a long time before I could turn these
bills to any account. At last I found a person willing to cash them at a
discount of only thirty per cent.

By the month of October I had accomplished about two-thirds of the
compilation of the Newgate lives, and had also made some progress with
the German translation. But about this time I had begun to see very
clearly that it was impossible that our connection would be of long
duration; yet, in the event of my leaving the big man, what had I to
offer another publisher? I returned to my labour, finished the German
translation, got paid in the usual style, and left that employer.


_III.--The Spirit of Stonehenge_


One morning I discovered that my whole worldly wealth was reduced to a
single half-crown, and throughout that day I walked about in
considerable distress of mind. By a most singular chance I again came
across my friend Petulengro in a fair into which I happened to wander
when walking by the side of the river beyond London. My gipsy friend was
seated with several men, carousing beside a small cask. He sprang up,
greeting me cordially, and we chatted in Romany as we walked about
together. Questioning me closely, he soon discovered that by that time I
had only eighteen pence in my pocket.

Said Jasper: "I, too, have been in the big city; but I have not been
writing books. I have fought in the ring. I have fifty pounds in my
pocket, and I have much more in the world. Brother, there is
considerable difference between us." But he could not prevail on me to
accept or to borrow money, for I said that if I could not earn, I would
starve. "Come and stay with us," said he. "Our tents and horses are on
the other side of yonder wooded hill. We shall all be glad of your
company, especially myself and my wife, Pakomovna."

I declined the kind invitation and walked on. Returning to the great
city, I suddenly found myself outside the shop of a publisher to whom I
had vainly applied some time before, in the hope of selling some of my
writings. As I looked listlessly at the window, I observed a paper
affixed to the glass, on which was written in a fair round hand, "A
Novel or Tale is much wanted." I at once resolved to go to work to
produce what was thus solicited. But what should the tale be about?
After cogitating at my lodging, with bread and water before me, I
concluded that I would write an entirely fictitious narrative called
"The Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller." This
Joseph Sell was an imaginary personage who had come into my head.

I seized pen and paper, but soon gave up the task of outlining the
story, for the scenes flitted in bewildering fashion before my
imagination. Yet, before morning, as I lay long awake, I had sketched
the whole work on the tablets of my mind. Next day I partook of bread
and water, and before night had completed pages of Joseph Sell, and
added pages in varying quantity day by day, until my enterprise was
finished.

"To-morrow for the bookseller! Oh, me!" I exclaimed, as I lay down to
rest.

On arriving at the shop, I saw to my delight that the paper was still in
the window. As I entered, a ladylike woman of about thirty came from the
back parlour to ask my business. After my explanation, she requested me,
as her husband was out, to leave the MS. with her, and to call again the
next day at eleven. At that hour I duly appeared, and was greeted with a
cordial reception. "I think your book will do," said the bookseller.
After some negotiation, I was paid £20 on the spot, and departed with a
light heart. Reader, amidst life's difficulties, should you ever be
tempted to despair, call to mind these experiences of Lavengro. There
are few positions, however difficult, from which dogged resolution and
perseverance will not liberate you.

I had long determined to leave London, as my health had become much
impaired. My preparations were soon made, and I set out to travel on
foot. In about two hours I had cleared the great city, and was in a
broad and excellent road, leading I knew not whither. In the evening,
feeling weary, I thought of putting up at an inn, but was induced to
take a seat in a coach, paying sixteen shillings for the fare. At dawn
of day I was roused from a broken slumber and bidden to alight, and
found myself close to a moorland. Walking on and on, I at length reached
a circle of colossal stones.

The spirit of Stonehenge was upon me. As I reclined under the great
transverse stone, in the middle of the gateway of giants, I heard the
tinkling of bells, and presently a large flock of sheep came browsing
along, and several entered the circle. Soon a man also came up. In a
friendly talk, the young shepherd told me that the people of the plain
believed that thousands of men had brought the stones from Ireland, to
make a temple in which to worship God.

"But," said I, "our forefathers slaughtered the men who raised the
stones, and left not one stone on another."

"Yes, they did," said the shepherd, looking aloft at the great
transverse stone.

"And it is well that they did," answered I, "for whenever that stone,
which English hands never raised, is by English hands thrown down, woe
to the English race. Spare it, English. Hengist spared it."

We parted, and I wandered off to Salisbury, the city of the spire. There
I stayed two days, spending my time as best I could, and then walked
forth for several days, during which nothing happened worthy of notice,
but the weather was brilliant, and my health had greatly improved.

Coming one day to a small countryside cottage, I saw scrawled over the
door, "Good beer sold here." Being overcome with thirst, I went in to
taste the beverage. Along the wall opposite where I sat in the
well-sanded kitchen was the most disconsolate family I had ever seen,
consisting of a tinker, his wife, a pretty-looking woman, who had
evidently been crying, and a ragged boy and girl. I treated them to a
large measure of beer, and in a few minutes the tinker was telling me
his history. That conversation ended very curiously, for I purchased for
five pounds ten shillings the man's whole equipment. It included his
stock-in-trade, and his pony and cart. Of the landlady I purchased
sundry provisions, and also a waggoner's frock, gave the horse a little
feed of corn, and departed.


_IV.--The Flaming Tinman_


At three hours past noon I thus started to travel as a tinker. I was
absolutely indifferent as to the direction of my journey. Coming to no
hostelry, I pitched my little tent after nightfall in a waste land
amongst some bushes, and kindled a fire in a convenient spot with sticks
which I gathered. For a few days I practiced my new craft by trying to
mend two kettles and a frying-pan, remaining in my little camp. Few folk
passed by. But soon some exciting incidents happened. My quarters were
one morning suddenly invaded by a young Romany girl, who advanced
towards me, after closely scanning me, singing a gipsy song:

    The Romany chi
    And the Romany chal
    Shall jaw tasaulor
    To drab the bawlor,
    And dook the gry
    Of the farming rye.

A very pretty song, thought I, falling hard to work again on my kettle;
a very pretty song, which bodes the farmers much good. Let them look to
their cattle.

"All alone here, brother?" said a voice close to me, in sharp, but not
disagreeable tones.

A talk ensued, in which the girl discovered that I knew how to speak
Romany, and it ended in my presenting her with the kettle.

"Parraco tute--that is, I thank you, brother. The rikkeni kekaubi is now
mine. O, rare, I thank you kindly, brother!"

Presently she came towards me, stared me full in the face, saying to
herself, "Grey, tall, and talks Romany!" In her countenance there was an
expression I had not seen before, which struck me as being composed of
fear, curiosity, and deepest hate. It was only momentary, and was
succeeded by one smiling, frank, and open. "Good-bye, tall brother,"
said she, and she departed, singing the same song.

On the evening of the next day, after I had been with my pony and cart
strolling through several villages, and had succeeded in collecting
several kettles which I was to mend, I returned to my little camp, lit
my fire, and ate my frugal meal. Then, after looking for some time at
the stars, I entered my tent, lay down on my pallet, and went to sleep.
Two more days passed without momentous incidents, but on the third
evening the girl reappeared, bringing me two cakes, one of which she
offered to eat herself, if I would eat the other. They were the gift to
me of her grandmother, as a token of friendship. Incautiously I ate a
portion to please the maiden. She eagerly watched as I did so. But I
paid dearly indeed for my simplicity. I was in a short time seized with
the most painful sensations, and was speedily prostrate in helpless
agonies.

While I was in this alarming condition the grandmother appeared, and
began to taunt me with the utmost malignity. She was Mrs. Herne, "the
hairy one," who had conceived inveterate spite against me at the time
when Petulengro had proposed that I should marry his wife's sister. This
poison had been administered to inflict on me the vengeance she had not
ceased to meditate.

My life was in real peril, but I was fortunately delivered by a timely
and providential interposition. The malignant old gipsy woman and her
granddaughter were scared as they watched my sufferings by hearing the
sound of travellers approaching. Two wayfarers came along, one of whom
happened to be a kind and skillful doctor. He saved my life by drastic
remedies.

The next that I heard of Mrs. Herne was, as Petulengro told me when we
again met, that she had hanged herself, the girl finding her suspended
from a tree. That announcement was accompanied by an unexpected
challenge from my friend Jasper to fight him. He declared that as she
was his relative, and I had been the cause of her destruction, there was
no escape from the necessity of fighting. My plea that there was no
inclination on my part for such a combat was of no avail. Accordingly we
fought for half an hour, when suddenly Petulengro exclaimed: "Brother,
there is much blood on your face; I think enough has been done in the
affair of the old woman."

So the struggle ended, and my Romany friend once more pressed me to join
his tribe in their camp and in their life. I declined the offer, for I
had resolved to practice yet another calling, the trade of a blacksmith.
I could do so, for amongst the stock-in-trade I had purchased from the
tinker was a small forge, with an anvil and hammers.

It has always struck me that there is something poetical about a forge.
I believe that the life of any blacksmith, especially a rural one, would
afford material for a highly poetical treatise. But a rude stop was put
to my dream. One morning, a brutal-looking ruffian, whom I had met
before and recognised as a character known as the Flaming Tinman,
appeared on the scene, accusing me with fearful oaths of trespassing on
his ground. After volleys of abuse, he attacked me, and a fearful fight
ensued, in which he was not the victor, for in one of his terrific
lunges he slipped, and a blow which I was aiming happened to strike him
behind the ear. He fell senseless. Two women were with him, one, a
vulgar, coarse creature, his wife; the other a tall, fine young woman,
who travelled with them for company, doing business of her own with a
donkey and cart, selling merchandise.

While I was bringing water from a spring in order to seek to revive the
Flaming Tinman, his wife and the young woman violently quarrelled, for
the latter took my part vehemently. When at length my enemy recovered
sufficiently to look about him, and then to stand up, I found that his
wife had put an open knife in his hand. But his intention could not be
carried out, for his right hand was injured in the fight, and was for
the time useless, as he quickly realised.

The couple presently departed, cursing me and the young woman, who
remained behind in the little camp, and, as I was in an exhausted state,
offered to make tea by the camp fire. While we were taking the repast,
she told me the story of her life. Her name was Isopel Berners, and
though she believed that she had come of a good stock, she was born in a
workhouse. When old enough, she had entered the service of a kind widow,
who travelled with small merchandise. After the death of her mistress,
Isopel carried on the same avocation. Being friendless, and falling in
with the Flaming Tinman and his wife, she had associated with them, yet
acknowledged that she had found them to be bad people.

Time passed on. Isopel and I lived still in the dingle, occupying our
separate tents. She went to and fro on her business, and I went on short
excursions. Her company, when she happened to be in camp, was very
entertaining, for she had wandered in all parts of England and Wales.
For recreation, I taught her a great deal of Armenian, much of which was
like the gipsy tongue. She had a kind heart, and was an upright
character. She often asked me questions about America, for she had an
idea she would like to go there. But as I had never crossed the sea to
that country, I could only tell her what I had heard about it.

       *       *       *        *        *




The Romany Rye

      In this work, published in two volumes in 1857, George Borrow
     continued the "kind of biography in the Robinson Crusoe style"
     which he had begun in the three volumes of "Lavengro," issued
     six years earlier. "Romany Rye" is described as a sequel to
     "Lavengro," and takes up that story with the author and his
     friend Isopel Berners encamped side by side in the Mumpers'
     Dingle, whither the gipsies, Mr. and Mrs. Petulengro and their
     relations, shortly afterwards arrive. The book consists of a
     succession of episodes, without plot, the sole connecting
     thread being Borrow's personality as figuring in them. Much of
     the "Romany Rye" was written at Oulton Broad, where, after his
     marriage in 1840, Borrow lived until he removed to Hereford
     Square, Brompton. At Oulton, it is worthy of record, gipsies
     were allowed to pitch their tents, the author of "Romany Rye"
     and "Lavengro" mingling freely with them. As a novel, the
     "Romany Rye" is preferred by many readers to any of Borrow's
     other works.


_I.--The Roving Life_


It was, as usual, a brilliant morning, the dewy blades of the rye-grass
which covered the plain sparkled brightly in the beams of the sun, which
had probably been about two hours above the horizon. Near the mouth of
the dingle--Mumpers' Dingle, near Wittenhall, Staffordshire--where my
friend Isopel Berners and I, the travelling tinker, were encamped side
by side, a rather numerous body of my ancient friends and allies
occupied the ground. About five yards on the right, Mr. Petulengro was
busily employed in erecting his tent; he held in his hand an iron bar,
sharp at the bottom, with a kind of arm projecting from the top for the
purpose of supporting a kettle or cauldron over the fire. With the sharp
end of this he was making holes in the earth at about twenty inches
distance from each other, into which he inserted certain long rods with
a considerable bend towards the top, which constituted the timbers of
the tent and the supporters of the canvas. Mrs. Petulengro and a female
with a crutch in her hand, whom I recognised as Mrs. Chikno, sat near
him on the ground.

"Here we are, brother," said Mr. Petulengro. "Here we are, and plenty of
us."

"I am glad to see you all," said I; "and particularly you, madam," said
I, making a bow to Mrs. Petulengro, "and you also, madam," taking off my
hat to Mrs. Chikno.

"Good-day to you, sir," said Mrs. Petulengro. "You look as usual,
charmingly, and speak so, too; you have not forgot your manners."

"It is not all gold that glitters," said Mrs. Chikno. "However,
good-morrow to you, young rye."

"I am come on an errand," said I. "Isopel Berners, down in the dell
there, requests the pleasure of Mr. and Mrs. Petulengro's company at
breakfast. She will be happy also to see you, madam," said I, addressing
Mrs. Chikno.

"Is that young female your wife, young man?" said Mrs. Chikno.

"My wife?" said I.

"Yes, young man, your wife--your lawful certificated wife?"

"No," said I. "She is not my wife."

"Then I will not visit with her," said Mrs. Chikno. "I countenance
nothing in the roving line."

"What do you mean by the roving line?" I demanded.

"What do I mean by the roving line? Why, by it I mean such conduct as is
not tatcheno. When ryes and rawnies lives together in dingles, without
being certificated, I call such behaviour being tolerably deep in the
roving line, everything savouring of which I am determined not to
sanctify. I have suffered too much by my own certificated husband's
outbreaks in that line to afford anything of the kind the slightest
shadow of countenance."

"It is hard that people may not live in dingles together without being
suspected of doing wrong," said I.

"So it is," said Mrs. Petulengro, interposing. "I am suspicious of
nobody, not even of my own husband, whom some people would think I have
a right to be suspicious of, seeing that on his account I once refused a
lord. I always allows him an agreeable latitude to go where he pleases.
But I have had the advantage of keeping good company, and therefore----"

"Meklis," said Mrs. Chikno, "pray drop all that, sister; I believe I
have kept as good company as yourself; and with respect to that offer
with which you frequently fatigue those who keeps company with you, I
believe, after all, it was something in the roving and uncertificated
line."


_II.--The Parting of the Ways_


Belle was sitting before the fire, at which the kettle was boiling.

"Were you waiting for me?" I inquired.

"Yes," said Belle.

"That was very kind," said I.

"Not half so kind," said she, "as it was of you to get everything ready
for me in the dead of last night."

After tea, we resumed our study of Armenian. "First of all, tell me,"
said Belle, "what a verb is?"

"A part of speech," said I, "which, according to the dictionary,
signifies some action or passion. For example: I command you, or I hate
you."

"I have given you no cause to hate me," said Belle, looking me
sorrowfully in the face.

"I was merely giving two examples," said I. "In Armenian, there are four
conjugations of verbs; the first ends in al, the second in yel, the
third in oul, and the fourth in il. Now, have you understood me?"

"I am afraid, indeed, it will all end ill," said Belle.

"Let us have no unprofitable interruptions," said I. "Come, we will
begin with the verb hntal, a verb of the first conjugation, which
signifies rejoice. Come along. Hntam, I rejoice; hntas, thou rejoicest.
Why don't you follow, Belle?"

"I'm sure I don't rejoice, whatever you may do," said Belle.

"The chief difficulty, Belle," said I, "that I find in teaching you the
Armenian grammar proceeds from your applying to yourself and me every
example I give."

"I can't bear this much longer," said Belle.

"Keep yourself quiet," said I. "We will skip hntal and proceed to the
second conjugation. Belle, I will now select for you to conjugate the
prettiest verb in Armenian--the verb siriel. Here is the present tense:
siriem, siries, sirè, siriemk, sirèk, sirien. Come on, Belle, and say
'siriem.'"

Belle hesitated. "You must admit, Belle, it is much softer than hntam."

"It is so," said Belle, "and to oblige you, I will say 'siriem.'"

"Very well indeed, Belle," said I. "And now, to show you how verbs act
upon pronouns, I will say 'siriem zkiez.' Please to repeat 'siriem
zkiez.'"

"'Siriem zkiez!'" said Belle. "That last word is very hard to say."

"Sorry that you think so, Belle," said I. "Now please to say 'siria
zis.'" Belle did so.

"Now say 'yerani thè sirèir zis,'" said I.

"'Yerani thè sirèir zis,'" said Belle.

"Capital!" said I. "You have now said, 'I love you--love me--ah! would
that you would love me!'"

"And I have said all these things?"

"You have said them in Armenian," said I.

"I would have said them in no language that I understood; and it was
very wrong of you to take advantage of my ignorance and make me say such
things."

"Why so?" said I. "If you said them, I said them, too."

"You did so," said Belle; "but I believe you were merely bantering and
jeering."

"As I told you before, Belle," said I, "the chief difficulty which I
find in teaching you Armenian proceeds from your persisting in applying
to yourself and me every example I give."

"Then you meant nothing, after all?" said Belle, raising her voice.

"Let us proceed: sirietsi, I loved."

"You never loved anyone but yourself," said Belle; "and what's more----"

"Sirietsits, I will love," said I; "sirietsies, thou wilt love."

"Never one so thoroughly heartless."

"I tell you what, Belle--you are becoming intolerable. But we will
change the verb. You would hardly believe, Belle," said I, "that the
Armenian is in some respects closely connected with the Irish, but so it
is. For example: that word parghatsoutsaniem is evidently derived from
the same root as fear-gaim, which, in Irish, is as much as to say, 'I
vex.'"

"You do, indeed," said Belle, sobbing.

"But how do you account for it?"

"Oh, man, man!" cried Belle, bursting into tears, "for what purpose do
you ask a poor ignorant girl such a question, unless it be to vex and
irritate her? If you wish to display your learning, do so to the wise
and instructed, and not to me, who can scarcely read or write."

"I am sorry to see you take on so, dear Belle," said I. "I had no idea
of making you cry. Come, I beg your pardon; what more can I do? Come,
cheer up, Belle. You were talking of parting; don't let us part, but
depart, and that together."

"Our ways lie different," said Belle.

"I don't see why they should," said I. "Come, let us be off to America
together."

"To America together?" said Belle.

"Yes," said I; "where we will settle down in some forest, and conjugate
the verb siriel conjugally."

"Conjugally?" said Belle.

"Yes; as man and wife in America."

"You are jesting, as usual," said Belle.

"Not I, indeed. Come, Belle, make up your mind, and let us be off to
America."

"I don't think you are jesting," said Belle; "but I can hardly entertain
your offers; however, young man, I thank you. I will say nothing more at
present. I must have time to consider."

Next day, when I got up to go with Mr. Petulengro to the fair, on
leaving my tent I observed Belle, entirely dressed, standing close to
her own little encampment.

"Dear me," said I. "I little expected to find you up so early."

"I merely lay down in my things," said Belle; "I wished to be in
readiness to bid you farewell when you departed."

"Well, God bless you, Belle!" said I. "I shall be home to-night; by
which time I expect you will have made up your mind."

On arriving at the extremity of the plain, I looked towards the dingle.
Isopel Berners stood at the mouth, the beams of the early morning sun
shone full on her noble face and figure. I waved my hand towards her.
She slowly lifted up her right arm. I turned away, and never saw Isopel
Berners again.

The fourth morning afterwards I received from her a letter in which she
sent me a lock of her hair and told me she was just embarking for a
distant country, never expecting to see her own again. She concluded
with this piece of advice: "_Fear God_, and take your own part. Fear
God, young man, and never give in! The world can bully, and is fond, if
it sees a man in a kind of difficulty, of getting about him, calling him
coarse names; but no sooner sees the man taking off his coat and
offering to fight, than it scatters, and is always civil to him
afterwards."


_III.--Horse-Keeping and Horse-Dealing_


After thus losing Isopel, I decided to leave the dingle, and having, by
Mr. Petulengro's kind advice, become the possessor of a fine horse, I
gave my pony and tinker's outfit to the gipsies, and set out on the
road, whereupon I was to meet with strange adventures.

At length, awaiting the time when I could take my horse to Horncastle
Fair and sell him, I settled at a busy inn on the high-road, where, in
return for board and lodging for myself and horse, I had to supervise
the distribution of hay and corn in the stables, and to keep an account
thereof. The old ostler, with whom I was soon on excellent terms, was a
regular character--a Yorkshireman by birth, who had seen a great deal of
life in the vicinity of London. He had served as ostler at a small inn
at Hounslow, much frequented by highway men. Jerry Abershaw and Richard
Ferguson, generally called Galloping Dick, were capital customers then,
he told me, and he had frequently drunk with them in the corn-room. No
man could desire jollier companions over a glass of "summut"; but on the
road they were terrible, cursing and swearing, and thrusting the muzzles
of their pistols into people's mouths.

From the old ostler I picked up many valuable hints about horses.

"When you are a gentleman," said he, "should you ever wish to take a
journey on a horse of your own, follow my advice. Before you start,
merely give your horse a couple of handfuls of corn, and a little
water--somewhat under a quart. Then you may walk and trot for about ten
miles till you come to some nice inn, where you see your horse led into
a nice stall, telling the ostler not to feed him till you come. If the
ostler happens to have a dog, say what a nice one it is; if he hasn't,
ask him how he's getting on, and whether he ever knew worse times; when
your back's turned, he'll say what a nice gentleman you are, and how he
thinks he has seen you before.

"Then go and sit down to breakfast, and before you have finished, get up
and go and give your horse a feed of corn; chat with the ostler two or
three minutes till your horse has taken the shine out of his corn, which
will prevent the ostler taking any of it away when your back's turned.
Then go and finish your breakfast, and when you have finished your
breakfast, when you have called for the newspaper, go and water your
horse, letting him have about one pailful; then give him another feed of
corn, and enter into discourse with the ostler about bull-baiting, the
prime minister, and the like; and when your horse has once more taken
the shine out of his corn, go back to your room and your newspaper. Then
pull the bell-rope and order in your bill, which you will pay without
counting it up--supposing you to be a gentleman. Give the waiter
sixpence, and order out your horse, and when your horse is out, pay for
the corn, and give the ostler a shilling, then mount your horse and walk
him gently for five miles.

"See to your horse at night, and have him well rubbed down. Next day,
you may ride your horse forty miles just as you please, and those will
bring you to your journey's end, unless it's a plaguey long one. If so,
never ride your horse more than five-and-thirty miles a day, always
seeing him well fed, and taking more care of him than yourself, seeing
as how he is the best animal of the two."

The stage-coachmen of that time--low fellows, but masters of driving--
were made so much fuss of by sprigs of nobility and others that their
brutality and rapacious insolence had reached a climax. One, who
frequented our inn, and who was called the "bang-up coachman," was a
swaggering bully, who not only lashed his horses unmercifully, but in
one or two instances had beaten in a barbarous manner individuals who
had quarrelled with him. One day an inoffensive old fellow of sixty, who
refused him a tip for his insolence, was lighting his pipe, when the
coachman struck it out of his mouth.

The elderly individual, without manifesting much surprise, said: "I
thank you; and if you will wait a minute I'll give you a receipt for
that favour." Then, gathering up his pipe, and taking off his coat and
hat, he advanced towards the coachman, holding his hands crossed very
near his face.

The coachman, who expected anything but such a movement, pointed at him
derisively with his finger. The next moment, however, the other had
struck aside the hand with his left fist, and given him a severe blow on
the nose with his right, which he immediately followed by a left-hand
blow in the eye. The coachman endeavoured to close, but his foe was not
to be closed with; he did not shift or dodge about, but warded off the
blows of his opponent with the greatest _sangfroid_, always using the
same guard, and putting in short, chopping blows with the quickness of
lightning. In a very few minutes the coachman was literally cut to
pieces. He did not appear on the box again for a week, and never held up
his head afterwards.

Reaching Horncastle at last, I managed to get quarters for myself and
horse, and, by making friends with the ostlers and others, picked up
more hints.

"There a'n't a better horse in the fair," said one companion to me, "and
as you are one of us, and appear to be all right, I'll give you a piece
of advice--don't take less than a hundred and fifty for him."

"Well," said I, "thank you for your advice; and, if successful, I will
give you 'summut' handsome."

"Thank you," said the ostler; "and now let me ask whether you are up to
all the ways of this here place?"

"I've never been here before," said I.

Thereupon he gave me half a dozen cautions, one of which was not to stop
and listen to what any chance customer might have to say; and another,
by no manner of means to permit a Yorkshireman to get up into the
saddle. "For," said he, "if you do, it is three to one that he rides off
with the horse; he can't help it. Trust a cat amongst cream, but never
trust a Yorkshireman on the saddle of a good horse."

"A fine horse! A capital horse!" said several of the connoisseurs. "What
do you ask for him?"

"A hundred and fifty pounds," said I.

"Why, I thought you would have asked double that amount! You do yourself
injustice, young man."

"Perhaps I do," said I; "but that's my affair. I do not choose to take
more."

"I wish you would let me get into the saddle," said the man. "The horse
knows you, and therefore shows to more advantage; but I should like to
see how he would move under me, who am a stranger. Will you let me get
into the saddle, young man?"

"No," said I.

"Why not?" said the man.

"Lest you should be a Yorkshireman," said I, "and should run away with
the horse."

"Yorkshire?" said the man. "I am from Suffolk--silly Suffolk--so you
need not be afraid of my running away with him."

"Oh, if that's the case," said I, "I should be afraid that the horse
would run away with you!"

Threading my way as well as I could through the press, I returned to the
yard of the inn, where, dismounting, I stood still, holding the horse by
the bridle. A jockey, who had already bargained with me, entered,
accompanied by another individual.

"Here is my lord come to look at the horse, young man," said the jockey.
My lord was a tall figure of about five-and-thirty. He had on his head a
hat somewhat rusty, and on his back a surtout of blue rather worse for
wear. His forehead, if not high, was exceedingly narrow; his eyes were
brown, with a rat-like glare in them. He had scarcely glanced at the
horse when, drawing in his cheeks, he thrust out his lips like a baboon
to a piece of sugar.

"Is this horse yours?" said he.

"It's my horse," said I. "Are you the person who wishes to make an
honest penny by it?" alluding to a phrase of the jockey's.

"How?" said he, drawing up his head with a very consequential look, and
speaking with a very haughty tone. "What do you mean?" We looked at each
other full in the face. "My agent here informs me that you ask one
hundred and fifty pounds, which I cannot think of giving. The horse is a
showy horse. But look, my dear sir, he has a defect here, and in his
near foreleg I observe something which looks very much like a splint!
Yes, upon my credit, he has a splint, or something which will end in
one! A hundred and fifty pounds, sir! What could have induced you to ask
anything like that for this animal? I protest--Who are you, sir? I am in
treaty for this horse," said he, turning to a man who had come up whilst
he was talking, and was now looking into the horse's mouth.

"Who am I?" said the man, still looking into the horse's mouth. "Who am
I? his lordship asks me. Ah, I see, close on five," said he, releasing
the horse's jaws.

Close beside him stood a tall youth in a handsome riding dress, and
wearing a singular green hat with a high peak.

"What do you ask for him?" said the man.

"A hundred and fifty," said I.

"I shouldn't mind giving it to you," said he.

"You will do no such thing," said his lordship. "Sir," said he to me, "I
must give you what you ask."

"No," said I; "had you come forward in a manly and gentlemanly manner to
purchase the horse I should have been happy to sell him to you; but
after all the fault you have found with him I would not sell him to you
at any price."

His lordship, after a contemptuous look at me and a scowl at the jockey,
stalked out.

"And now," said the other, "I suppose I may consider myself as the
purchaser of this here animal for this young gentleman?"

"By no means," said I. "I am utterly unacquainted with either of you."

"Oh, I have plenty of vouchers for my respectability!" said he. And,
thrusting his hand into his bosom, he drew out a bundle of notes. "These
are the kind of things which vouch best for a man's respectability."

"Not always," said I; "sometimes these kind of things need vouchers for
themselves." The man looked at me with a peculiar look. "Do you mean to
say that these notes are not sufficient notes?" said he; "because, if
you do, I shall take the liberty of thinking that you are not over
civil; and when I thinks a person is not over and above civil I
sometimes takes off my coat; and when my coat is off----"

"You sometimes knock people down," I added. "Well, whether you knock me
down or not, I beg leave to tell you that I am a stranger in this fair,
and shall part with the horse to nobody who has no better guarantee for
his respectability than a roll of bank-notes, which may be good or not
for what I know, who am not a judge of such things."

"Oh, if you are a stranger here," said the man, "you are quite right to
be cautious, queer things being done in this fair. But I suppose if the
landlord of the house vouches for me and my notes you will have no
objection to part with the horse to me?"

"None whatever," said I.

Thereupon I delivered the horse to my friend the ostler. The landlord
informed me that my new acquaintance was a respectable horse-dealer and
an intimate friend of his, whereupon the purchase was soon brought to a
satisfactory conclusion.


_IV.--A Recruiting Sergeant_


Leaving Horncastle the next day, I bent my steps eastward, and on the
following day I reached a large town situated on a river. At the end of
the town I was accosted by a fiery-faced individual dressed as a
recruiting sergeant.

"Young man, you are just the kind of person to serve the Honourable East
India Company."

"I had rather the Honourable Company should serve me," said I.

"Of course, young man. Take this shilling; 'tis service money. The
Honourable Company engages to serve you, and you the Honourable
Company."

"And what must I do for the Company?"

"Only go to India--the finest country in the world. Rivers bigger than
the Ouse. Hills higher than anything near Spalding. Trees--you never saw
such trees! Fruits--you never saw such fruits!"

"And the people--what kind are they?"

"Pah! Kauloes--blacks--a set of rascals! And they calls us lolloes,
which, in their beastly gibberish, means reds. Why do you stare so?"

"Why," said I, "this is the very language of Mr. Petulengro."

"I say, young fellow, I don't like your way of speaking; you are mad,
sir. You won't do for the Honourable Company. Good-day to you!"

"I shouldn't wonder," said I, as I proceeded rapidly eastward, "if Mr.
Petulengro came from India. I think I'll go there."

       *       *       *       *       *




M. E. BRADDON


Lady Audley's Secret

      Mary Elizabeth Maxwell, youngest daughter of Henry Braddon,
     solicitor, and widow of John Maxwell, publisher, was born in
     London in 1837. Early in life she had literary aspirations,
     and, as a girl of twenty-three, wrote her first novel, "The
     Trail of the Serpent," which first appeared in serial form.
     "Lady Audley's Secret" was published in 1862, and Miss Braddon
     immediately sprang into fame as an authoress, combining a
     graphic style with keen analysis of character, and exceptional
     ingenuity in the construction of a plot of tantalising
     complexities and DRAMATIC _DÉNOUEMENT_. The book passed
     through many editions, and there was an immediate demand for
     other stories by the gifted authoress. That demand was met
     with an industry and resource rarely equalled. Every year
     since, Miss Braddon, who throughout retained her maiden as her
     pen-name, furnished the reading public with one, and for a
     long period two romances of absorbing interest.


_I.--The Second Lady Audley_


SIR MICHAEL AUDLEY was fifty-six years of age, and had married a second
wife nine months before. For seventeen years he had been a widower with
an only child--Alicia, now eighteen. Lady Audley had come into the
neighbourhood from London, in response to an advertisement in the
"Times," as a governess in the family of Mr. Dawson, the village
surgeon. Her accomplishments were brilliant and numerous. Everyone, high
and low, loved, admired, and praised her, and united in declaring that
Lucy Graham was the sweetest girl that ever lived. Sir Michael Audley
expressed a strong desire to be acquainted with her. A meeting was
arranged at the surgeon's house, and that day Sir Michael's fate was
sealed. One misty June evening Sir Michael, sitting opposite Lucy Graham
at the window of the surgeon's little drawing-room, spoke to her on the
subject nearest his heart.

"I scarcely think," he said, "there is a greater sin, Lucy, than that of
a woman who marries a man she does not love. You are so precious to me
that, deeply as my heart is set on this, and bitter as the mere thought
of disappointment is to me, I would not have you commit such a sin for
any happiness of mine. Nothing but misery can result from a marriage
dictated by any motive but truth and love."

Lucy for some moments was quite silent. Then, turning to him with a
sudden passion in her manner that lighted up her face with a new and
wonderful beauty, she fell on her knees at his feet. Clutching at a
black ribbon about her throat, she exclaimed:

"How good, how noble, how generous you are! But you ask too much of me.
Only remember what my life has been! From babyhood I have never seen
anything but poverty. My father was a gentleman, but poor; my mother--
but don't let me speak of her. You can never guess what is endured by
genteel paupers. I cannot be disinterested; I cannot be blind to the
advantages of such a marriage. I do not dislike you--no, no; and I do
not love anyone in the world," she added, with a laugh, when asked if
there was anyone else.

Sir Michael was silent for a few moments, and then, with a kind of
effort, said: "Well, Lucy, I will not ask too much of you; but I see no
reason why we should not make a very happy couple."

When Lucy went to her own room she sat down on the edge of the bed, and
murmured: "No more dependence, no more drudgery, no more humiliations!
Every trace of the old life melted away, every clue to identity buried
and forgotten except this"--and she drew from her bosom a black ribbon
and locket, and the object attached to it. It was a ring wrapped in an
oblong piece of crumpled paper, partly written and partly printed.


_II.--The Return of the Gold-Seeker_


A tall, powerfully-built young man of twenty-five, his face bronzed by
exposure, brown eyes, bushy black beard, moustache, and hair, was pacing
impatiently the deck of the Australian liner Argus, bound from Melbourne
to Liverpool. His name was George Talboys. He was joined in his
promenade by a shipboard-friend, who had been attracted by the feverish
ardour and freshness of the young man, and was made the confidant of his
story.

"Do you know, Miss Morley," he said, "that I left my little girl asleep,
with her baby in her arms, and with nothing but a few blotted lines to
tell her why her adoring husband had deserted her."

"Deserted her!" cried Miss Morley.

"Yes. I was a cornet in a cavalry regiment when I first met my darling.
We were quartered in a stupid seaport town, where my pet lived with her
shabby old father--a half-pay naval man. It was a case of love at first
sight on both sides, and my darling and I made a match of it. My father
is a rich man, but no sooner did he hear that I was married to a
penniless girl than he wrote a furious letter telling me that he would
never again hold any communication with me, and that my yearly allowance
was stopped.

"I sold out my commission, thinking that before the money I got for it
was exhausted I should be sure to drop into something. I took my darling
to Italy, lived in splendid style, and then, when there was nothing left
but a couple of hundred pounds, we came back to England and boarded with
my wretched father-in-law, who fleeced us finely. I went to London and
tried in vain to get employment; and on my return, my little girl burst
into a storm of lamentations, blaming me for the cruel wrong of marrying
her if I could give her nothing but poverty and misery. Her tears and
reproaches drove me almost mad. I ran out of the house, rushed down to
the pier, intending, after dark, to drop quietly into the water and end
all.

"While I sat smoking two men came along, and began to talk of the
Australian gold-diggings and the great fortunes that were to be made
there in a short time. I got into conversation with them, and learned
that a ship sailed from Liverpool for Melbourne in three days. The
thought flashed on me that that was better than the water. I returned
home, crept upstairs, and wrote a few hurried lines which told her that
I never loved her better than now when I seemed to desert her; that I
was going to try my fortune in a new world; that if I succeeded I should
come back to bring her plenty and happiness, but if I failed I should
never look upon her face again. I kissed her hand and the baby once, and
slipped out of the room. Three nights after I was out at sea, bound for
Melbourne, a steerage passenger with a digger's tools for my baggage,
and seven shillings in my pocket. After three and a half years of hard
and bitter struggles on the goldfields, at last I struck it rich,
realised twenty thousand pounds, and a fortnight later I took my passage
for England. All this time I had never communicated with my wife, but
the moment fortune came, I wrote, telling her I should be in England
almost as soon as my letter, and giving her an address at a coffee-house
in London."

That same evening Phoebe Marks, maid to Lady Audley, invited her cousin
and sweetheart, Luke Marks, a farm labourer with ambitions to own a
public-house, to survey the wonders of Audley Court, including my lady's
private apartments and her jewel-box. During the inspection, by
accident, a knob in the framework of the jewel-box was pushed, and a
secret drawer sprang out There were neither gold nor gems in it. Only a
baby's little worsted shoe, rolled in a piece of paper, and a tiny lock
of silky yellow hair, evidently taken from a baby's head. Phoebe's eyes
dilated as she examined the little packet.

"So this is what my lady hides in the secret drawer," she said, putting
the little packet in her pocket.

"Why, Phoebe, you're never going to be such a fool as to take that?"
cried Luke.

"I'd rather have this than the diamond bracelet you would have liked to
take," she said, her lips curving into a curious smile. "You shall have
the public-house, Luke."


_III.--Robert Audley Comes on the Scene_


Robert Audley was supposed to be a barrister, and had chambers in Fig
Tree Court, Temple. He was a handsome, lazy, care-for-nothing fellow of
seven-and-twenty, the only son of the younger brother of Sir Michael
Audley, who had left him a moderate competency.

One morning, Robert Audley strolled out of the Temple, Blackfriarswards.
At the corner of a court in St. Paul's Churchyard he was almost knocked
down by a man of his own age dashing headlong into the narrow opening.
Robert remonstrated; the stranger stopped suddenly, looked very hard at
the speaker, and cried, in a tone of intense astonishment:

"Bob! I only touched British ground after dark last night, and to think
I should meet you this morning!"

George Talboys, for the stranger was the late passenger on board the
Argus, had been from boyhood the inseparable chum of Robert Audley. The
tale of Talboys' marriage, his expedition to Australia, and his return
with a fortune, was briefly told. The pair took a hansom to the
Westminster coffee-house where Talboys had written to his wife to
forward letters. There was no letter, and the young man showed very
bitter disappointment. By and by George mechanically picked up a "Times"
newspaper of a day or two before, and stared vacantly at the first page.
He turned a sickly colour, and pointed to a line which ran: "On the 24th
inst., at Ventnor-Isle of Wight, Helen Talboys, aged 22." He knew no
more until he opened his eyes in a room in his friend's chambers in the
Temple.

Next day he and Robert Audley journeyed by express to Ventnor, learned
on inquiry at the principal hotel that a Captain Maldon, whose daughter
was lately dead, was staying at Lansdowne Cottage; and thither they
proceeded. The captain and his little grandson, Georgey, were out.

George Talboys and his friend visited the churchyard where his wife was
buried, commissioned a mason to erect a headstone on the grave, and then
went to the beach to seek Captain Maldon and the little boy.

The captain, when he saw his son-in-law, coloured violently with
something of a frightened look. He told Talboys that only a few months
after his departure he and Helen came to live at Southampton, where she
had obtained a few pupils for the piano; but her health failed, and she
fell into a decline, of which she died. Broken-hearted, Talboys started
for Liverpool to take ship for Australia, but failed to catch the
steamer; returned to London, and accompanied Robert Audley on a long
visit to Russia.

A year passed, and Robert proposed to take his friend to Audley Court,
but had a letter from his cousin Alicia, saying that her stepmother had
taken into her head that she was too ill to entertain, though in reality
there was nothing the matter with her.

"My lady's airs and graces shan't keep us out of Essex, for all that,"
said Robert Audley. "We will go to a comfortable old inn in the village
of Audley."

Thither they went; but Lady Audley, who had casually seen him, although
he was unaware of it, continued on one excuse or another to avoid
meeting George Talboys. The two young men strolled up to the Court in
the absence of Sir Michael and Lady Audley, where they met Alicia
Audley, who showed them the lime walk and the old well.

Robert was anxious to see the portrait of his new aunt; but Lady
Audley's picture was in her private apartments, the door of which was
locked. Alicia remembered there was, unknown to Lady Audley, access to
these by means of a secret passage. In a spirit of fun the young men
explored the passage and reached the portrait. George Talboys sat before
it without uttering a word, only staring blankly.

"We managed it capitally; but I don't like the portrait," said Robert,
when they had crept back. "There is something odd about it."

"There is," answered Alicia. "We never have seen my lady look as she
does in that picture; but I think she could look so."

Next day Talboys and Robert went fishing. George pretended to fish;
Robert slept on the river-bank. The servants were at dinner at the
Court; Alicia had gone riding. Lady Audley sauntered out, book in hand,
to the shady lime walk. George Talboys came up to the hall, rang the
bell, was told that her ladyship was walking in the lime avenue. He
looked disappointed at the intelligence, and walked away. A full hour
and a half later, Lady Audley returned to the house, not coming from the
lime avenue, but from the opposite direction. In her own room she
confronted her maid, Phoebe. The eyes of the two women met.

"Phoebe Marks," said my lady presently, "you are a good girl; and while
I live and am prosperous, you shall not want a firm friend and a
twenty-pound note."


_IV.--The Search and the Counter Check_


Robert Audley awoke from his nap to find George Talboys gone. He
searched in the grounds and in the inn for him in vain. At the
railway-station he heard that a man who, from the description given,
might be Talboys, had gone by the afternoon train to London. In the
evening he went up to the Court to dinner. Lady Audley was gay and
fascinating; but gave a little nervous shudder when Robert, feeling
uneasy about his friend, said so.

Again, when Lady Audley was at the piano he observed a bruise on her
arm. She said that it was caused by tying a piece of ribbon too tightly
round her arm two or three days before. But Robert saw that the bruise
was recent, and that it had been made by the four fingers, one of which
had a ring, of a powerful hand.

Suspicion began to be aroused in the mind of Robert Audley, first as to
the real identity of Lady Audley; and second, as to the fate of his
friend. He brought into play all the keenness of his intellect, and
abandoned his lazy habits. He went to Southampton, saw Captain Maldon,
who told him that George Talboys had arrived the morning before at one
o'clock to have a look at his boy before sailing for Australia. On
inquiry at Liverpool, this proved to be false.

He sought the assistance of George's father, Squire Talboys, at Grange
Heath, Dorsetshire, to discover the murderer; but the squire resolutely
refused to accept that his son was dead. He was only hiding, hoping for
forgiveness, which would never be given.

The beautiful sister of George Talboys followed Robert when he left the
mansion and besought him passionately to avenge her brother's murder, in
which she implicitly believed, and this he promised to do.

Then he learned that Phoebe, Lady Audley's maid, had married her cousin
Luke Marks, who, under veiled threats, had obtained one hundred pounds
from her ladyship to enable him to lease the Castle Inn. And having
visited the place, and held conversation with the half-drunken landlord,
he felt assured that Luke Marks and his wife had by some means obtained
a sinister power over Lady Audley.

Robert thereafter traced the life history of Helen Maldon from her
marriage to George Talboys at Wildernsea, Yorkshire, her secret
departure from there after her husband's desertion, her appearance the
following day as a teacher in a girl's school at Brompton under the name
of Lucy Graham; her arrival as a governess in Essex, and finally her
marriage to Sir Michael Audley.

Once more he returned to the Court, where his uncle was lying ill,
attended by Lady Audley. He demanded a private audience of my lady, at
which he told her he had discovered the whole of the conspiracy
concocted by an artful woman who had speculated upon the chance of her
husband's death, and had secured a splendid position at the risk of
committing a crime.

"My friend, George Talboys," said Robert, "was last seen entering these
gardens, and was never seen to leave them. I will have such a search
made as shall level that house to the earth, and root up every tree
rather than I will fail in finding the grave of my murdered friend."

"You shall never live to do this," she said. "I will kill you first!"

That evening Lady Audley gave to her husband a gloss of what his nephew
had said, and boldly accused him of being mad. "You would," she said,
"never let anyone influence you against me, would you, darling?"

"No, my love; they had better not try it."

Lady Audley laughed aloud, with a gay, triumphant peal as she tripped
out of the room; but as she sat in her own chamber, brooding, she
muttered: "Dare I defy him? Will anything stop him but--death?"

Just then Phoebe Marks arrived to warn Lady Audley that Robert had
appeared at the Castle Inn. She also explained that a bailiff was in the
house, as the rent was due, and she wanted money to pay him out. Lady
Audley, insisted to Phoebe's astonishment, that she herself would bring
the money. She did so; and, unknown to Phoebe, cunningly set fire to the
inn, hoping that Robert Audley would meet his death. She and her maid
then left the inn to make the long tramp back to the Court. Half the
distance had been covered, when Phoebe looked back and saw a red glare
in the sky. She stopped, suddenly fell on her knees, and cried: "Oh, my
God! Say it's not true! It's too horrible!"

"What's too horrible?" said Lady Audley.

"The thought that is in my mind."

"I will tell you nothing except that you are a mad woman; and go home."
Lady Audley walked away in the darkness.


_V.--My Lady Tells the Truth_


Lady Audley next day was under the dominion of a terrible restlessness.
Towards the dinner hour she walked in the quadrangle. In the dusk she
lost all self-control when a figure approached. Her knees sank under her
and she dropped to the ground. It was Robert Audley who helped her to
rise and then led her into the library. In a pitiless voice he called
her the incendiary of the fire at the inn. Fortunately, he had changed
his room, and escaped being burnt to death, saving, at the same time,
Luke Marks. The day was now past, he insisted, for mercy, after last
night's deed of horror; and she should no longer pollute the Court with
her presence.

"Bring Sir Michael," she cried, "and I will confess everything!"

And so the confession was made. Briefly stated, it was that as a little
child, in a Hampshire coast village, when she asked where her mother
was, the answer always was that that was a secret. In a fit of passion
the foster-mother told her that her own mother was a madwoman in an
asylum many miles away. Afterwards, she learned that the madness was a
hereditary disease, and she was instructed to keep the secret because it
might affect her injuriously in after life. Then she detailed the story
of her life until her marriage with Sir Michael Audley, justifying that
on the ground that she had a right to believe her first husband was
dead. In the sunshine of love at Audley Court she felt, for the first
time in her life, the miseries of others, and took pleasure in acts of
kindness.

In an Essex paper she read of the return of her first husband to
England. Knowing his character, she thought that unless he could be
induced to believe she was dead, he would never abandon his search for
her. Again she became mad. In collusion with her father she induced a
Mrs. Plowson in Southampton, who had a daughter in the last stage of
consumption, to pass off that daughter as Mrs. George Talboys, and
removed her to Ventnor, Isle of Wight, with her own little boy schooled
to call her "mamma." There she died in a fortnight, was buried as Mrs.
George Talboys, and the advertisement of the death was inserted in the
"Times" two days before her husband's arrival in England.

Sir Michael could hear no more. He and his daughter Alicia departed that
evening for the Continent. Next day, Dr. Mosgrave, a mental specialist,
arrived from London. He was fully informed of the history of Lady
Audley, examined her, and finally reported to Robert: "The lady is not
mad, but she has a hereditary taint in her blood. She has the cunning of
madness, with the prudence of intelligence. She is dangerous." He gave
Robert a letter addressed to Monsieur Val, Villebrumeuse, Belgium, who,
he said, was the proprietor and medical superintendent of an excellent
_maison de santé_, and would, no doubt, willingly receive Lady Audley
into his establishment, and charge himself with the full responsibility
of her future life.

Robert escorted Lady Audley to Villebrumeuse, where she was presented to
Monsieur Val as Madame Taylor. When Monsieur Val retired from the
reception room, at my lady's request, she turned to Robert, and said:
"You have brought me to a living grave; you have used your power basely
and cruelly."

"I have done that which I thought was just to others, and merciful to
you," replied Robert. "Live here and repent."

"I cannot," cried my lady. "I would defy you and kill myself if I dared.
Do you know what I am thinking of? It is of the day upon which George
Talboys--disappeared! The body of George Talboys lies at the bottom of
the old well in the shrubbery beyond the lime walk. He came to me there,
goaded me beyond endurance, and I called him a madman and a liar. I was
going to leave him when he seized me by the wrist and sought to detain
me by force. You yourself saw the bruises. I became mad, and drew the
loose iron spindle from the shrunken wood of the windlass. My first
husband sank with one horrible cry into the black mouth of the well!"


_VI.--The Mystery Cleared Up_


On arrival in London, Robert Audley received a letter from Clara Talboys
saying that Luke Marks, the man whom he had saved in the fire at the
Castle Inn, was lying at his mother's cottage at Audley, and expressed a
very earnest wish to see him. Robert took train at once to Audley.

The dying man confessed that on the night of George Talboys's
disappearance, when going home to his mother's cottage, he heard groans
come from the laurel bushes in the shrubbery near the old well. On
search, he found Talboys covered with slime, and with a broken arm. He
carried the crippled man to his mother's cottage, washed, fed, and
nursed him.

Next day Talboys gave him a five-pound note to accompany him to the town
of Brentwood, where he called on a surgeon to have his broken arm set
and dressed. That done, Talboys wrote two notes in pencil with his left
hand, and gave them to Luke to deliver--one with a cross to be handed to
Lady Audley, and the other to the nephew of Sir Michael, and then took
train to London in a second-class carriage.

Phoebe, who had seen from her window Lady Audley pushing George Talboys
into the well, said that my lady was in their power, and that she would
do anything for them to keep her secret. So the letters were not
delivered.

He hid them away; not a creature had seen them. The old mother, who had
been present throughout the confession, took the papers from a drawer
and handed them to Robert Audley.

The note to Robert said that something had happened to the writer, he
could not tell what, which drove him from England, a broken-hearted man,
to seek some corner of the earth where he might live and die unknown and
forgotten. He left his son in his friend's hands, knowing that he could
leave him to no truer guardian. The second note was addressed "Helen,"
saying, "May God pity and forgive you for that which you have done
to-day, as truly as I do. Rest in peace. You shall never hear from me
again. I leave England, never to return.--G. T."

Luke Marks died that afternoon. Robert Audley wrote a long letter the
same evening, addressed to Madame Taylor, in which he told the story
related by Marks; and as soon as possible he went down to Dorsetshire to
inform George Talboys's father that his son was alive. He stayed five
weeks at Grange Heath, and the love which had come to him at first sight
of Clara Talboys rapidly ripened.

Consent to the marriage was given, with a blessing by the old
Roman-minded squire, and the pair agreed to go on their honeymoon trip
to Australia to look for the son and brother. Robert returned for the
last time to his bachelor chambers in the Temple. He was told that a
visitor was waiting for him. The visitor was George Talboys, and he
opened his arms to his lost friend with a cry of delight and surprise.
The tale was soon told. When George fell into the well he was stunned
and bruised, and his arm broken. After infinite pains and difficulties
he climbed to the top and hid in a clump of laurel bushes till the
arrival of Luke Marks. He had not been to Australia after all, but had
exchanged his berth on board the Victoria Regia for another in a ship
bound for New York. There he remained for a time till he yearned for the
strong clasp of the hand which guided him through the darkest passage of
his life.

Two years passed. In a fairy cottage on the banks of the Thames, between
Teddington Lock and Hampton Bridge, George Talboys lives with his sister
and brother-in-law, the latter having now obtained success at the Bar.
Georgey pays occasional visits from Eton to play with a pretty baby
cousin. It is a year since a black-edged letter came to Robert Audley,
announcing that Madame Taylor had died after a long illness, which
Monsieur Val described as _maladie de longueur_. Sir Michael Audley
lives in London with Alicia, who is very shortly to become the wife of
Sir Harry Towers, a sporting Herts baronet.

       *       *       *       *       *




EDWARD BRADLEY ("CUTHBERT BEDE")


The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green

      Edward Bradley is one of few English humorists of the
     mid-Victorian era who produced any work that is likely to
     survive the wear of time and change of taste. "The Adventures
     of Mr. Verdant Green," his earliest and best story, is, in its
     way, a masterpiece. Never has the lighter and gayer side of
     Oxford life been depicted with so much humour and fidelity;
     and what makes this achievement still more remarkable is the
     fact that Cuthbert Bede (to give Bradley the name which he
     adopted for literary purposes and made famous) was not an
     Oxford man. He was born at Kidderminster in 1827, and educated
     at Durham University, with the idea of becoming a clergyman.
     But not being old enough to take orders, he stayed for a year
     at Oxford, without, however, matriculating there. At the age
     of twenty he began to write for "Punch," and "The Adventures
     of Verdant Green" was composed in 1853, when he was still on
     the staff of that paper. The book, on its publication, had an
     immense vogue, and though twenty-six other books followed from
     his pen, it is still the most popular. He died on December 11,
     1889.


_I.--A Very Quiet Party_


As Mr. Verdant Green was sitting, sad and lonely, in his rooms
overlooking the picturesque, mediaeval quadrangle of Brazenface College,
Oxford, a German band began to play "Home, Sweet Home," with that truth
and delicacy of expression which the wandering minstrels of Germany seem
to acquire intuitively. The sweet melancholy of the air, as it came
subdued into softer tones by distance, would probably have moved any lad
who had just been torn from the shelter of his family to fight, all
inexperienced, the battle of life. On Mr. Verdant Green it had such an
overwhelming effect that when his scout, Filcher, entered the room he
found his master looking very red about the eyes, and furiously wiping
the large spectacles from which his nick-name, "Gig-lamps," was derived.

The fact was that Mr. Verdant Green was a freshman of the freshest kind.
It was his first day in Oxford. He had been brought up entirely by his
mother and a maiden aunt. Happily, Mr. Larkyns, the rector of Manor
Green, the charming Warwickshire village of which the Greens had been
squires from time immemorial, convinced his mother that Verdant needed
the society of young men of his own age. Mr. Larkyn's own son, a manly
young fellow named Charles, had already been sent up to Brazenface
College, where he was rapidly distinguishing himself; and after many
tears and arguments, Mrs. Green had consented to her boy also going up
to Oxford.

As we have said, Mr. Verdant Green felt very tearful and lonely as his
scout entered his rooms. But the appearance of Filcher reminded him that
he was now an Oxford man, and he resolved to begin his career by calling
upon Mr. Charles Larkyns.

He found Mr. Larkyns lolling on a couch, in dressing-gown and slippers.
Opposite to him was a gentleman whose face was partly hidden by a pewter
pot, out of which he was draining the last draught. Mr. Larkyns turned
his head, and saw dimly through the clouds of tobacco smoke that filled
his room a tall, thin, spectacled figure, with a hat in one hand, and an
envelope in the other.

"It's no use," he said, "stealing a march on me in this way. I don't owe
you anything; and if I did it is not convenient to pay it. Hang you
Oxford tradesmen! You really make a man thoroughly billious. Tell your
master that I can't get any money out of my governor till I've got my
degree. Now make yourself scarce! You know where the door lies!"

Mr. Verdant Green was so confounded at this unusual reception that he
lost the power of motion and speech. But as Mr. Larkyns advanced towards
him in a threatening attitude, he managed to gasp out: "Why, Charles
Larkyns, don't you remember me, Verdant Green?"

"'Pon my word, old fellow," said his friend, "I thought you were a dun.
There are so many wretched tradesmen in this place who labour under the
impression that because a man buys a thing he means to pay for it, that
my life is mostly spent in dodging their messengers. Allow me," he
added, "to introduce you to Mr. Smalls. You will find him very useful in
helping you in your studies. He himself reads so hard that he is called
a fast man."

Mr. Smalls put down his pewter pot, and said that he had much pleasure
in forming the acquaintance of a freshman like Mr. Verdant Green; which
was undoubtedly true. And he then showed his absorbing interest in
literary studies by neglecting the society of Mr. Verdant Green and
immersing himself in the perusal of one of those vivid accounts of "a
rattling set-to between Nobby Buffer and Hammer Sykes" which make
"Bell's Life" the favourite reading of many Oxford scholars.

"I heard from my governor," said Mr. Larkyns, "that you were coming up,
and in the course of the morning I should have come to look you up. Have
a cigar, old chap?"

"Er--er--thank you very much," said Verdant, in a frightened way; "but I
have never smoked."

"Never smoked!" exclaimed Mr. Smalls, holding up "Bell's Life," and
making private signals to Mr. Larkyns. "You'll soon get the better of
that weakness! As you are a freshman, let me give you a little advice.
You know what deep readers the Germans are. That is because they smoke
more than we do. I should advise you to go at once to the
vice-chancellor and ask him for a box of good cigars. He will be
delighted to find you are beginning to set to work so soon."

Mr. Verdant Green thanked Mr. Smalls for his kind advice, and said that
he would go without delay to the vice-chancellor. And Mr. Smalls was so
delighted with the joke, for the vice-chancellor took severe steps to
prevent undergraduates from indulging in the fragrant weed, that he
invited Verdant to dine with him that evening.

"Just a small quiet party of hard-working men," said Mr. Smalls. "I hope
you don't object to a very quiet party."

"Oh, dear, no! I much prefer a quiet party," said Mr. Verdant Green;
"indeed, I have always been used to quiet parties; and I shall be very
glad to come."

In order to while away the time between then and evening, Mr. Charles
Larkyns offered to take Mr. Verdant Green over Oxford, and put him up to
a thing or two, and show him some of the freshman's sights. Naturally,
he got a considerable amount of fun out of his young and very credulous
friend. For some weeks afterwards, Mr. Verdant Green never met any of
the gorgeously robed beadles of the university without taking his hat
off and making them a profound bow. For, according to his information,
one of them was the vice-chancellor, and the rest were various
dignitaries and famous men.

By the time the inventive powers of Mr. Larkyns were exhausted, it was
necessary to dress for the very quiet party. Some hours afterwards, Mr.
Verdant Green was standing in a room filled with smoke and noise,
leaning rather heavily against the table. His friends had first tempted
him with a cigar; then, as his first smoke produced the strange effects
common in these cases, they had induced him to take a little strong
punch as a remedy. He was now leaning against the table in answer to the
call of "Mr. Gig-lamps for a song." Having decided upon one of those
vocal efforts which in the bosom of his family met with great applause,
he began to sing in low and plaintive tones, "'I dre-eamt that I dwelt
in Mar-ar-ble Halls, with'"--and then, alarmed by hearing the sound of
his own voice, he stopped.

"Try back, Verdant," shouted Mr. Larkyns.

Mr. Verdant Green tried back, but with an increased confusion of ideas,
resulting from the mixture of milk-punch and strong cigars. "'I dre-eamt
that I dwe-elt in Mar-arble Halls, with vassals and serfs at my
si-hi-hide; and--'--I beg your pardon, gentlemen, I really forget----oh,
I know--'And I also dre-eamt, which ple-eased me most--' No, that's not
it."

And, smiling very amiably, he sank down on the carpet, and went to sleep
under the table. Some time afterwards, two men were seen carrying an
inert body across the quad; they took it upstairs and put it on a bed.
And late the next morning, Mr. Verdant Green woke up with a splitting
headache, and wished that he had never been born.

As time went on, all the well-known practical jokes were played upon
him; and gradually--and sometimes painfully--he learnt the wisdom that
is not taught in books, nor acquired from maiden aunts.


_II.--Mr. Verdant Green Does as He Has Been Done By_


One morning, Mr. Green and one of his friends, little Mr. Bouncer, were
lounging in the gateway of Brazenface, when a modest-looking young man
came towards them. He seemed so ill at ease in his frock coat and high
collar that he looked as if he were wearing these articles for the first
time.

"I'll bet you a bottle of blacking, Gig-lamps," said Mr. Bouncer, "that
we have here an intending freshman. Let us take a rise out of him."

"Can you direct me to Brazenface College, please, sir?" said the
youthful stranger, flushing like a girl.

"This is Brazenface College," said Mr. Bouncer, looking very important.
"And, pray, what is your business here and your name?"

"If you please," said the stranger, "I am James Pucker. I came to enter,
sir, for my matriculation examination, and I wish to see the gentleman
who will examine me."

"Then you've come to the proper quarter, young man," said Mr. Bouncer.
"Here is Mr. Pluckem," turning to Mr. Verdant Green, "the junior
examiner."

Mr. Verdant Green took his cue with astonishing aptitude and glared
through his glasses at the trembling, blushing Mr. Pucker.

"And here," continued Mr. Bouncer, pointing to Mr. Fosbrooke, who was
coming up the street, "is the gentleman who will assist Mr. Pluckem in
examining you."

"It will be extremely inconvenient to me to examine you now," said Mr.
Fosbrooke; "but, as you probably wish to return home as soon as
possible, I will endeavour to conclude the business at once. Mr.
Bouncer, will you have the goodness to bring this young gentleman to my
rooms?"

Leaving Mr. Pucker to express his thanks for this great kindness to Mr.
Bouncer, who whiled away the time by telling him terrible stories about
the matriculation ordeal, Mr. Verdant Green and Fosbrooke ran upstairs,
and spread a newspaper over a heap of pipes and pewter pots and bottles
of ale, and prepared a table with pen, ink, and scribble-paper. Soon
afterwards, Mr. Bouncer led in the unsuspecting victim.

"Take a seat, sir," said Mr. Fosbrooke, gravely. And Mr. Pucker put his
hat on the ground, and sat down at the table in a state of blushing
nervousness. "Have you been at a public school?"

"Yes, sir," stammered the victim; "a very public one, sir. It was a
boarding school, sir. I was a day boy, sir, and in the first class."

"First class of an uncommon slow train!" muttered Mr. Bouncer.

"Now, sir," continued Mr. Fosbrooke, "let us see what your Latin writing
is like. Have the goodness to turn what I have written into Latin; and
be very careful," added Mr. Fosbrooke sternly, "be very careful that it
is good Latin!" And he handed Mr. Pucker a sheet of paper, on which he
had scribbled the following:

"To be turned into Latin after the Manner of the Animals of Tacitus: She
went into the garden to cut a cabbage to make an apple-pie. Just then a
great she-bear, coming down the street, poked its nose into the shop
window. 'What! No soap? Bosh!' So he died, and she (very imprudently)
married the barber. And there were present at the wedding the
Joblillies, and the Piccannies, and the Gobelites, and the great
Panjandrum himself, with the little button on top. So they all set to
playing catch-who-catch-can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of
their boots."

It was well for the purposes of the hoaxers that Mr. Pucker's
trepidation prevented him from making a calm perusal of the paper; he
was nervously doing his best to turn the nonsensical English word by
word into equally nonsensical Latin, when his limited powers of Latin
writing were brought to a full stop by the untranslatable word "bosh."
As he could make nothing of this, he gazed appealingly at the benignant
features of Mr. Verdant Green. The appealing gaze was answered by our
hero ordering Mr. Pucker to hand in his paper, and reply to the
questions on history and Euclid. Mr. Pucker took the two papers of
questions, and read as follows:

HISTORY.

"1. Show the strong presumption there is, that Nox was the god of
battles.

"2. In what way were the shades on the banks of the Styx supplied with
spirits?

"3. Give a brief account of the Roman emperors who visited the United
States, and state what they did there.

EUCLID.

"1. Show the fallacy of defining an angle, as a worm at one end and a
fool at the other.

"2. If a freshman _A_ have any mouth _x_ and a bottle of wine _y_, show
how many applications of _x_ to _y_ will place _y_+_y_ before _A_.

"3. Find the value of a 'bob,' a 'tanner,' a 'joey,' a 'tizzy,' a
'poney,' and a 'monkey.'

"4. If seven horses eat twenty-five acres of grass in three days, what
will be their condition on the fourth day? Prove this by practice."

Mr. Pucker did not know what to make of such extraordinary and
unexpected questions. He blushed, tried to write, fingered his curls,
and then gave himself over to despair; whereupon Mr. Bouncer was seized
with an immoderate fit of laughter, which brought the farce almost to an
end.

"I'm afraid, young gentleman," said Mr. Bouncer, "that your learning is
not yet up to the Brazenface standard. But we will give you one more
chance to retrieve yourself. We will try a little _vivâ voce_, Mr.
Pucker. If a coach-wheel 6 inches in diameter and 5 inches in
circumference makes 240 revolutions in a second, how many men will it
take to do the same piece of work in ten days?"

Mr. Pucker grew redder and hotter than before, and gasped like a fish
out of water.

"I see you will not do for us yet awhile," said his tormentor, "and we
are therefore under the painful necessity of rejecting you. I should
advise you to read hard for another twelve months, and try to master
those subjects in which you have now failed."

Disregarding poor Mr. Pucker's entreaties to matriculate him this once
for the sake of his mother, when he would read very hard--indeed he
would--Mr. Fosbrooke turned to Mr. Bouncer and gave him some private
instructions, and Mr. Verdant Green immediately disappeared in search of
his scout, Filcher. Five minutes afterwards, as the dejected Mr. Pucker
was crawling out of the quad, Filcher came and led him back to the rooms
of Mr. Slowcoach, the real examining tutor.

"But I have been examined," Mr. Pucker kept on saying dejectedly. "I
have been examined, and they rejected me."

"I think it was an 'oax, sir," said Filcher.

"A what!" stammered Mr. Pucker.

"A 'oax--a sell," said the scout. "Those two gents has been 'aving a
little game with you, sir. They often does it with fresh parties like
you, sir, that seem fresh and hinnocent like."

Mr. Pucker was immensely relieved at this news, and at once went to Mr.
Slowcoach, who, after an examination of twenty minutes, passed him. But
Filcher was alarmed at the joyful way in which he rushed out of the
tutor's room.

"You didn't tell 'im about the 'oax, sir, did yer?" asked the scout
anxiously.

"Not a word," said the radiant Mr. Pucker.

"Then you're a trump, sir!" said Filcher. "And Mr. Verdant Green's
compliments to yer, sir, and will you come up to his rooms and take a
glass of wine with him, sir?"

It need hardly be said that the blushing Mr. Pucker passed a very
pleasant evening with his new friends, and that Mr. Verdant Green was
very proud of having got so far out of the freshman's stage of existence
as to take part in one of the most successful hoaxes in the history of
Oxford.


_III.--Town and Gown_


Mr. Verdant Green, Mr. Charles Larkyns, and a throng of their
acquaintances were sitting in Mr. Bouncer's rooms, on the evening of
November 5, when a knock at the oak was heard; and as Mr. Bouncer roared
out, "Come in!" the knocker entered. Opening the door, and striking into
an attitude, he exclaimed in a theatrical tone and manner:

"Scene, Mr. Bouncer's rooms in Brazenface; in the centre a table, at
which a party are drinking log-juice, and smoking cabbage leaves. Door,
left, third entrance. Enter the Putney Pet. Slow music; lights half
down."

Even Mr. Verdant Green did not require to be told the profession of the
Putney Pet. His thick-set frame, his hard-featured, battered, hang-dog
face proclaimed him a prize-fighter.

"Now for a toast, gentlemen," said Mr. Bouncer. "May the Gown give the
Town a jolly good hiding!"

This was received with great applause, and the Putney Pet was dressed
out in a gown and mortar-board, and the whole party then sallied out to
battle. From time immemorial it has been the custom at Oxford for the
town-people and the scholars to engage, at least once a year, in a wild
scrimmage, and the pitched battle was now due. No doubt it was not quite
fair for the men of Brazenface to bring the Putney Pet up from London
for the occasion; but for some years Gown had been defeated by Town, and
they were resolved to have their revenge.

When Mr. Bouncer's party turned the corner of Saint Mary's, they found
that the Town, as usual, had taken the initiative, and in a dense body
had swept the High Street and driven all the gownsmen before them. A
small knot of 'varsity men were manfully struggling against superior
numbers by St. Mary's Hall.

"Gown to the rescue!" shouted Mr. Bouncer, as he dashed across the
street. "Come on, Pet! Here we are in the thick of it, just in the nick
of time!"

Poor Mr. Verdant Green had never learnt to box. He was a lover of peace
and quietness, and would have preferred to have watched the battle from
a college window; but he had been drawn in the fray against his will by
Mr. Bouncer. He now rushed into the scrimmage with no idea of fighting,
and a valiant bargee singled him out as an easy prey, and aimed a heavy
blow at him. Instinctively doubling his fists, Mr. Verdant Green found
that necessity was indeed the mother of invention; and, with a passing
thought of what would be his mother's and his maiden aunt's feelings
could they see him fighting with a common bargeman, he managed to guard
off the blow. But he was not so fortunate in the second round, for the
bargee knocked him down, but was happily knocked down in turn by the
Putney Pet. The language of this gentle and refined scholar had become
very peculiar.

"There's a squelcher for you, my kivey," he said to the bargee, as he
sent him sprawling. Then, turning round, he asked a townsman: "What do
you charge for a pint of Dutch pink?" following up the question by
striking him on the nose.

Unused to being questioned in this violent way, the town party at last
turned and fled, and the gownsmen went in search of other foes to
conquer. Even Mr. Verdant Green felt desperately courageous when the
town took to their heels and vanished.

At Exeter College another town-and-gown fight was raging furiously. The
town mob had come across the Senior Proctor, the Rev. Thomas Tozer; and
while Old Towzer, as he was called, was trying to assert his proctorial
authority over them, they had jeered him, and torn his clothes, and
bespattered him with mud. A small group of gownsmen rushed to his
rescue.

"Oh, this is painful," said the Rev. Thomas Tozer, putting the
handkerchief to his bleeding nose. "This is painful! This is exceedingly
painful, gentlemen!"

He was at once surrounded by sympathising undergraduates, who begged him
to allow them to charge the town at once. But the Town far outnumbered
the Gown, and, in spite of the assistance of the reverend proctor, the
fight was going against them. The Rev. Thomas Tozer had just been
knocked down for the first time in his life, and the cry of "Gown to the
rescue!" fell very pleasantly on his ears. Mr. Verdant Green helped him
to rise, while the Putney Pet stepped before him and struck out right
and left. Ten minutes of scientific pugilism, and the fate of the battle
was decided. The Town fled every way, and the Rev. Thomas Tozer was at
last able to look calmly about him. He at once resumed his proctorial
duties.

"Why have you not on your gown, sir?" he said to the Putney Pet.

"I ax yer pardon, guv'nor," said the Pet deferentially. "I couldn't get
on in it, nohow. So I pocketed it; but some cove has gone and prigged
it."

"I am unable to comprehend the nature of your language, sir," said the
Rev. Thomas Tozer angrily, thinking it was an impudent undergraduate. "I
don't understand you, sir; but I desire at once to know your name and
college."

Mr. Bouncer, however, succeeded in explaining matters to the proctor,
who then congratulated the Pet on having displayed pugilistic powers
worthy of the Xystics of the noblest days of Ancient Rome. Both the Pet
and the undergraduates wondered what a Xystic was, but instead of
inquiring further into the matter, they went to the Roebuck, where,
after a supper of grilled bones and welsh-rabbits, Mr. Verdant Green
gave, "by particular request," his now celebrated song, "The Mar-arble
Halls."

The forehead of the singer was decorated with a patch of brown paper,
from which arose a strong smell of vinegar. But he was not ashamed of
it; indeed, he wore it all the next day, and was sorry when he had to
take it off--for was it not, in a way, a badge of courage?

From this time Mr. Verdant Green began to despise mere reading-men who
never went in for sports. He resolved at once to go in for them all. He
took to rowing, and was rescued from a watery grave by Mr. Bouncer.
Then, defeated but undaunted, he took to riding, and was thrown off. But
what did it matter? Before the term ended, he grew more accustomed to
the management of Oxford tubs and Oxford hacks.

It is true that the unfeeling man who reported the Torpid races for
"Bell's Life" had the unkindness to state in cold print; "Worcester
succeeded in making the bump at the Cherwell, in consequence of No. 3 of
the Brazenface boat suffering from fatigue." And on the copy of the
journal sent to Mrs. Green of Manor Green, her son sadly drew a pencil
line under "No. 3," and wrote: "This was me." But both Mrs. Green and
Miss Virginia Green were more than consoled when their beloved boy
returned home about midsummer with a slip of paper on which was written
and printed:

GREEN, VERDANT, È. Coll. AEn. Fac. Quiæstionibus Magistrorum Scholarum
in Parviso pro forma respondit.

        Ita testamur (GULIELMUS SMITH.
                     (ROBERTUS JONES.

In other words, Mr. Verdant Green had got through his Smalls. But, sad
to say, poor Mr. Bouncer had been plucked.

Mr. Verdant Green smiled to himself. It was the sheerest bit of good
luck that he had managed to get through. Still, he had learned more at
Oxford than was taught in books--he had learned to be a manly fellow in
spite of his gig-lamps.


       *       *       *       *       *



CHARLOTTE BRONTË


Jane Eyre

      Charlotte Brontë was born at Thornton, Yorkshire, England, on
     the 21st of April, 1816, of Irish and Cornish stock. By reason
     of her father's manner of living, she was utterly deprived of
     all companions of her own age. She therefore lived in a little
     world of her own, and by the time she was thirteen years of
     age, it had become her constant habit, and one of her few
     pleasures, to weave imaginary tales, idealising her favorite
     historical heroes, and setting forth in narrative form her own
     thoughts and feelings. Both Charlotte and her sisters Emily
     and Anne early found refuge in their habits of composition,
     and about 1845 made their first literary venture--a small
     volume of poems. This was not successful, but the authors were
     encouraged to make a further trial, and each began to prepare
     a prose tale. "Jane Eyre," perhaps the most poignant
     love-story in the English tongue, was published on October 16,
     1847. Its title ran: "Jane Eyre: an Autobiography. Edited by
     Currer Bell." The romantic story of its acceptance by the
     publishers has been told in our condensation of Mrs. Gaskell's
     "Life of Charlotte Brontë." (See LIVES AND LETTERS, Vol. IX.)
     Written secretly under the pressure of incessant domestic
     anxiety, as if with the very life-blood of its author, the
     wonderful intensity of the story kindled the imagination of
     the reading public in an extraordinary degree, and the
     popularity at once attained has never flagged. Though the
     experiences of Jane Eyre were not, except in comparatively
     unimportant episodes, the experiences of the authoress, Jane
     Eyre is Charlotte Brontë. One of the most striking features of
     the book--a feature preserved in the following summary--is the
     haunting suggestion of sympathy between nature and human
     emotion. The publication of "Jane Eyre" removed its authoress
     from almost straitened circumstances and a narrow round of
     life to material comfort and congenial society. In reality it
     endowed at once the most diffident of women with lasting fame.
     After a brief period of married life, Charlotte Brontë died on
     March 31, 1855.


_I.--The Master of Thornfield Hall_


Thornfield, my new home after I left school, was, I found, a fine old
battlemented hall, and Mrs. Fairfax, who had answered my advertisement,
a mild, elderly lady, related by marriage to Mr. Rochester, the owner of
the estate and the guardian of Adela Varens, my little pupil.

It was not till three months after my arrival there that my adventures
began. One day Mrs. Fairfax proposed to show me over the house, much of
which was unoccupied. The third storey especially had the aspect of a
home of the past--a shrine of memory. I liked its hush and quaintness.

"If there were a ghost at Thornfield Hall this would be its haunt," said
Mrs. Fairfax, as we passed the range of apartments on our way to see the
view from the roof.

I was pacing through the corridor of the third floor on my return, when
the last sound I expected in so still a region struck my ear--a laugh,
distinct, formal, mirthless. At first it was very low, but it passed off
in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every lonely chamber.

"Mrs. Fairfax," I called out, "did you hear that laugh? Who is it?"

"Some of the servants very likely," she answered; "perhaps Grace Poole."

The laugh was repeated in a low tone, and terminated in an odd murmur.

"Grace!" exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax.

I didn't expect Grace to answer, for the laugh was preternatural.

Nevertheless, the door nearest me opened, and a servant came out--a set,
square-made figure, with a hard, plain face.

"Too much noise, Grace," said Mrs. Fairfax. "Remember directions!"

Grace curtseyed silently, and went in.

Not unfrequently after that I heard Grace Poole's laugh and her
eccentric murmurs, stranger than her laugh.

Late one fine, calm afternoon in January I volunteered to carry to the
post at Hay, two miles distant, a letter Mrs. Fairfax had just written.
The lane to Hay inclined uphill all the way, and having reached the
middle, I sat on a stile till the sun went down, and on the hill-top
above me stood the rising moon. The village was a mile distant, but in
the absolute hush I could hear plainly its murmurs of life.

A rude noise broke on the fine ripplings and whisperings of the evening
calm, a metallic clatter, a horse was coming. The windings of the lane
hid it as it approached. Then I heard a rush under the hedge, and close
by glided a great dog, not staying to look up. The horse followed--a
tall steed, and on its back a rider. He passed; a sliding sound, a
clattering tumble, and man and horse were down. They had slipped on the
sheet of ice which glased the causeway. The dog came bounding back,
sniffed round the prostrate group, and then ran up to me; it was all he
could do. I obeyed him, and walked down to the traveller struggling
himself free of his steed. I think he was swearing, but am not certain.

"Can I do anything?" I asked.

"You can stand on one side," he answered as he rose. Whereupon began a
heaving, stamping process, accompanied by a barking and baying, and the
horse was re-established and the dog silenced with a "Down, Pilot!"

"If you are hurt and want help, sir," I remarked, "I can fetch someone,
either from Thornfield Hall or from Hay."

"Thank you, I shall do. I have no broken bones, only a sprain." And he
limped to the stile.

He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow. His eyes and
gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted; he was past youth, but had
not reached middle age--perhaps he might be thirty-five. I felt no fear
of him and but little shyness. His frown and roughness set me at ease.

He waved me to go, but I said:

"I cannot think of leaving you in this solitary lane till you are fit to
mount your horse."

"You ought to be at home yourself," said he. "Where do you come from?"

"From just below."

"Do you mean that house with the battlements?"

"Yes, sir."

"Whose house is it?"

"Mr. Rochester's."

"Do you know Mr. Rochester?"

"No, I have never seen him."

"You are not a servant at the Hall, of course. You are--"

"I am the governess."

"Ah, the governess!" he repeated. "Deuce take me if I had not forgotten!
Excuse me," he continued, "necessity compels me to make you useful."

He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, limped to his horse, caught the
bridle, and, grimacing grimly, sprang into the saddle and, with a "Thank
you," bounded away.

When I returned from Hay, after posting Mrs. Fairfax's letter, I went to
her room. She was not there, but sitting upright on the rug was a great
black-and-white long-haired dog. I went forward and said, "Pilot," and
the thing got up, came to me, sniffed me, and wagged his great tail. I
rang the bell.

"What dog is this?"

"He came with master, who has just arrived. He has had an accident, and
his ankle is sprained."

The next day I was summoned to take tea with Mr. Rochester and my pupil.
When I entered he was looking at Adela, who knelt on the hearth beside
Pilot.

"Here is Miss Eyre, sir," said Mrs. Fairfax, in her quiet way.

Mr. Rochester bowed, still not taking his eyes from the group of the dog
and the child.

I sat down, disembarrassed. Politeness might have confused me; caprice
laid me under no obligation.

Mrs. Fairfax seemed to think someone should be amiable, and she began to
talk.

"Madam, I should like some tea," was the sole rejoinder she got.

"Come to the fire," said the master, when the tray was taken away. "When
you came on me in Hay lane last night I thought unaccountably of fairy
tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse.
I am not sure yet. Who are your parents?"

"I have none."

"I thought not. And so you were waiting for your people when you sat on
that stile?"

"For whom, sir?"

"For the men in green. Did I break through one of your rings that you
spread that ice on the causeway?"

I shook my head.

"The men in green all forsook England a hundred years ago. I don't think
either summer or harvest or winter moon will ever shine on their revels
more."

Mrs. Fairfax dropped her knitting, wondering what sort of talk this was,
and remarked that Miss Eyre had been a kind and careful teacher.

"Don't trouble yourself to give her a character," returned Mr.
Rochester. "I shall judge for myself. She began by felling my horse."

"You said Mr. Rochester was not peculiar, Mrs. Fairfax," I remonstrated,
when I rejoined her in her room after putting Adela to bed.

After a time my master's manner towards me changed. It became more
uniform. I never seemed in his way. He did not take fits of chilling
hauteur. When he met me, the encounter seemed welcome; he always had a
word, and sometimes a smile. I felt at times as if he were my relation
rather than my master, and so happy did I become that the blanks of
existence were filled up. He had now been resident eight weeks, though
Mrs. Fairfax said he seldom stayed at the Hall longer than a fortnight.


_II.--The Mystery of the Third Floor_


One night, I hardly know whether I had been sleeping or musing, I
started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and lugubrious.
It ceased, but my heart beat anxiously; my inward tranquillity was
broken. The clock, far down in the hall, struck two. Just then my
chamber-door was touched as if fingers swept the panels groping a way
along the dark gallery outside. I was chilled with fear. Then I
remembered that it might be Pilot, and the idea calmed me. But it was
fated I should not sleep that night, for at the very keyhole of my
chamber, as it seemed, a demoniac laugh was uttered. My first impulse
was to rise and fasten the bolt, my next to cry: "Who is there?" Ere
long steps retreated up the gallery towards the third floor staircase,
and then all was still.

"Was it Grace Poole?" thought I. I hurried on my frock, and with a
trembling hand opened the door. There, burning outside, left on the
matting of the gallery, was a candle; and the air was filled with smoke,
which rushed in a cloud from Mr. Rochester's room. In an instant I was
within the chamber. Tongues of fire darted round the bed; the curtains
were on fire, and in the midst lay Mr. Rochester, in deep sleep. I shook
him, but he seemed stupefied. Then I rushed to his basin and ewer, and
deluged the bed with water. He woke with the cry: "Is there a flood?
What is it?"

I briefly related what had transpired. He was now in his dressing-gown,
and, warning me to stay where I was and call no one, he added: "I must
pay a visit to the third floor." A long time elapsed ere he returned,
pale and gloomy.

"I have found it all out," said he; "it is as I thought. You are no
talking fool. Say nothing about it."

He held out his hand as we parted. I gave him mine; he took it in both
his own.

"You have saved my life. I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a
debt. I feel your benefits no burden, Jane."

Strange energy was in his voice.

Till morning I was tossed on a buoyant, but unquiet sea. In the morning
I heard the servants exclaim how providential that master thought of the
water-jug when he had left the candle alight; and passing the room, I
saw, sewing rings on the new curtains, no other than--Grace Poole.

Company now came to the hall, including the beautiful Miss Ingram, whom
rumour associated with Mr. Rochester, as I heard from Mrs. Fairfax.

One day Mr. Rochester had been called away from home, and on his return,
as I was the first inmate of the house to meet him, I remarked: "Oh, are
you aware, Mr. Rochester, that a stranger has arrived since you left
this morning?"

"A stranger! no; I expected no one; did he give his name?"

"His name is Mason, sir, and he comes from the West Indies."

Mr. Rochester was standing near me, and as I spoke he gave my wrist a
convulsive grip, while a spasm caught his breath, and he turned whiter
than ashes.

"Do you feel ill, sir?" I inquired.

"Jane, I've got a blow; I've got a blow, Jane!" he staggered.

Then he sat down and made me sit beside him.

"My little friend," said he, "I wish I were in a quiet island with only
you; and trouble and danger and hideous recollections were removed from
me."

"Can I help you, sir? I'd give my life to serve you."

"Jane, if aid is wanted, I'll seek it at your hands."

"Thank you, sir; tell me what to do."

"Go back into the room; step quietly up to Mason, tell him Mr. Rochester
has come and wishes to see him; show him in here, and then leave me."

At a late hour that night I heard the visitors repair to their chambers
and Mr. Rochester saying: "This way, Mason; this is your room."

He spoke cheerfully, and the gay tones set my heart at ease.

Awaking in the dead of night I stretched my hand to draw the curtain,
for the moon was full and bright. Good God! What a cry! The night was
rent in twain by a savage, shrilly sound that ran from end to end of
Thornfield Hall.

The cry died and was not renewed. Indeed, whatever being uttered that
fearful shriek could not soon repeat it; not the widest-winged condor on
the Andes could, twice in succession, send out such a yell from the
cloud shrouding his eyrie.

It came out of the third storey. And overhead--yes, in the room just
above my chamber, I heard a deadly struggle, and a half-smothered voice
shout, "Help! help!"

A chamber door opened; someone rushed along the gallery. Another step
stamped on the floor above, and something fell. Then there was silence.

The sleepers were all aroused and gathered in the gallery, which but for
the moonlight would have been in complete darkness. The door at the end
of the gallery opened, and Mr. Rochester advanced with a candle. He had
just descended from the upper storey.

"All's right!" he cried. "A servant has had a nightmare, that is all,
and has taken a fit with fright. Now I must see you all back to your
rooms." And so by dint of coaxing and commanding he contrived to get
them back to their dormitories.

I retreated unnoticed and dressed myself carefully to be ready for
emergencies. About an hour passed, and then a cautious hand tapped low
at my door.

"Are you up and dressed?"

"Yes."

"Then come out quietly."

Mr. Rochester stood in the gallery holding a light.

"Bring a sponge and some volatile salts," said he.

I did so, and followed him.

"You don't turn sick at the sight of blood?"

"I think not; I have never been tried yet."

We entered a room with an inner apartment, from whence came a snarling,
snatching sound. Mr. Rochester went forward into this apartment, and a
shout of laughter greeted his entrance. Grace Poole, then, was there.
When he came out he closed the door behind him.

"Here, Jane!" he said.

I walked round to the other side of the large bed in the outer room, and
there, in an easy-chair, his head leaned back, I recognised the pale and
seemingly lifeless face of the stranger, Mason. His linen on one side
and one arm was almost soaked in blood.

Mr. Rochester took the sponge, dipped it in water, moistened the
corpse-like face, and applied my smelling-bottle to the nostrils.

Mr. Mason unclosed his eyes and murmured: "Is there immediate danger?"

"Pooh!--a mere scratch! I'll fetch a surgeon now, and you'll be able to
be removed by the morning."

"Jane," he continued, "you'll sponge the blood when it returns, and put
your salts to his nose; and you'll not speak to him on any pretext--and,
Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her."

Two hours later the surgeon came and removed the injured man.

In the morning I heard Rochester in the yard, saying to some of the
visitors, "Mason got the start of you all this morning; he was gone
before sunrise. I rose to see him off."


_III.--The Shadowy Walk_


A splendid midsummer shone over England. In the sweetest hour of the
twenty-four, after the sun had gone down in simple state, and dew fell
cool on the panting plain, I had walked into the orchard, to the giant
horse-chestnut, near the sunk fence that separates the Hall grounds from
the lonely fields, when there came to me the warning fragrance of Mr.
Rochester's cigar. I was about to retreat when he intercepted me, and
said: "Turn back, Jane; on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the
house." I did not like to walk alone with my master at this hour in the
shadowy orchard, but could find no reason for leaving him.

"Jane," he recommenced, as we slowly strayed down in the direction of
the horse-chestnut, "Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer, is it
not?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you must have become in some degree attached to it?"

"I am attached to it, indeed."

"Pity!" he said, and paused.

"Must I move on, sir?" I asked.

"I believe you must, Jane."

This was a blow, but I did not let it prostrate me.

"Then you are going to be married, sir?"

"In about a month I hope to be a bridegroom. We have been good friends,
Jane, have we not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Here is the chestnut-tree; come, we will sit here in peace to-night."
He seated me and himself.

"Jane, do you hear the nightingale singing in the wood? Listen!"

In listening, I sobbed convulsively, for I could repress what I endured
no longer, and when I did speak, it was only to express an impetuous
wish that I had never been born, or never come to Thornfield.

"Because you are sorry to leave it?"

The vehemence of emotion was claiming mastery, and struggling for full
sway--to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last; yes--and to speak.

"I grieve to leave Thornfield. I love Thornfield, because I have lived
in it a full and delightful life. I have not been trampled on; I have
not been petrified. I have talked face to face with what I delight
in--an original, a vigorous and expanded mind. I have known you, Mr.
Rochester. I see the necessity of departure, but it is like looking on
the necessity of death."

"Where do you see the necessity?" he asked suddenly.

"Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you?" I retorted, roused
to something like passion. "Do you think, because I am poor, obscure,
plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have
as much soul as you--and full as much heart! I am not talking to you now
through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even mortal flesh.
It is my spirit that addresses your spirit, just as if both had passed
through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal--as we are!"

"As we are!" repeated Mr. Rochester, gathering me to his heart and
pressing his lips on my lips. "So, Jane!"

"Yes, so, sir!" I replied. "I have spoken my mind, and can go anywhere
now. Let me go!"

"Jane, be still; don't struggle so, like a wild, frantic bird, rending
its own plumage in its desperation."

"I am no bird, and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being, with an
independent will, which I now exert to leave you."

Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him.

"And your will shall decide your destiny," he said. "I offer you my
hand, my heart, and a share in all my possessions."

A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel walk and trembled through
the boughs of the chestnut; it wandered away--away to an infinite
distance--it died. The nightingale's song was then the only voice of the
hour; in listening to it again, I wept.

Mr. Rochester sat looking at me gently, and at last said, drawing me to
him again: "My bride is here, because my equal is here, and my likeness.
Jane, will you marry me? Give me my name--Edward. Say, 'I will marry
you.'"

"Are you in earnest? Do you love me? Do you sincerely wish me to be your
wife?"

"I do. I swear it!"

"Then, sir, I will marry you."

"God pardon me, and man meddle not with me. I have her, and will hold
her!"

But what had befallen the night? And what ailed the chestnut-tree? It
writhed and groaned, while the wind roared in the laurel walk.

"We must go in," said Mr. Rochester; "the weather changes."

He hurried me up the walk, but we were wet before we could pass the
threshold.


_IV.--The Mystery Explained_


There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait for or
marshal; none but Mr. Rochester and I. I wonder what other bridegroom
looked as he did--so bent up to a purpose, so resolutely grim. Our place
was taken at the communion rails. All was still; two shadows only moved
in a remote corner of the church.

As the clergyman's lips unclosed to ask, "Wilt thou have this woman for
thy wedded wife?" a distinct and near voice said: "The marriage cannot
go on. I declare the existence of an impediment."

"What is the nature of the impediment?" asked the clergyman.

"It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage," said the
speaker. "Mr. Rochester has a wife now living."

My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated
to thunder. I looked at Mr. Rochester; I made him look at me. His face
was colourless rock; his eye both spark and flint; he seemed as if he
would defy all things.

"Mr. Mason, have the goodness to step forward," said the stranger.

"Are you aware, sir, whether or not this gentleman's wife is still
living?" inquired the clergyman.

"She is now living at Thornfield Hall," said Mason, with white lips. "I
saw her there last April. I am her brother."

I saw a grim smile contract Mr. Rochester's lip.

"Enough," said he. "Wood"--to the clergyman--"close your book; John
Green"--to the clerk--"leave the church; there will be no wedding
to-day."

"Bigamy is an ugly word," he continued, "but I meant to be a bigamist.
This girl thought all was fair and legal, and never dreamt she was going
to be entrapped into a feigned union with a defrauded wretch already
bound to a bad, mad, and embruted partner. Follow me. I invite you all
to visit Grace Poole's patient and my wife!"

We passed up to the third storey, and there, in the deep shade of the
inner room beyond the room where I had watched over the wounded Mason,
ran backward and forward, seemingly on all fours, a figure, whether
beast or human one could not at first sight tell. It snatched and
growled like some wild animal. It was covered with clothing; but a
quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.

"That is my wife," said Mr. Rochester, "whom I was cheated into marrying
fifteen years ago--a mad woman and a drunkard, of a family of idiots and
maniacs for three generations. And this is what I wished to
have"--laying his hand on my shoulder--"this young girl who stands so
grave and quiet, at the mouth of hell. Jane," he continued, in an
agonised tone, "I never meant to wound you thus."

Reader! I forgave him at the moment, and on the spot. I forgave him all;
yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my heart's core.

That night I never thought to sleep, but a slumber fell on me as soon as
I lay down in bed, and in my sleep a vision spoke to my spirit:
"Daughter, flee temptation!" I rose with the dim dawn. One word
comprised my intolerable duty--Depart!

After three days wandering and starvation on the north-midland moors,
for hastily and secretly I had travelled by coach as far from Thornfield
as my money would carry me, I found a temporary home at the vicarage of
Morton, until the clergyman of that moorland parish, Mr. St. John
Rivers, secured for me--under the assumed name of Jane Elliott--the
mistresship of the village school.

At Christmas I left the school. As the spring advanced St. John Rivers,
who, with an icy heroism, was possessed by the idea of becoming a
missionary, urged me strongly to accompany him to India as his wife, on
the grounds that I was docile, diligent, and courageous, and would be
very useful. I felt such veneration for him that I was tempted to cease
struggling with him--to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf
of his existence, and there lose my own.


_V.--Reunion_


The time came when he called on me to decide. I fervently longed to do
what was right, and only that. "Show me the path, show me the path!" I
entreated of Heaven.

My heart beat fast and thick; I heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still
to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it through. My senses rose
expectant; ear and eye waited, while the flesh quivered on my bones. I
saw nothing; but I heard a voice, somewhere, cry "Jane! Jane! Jane!"--
nothing more.

"Oh, God! What is it?" I gasped. I might have said, "Where is it?" for
it did not seem in the room, nor in the house, nor in the garden, nor
from overhead. And it was the voice of a human being--a loved,
well-remembered voice--that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in
pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.

"I am coming!" I cried. "Wait for me!" I ran out into the garden; it was
void.

"Down, superstition!" I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the
black yew at the gate.

I mounted to my chamber, locked myself in, fell on my knees, and seemed
to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in
gratitude at His feet.

Then I rose from the thanksgiving, took a resolve, and lay down,
unscared, enlightened, eager but for the daylight.

Thirty-six hours later I was crossing the fields to where I could see
the full front of my master's mansion, and, looking with a timorous joy,
saw--a blackened ruin.

Where, meantime, was the hapless owner?

I returned to the inn, where the host himself, a respectable middle-aged
man, brought my breakfast into the parlour. I scarcely knew how to begin
my questions.

"Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?"

"No, ma'am--oh, no! No one is living there. It was burnt down about
harvest time. The fire broke out at dead of night."

"Was it known how it originated?"

"They guessed, ma'am; they guessed. There was a lady--a--a lunatic kept
in the house. She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs. Poole, an
able woman but for one fault--she kept a private bottle of gin by her;
and the mad lady would take the keys out of her pocket, let herself out
of her chamber, and go roaming about the house doing any wild mischief
that came into her head. Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke
out, and he went up to the attics and got the servants out of their
beds, and then went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And then
they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was waving
her arms and shouting till they could hear her a mile off. She was a big
woman, and had long, black hair; and we could see it streaming against
the flames as she stood. We saw Mr. Rochester approach her and call
'Bertha!' And then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next
minute lay dead, smashed on the pavement."

"Were any other lives lost?"

"No. Perhaps it would have been better if there had. Poor Mr. Edward! He
is stone-blind."

I had dreaded he was mad.

"As he came down the great staircase it fell, and he was taken out of
the ruins with one eye knocked out and one hand so crushed that the
surgeon had to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed, and he lost
the sight of that also."

"Where does he live now?"

"At Ferndean, a manor house on a farm he has--quite a desolate spot. Old
John and his wife are with him; he would have none else."

To Ferndean I came just ere dusk, walking the last mile. As I
approached, the narrow front door of the grange slowly opened, and a
figure came out into the twilight; a man without a hat. He stretched
forth his hand to feel whether it rained. It was my master, Edward
Fairfax Rochester.

He groped his way back to the house, and, re-entering it, closed the
door. I now drew near and knocked, and John's wife opened for me.

"Mary," I said, "how are you?"

She started as if she had seen a ghost. I calmed her, and followed her
into the kitchen, where I explained in a few words that I should stay
for the night, and that John must fetch my trunk from the turnpike
house. At this moment the parlour bell rang.

Mary proceeded to fill a glass with water and place it on a tray,
together with candles.

"Give the tray to me; I will carry it in."

The old dog Pilot pricked up his ears as I entered the room; then he
jumped up with a yelp, and bounded towards me, almost knocking the tray
from my hands.

"What is the matter?" inquired Mr. Rochester.

He put out his hand with a quick gesture. "Who is this?" he demanded
imperiously.

"Will you have a little more water, sir? I spilt half of what was in the
glass," I said.

"What is it? Who speaks?"

"Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here," I answered.

He groped, and, arresting his wandering hand, I prisoned it in both
mine.

"Her very fingers! Her small, slight fingers! Is it Jane--Jane Eyre?" he
cried.

"My dear master, I am Jane Eyre. I have found you out; I am come back to
you!"

       *       *       *       *       *




Shirley

      "Shirley," Charlotte Brontë's second novel, was published two
     years after "Jane Eyre"--on October 26, 1849. The writing of
     it was a tragedy. When the book was begun, her brother,
     Branwell, and her two sisters, Emily and Anne Brontë, were
     alive. When it was finished all were dead, and Charlotte was
     left alone with her aged father. In the character of Shirley
     Keeldar the novelist tried to depict her sister Emily as she
     would have been had she been placed in health and prosperity.
     Nearly all the characters were drawn from life, and drawn so
     vividly that they were recognised locally. Caroline Helstone
     was sketched from Ellen Nussey, Charlotte Brontë's dearest
     friend, who furnished later much of the material for the best
     biographies of the novelist. "Shirley" fully sustained at the
     time of its publication, the reputation won through "Jane
     Eyre"; but under the test of time the story--owing, no doubt,
     to the conditions under which it was written--has not taken
     rank with that first-fruit of genius, "Jane Eyre," or that
     consummation of genius, "Villette."


_I.--In the Dark Days of the War_


Released from the business yoke, Robert Moore was, if not lively
himself, a willing spectator of the liveliness of Caroline Helstone, his
cousin, a complacent listener to her talk, a ready respondent to her
questions. Sometimes he was better than this--almost animated, quite
gentle and friendly. The drawback was that by the next morning he was
frozen up again.

To-night he stood on the kitchen hearth of Hollow's cottage, after his
return from Whinbury cloth-market, and Caroline, who had come over to
the cottage from the vicarage, stood beside him. Looking down, his
glance rested on an uplifted face, flushed, smiling, happy, shaded with
silky curls, lit with fine eyes. Moore placed his hand a moment on his
young cousin's shoulder, stooped, and left a kiss on her forehead.

"Are you certain, Robert, you are not fretting about your frames and
your business, and the war?" she asked.

"Not just now."

"Are you positive you don't feel Hollow's cottage too small for you, and
narrow, and dismal?"

"At this moment, no."

"Can you affirm that you are not bitter at heart because rich and great
people forget you?"

"No more questions. I am not anxious to curry favour with rich and great
people. I only want means--a position--a career."

"Which your own talent and goodness shall win for you. You were made to
be great; you shall be great."

"Ah! You judge me with your heart; you should judge me with your head."

It was the dark days of the Napoleonic wars, when the cloth of the West
Riding was shut out from the markets of the world, and ruin threatened
the manufacturers, while the introduction of machinery so reduced the
numbers of the factory hands that desperation was born of misery and
famine.

Robert Moore, of Hollow's Mill, was one of the most unpopular of the
mill-owners, partly because he haughtily declined to conciliate the
working class, and partly because of his foreign demeanour, for he was
the son of a Flemish mother, had been educated abroad, and had only come
home recently to attempt to retrieve, by modern trading methods, the
fallen fortune of the ancient firm of his Yorkshire forefathers.

The last trade outrage of the district had been the destruction on
Stilbro' Moor of the new machines that were being brought by night to
his mill.

Caroline Helstone was eighteen years old, drawing near the confines of
illusive dreams. Elf-land behind her, the shores of Reality in front. To
herself she said that night, after Robert had walked home with her to
the rectory gate: "I love Robert, and I feel sure that he loves me. I
have thought so many a time before; to-day I felt it."

And Robert, leaning later on his own yard gate, with the hushed, dark
mill before him, exclaimed: "This won't do. There's weakness--there's
downright ruin in all this."

For Caroline Helstone was a fatherless and portionless girl, entirely
dependent on her uncle, the vicar of Briarfield.


_II.--The Master of Hollows Mill_


"Come, child, put away your books. Lock them up! Get your bonnet on; I
want you to make a call with me."

"With you, uncle?"

Thus the Rev. Matthewson Helstone, the imperious little vicar of
Briarfield, to his niece, who, obeyed his unusual request, asked where
they were going.

"To Fieldhead," replied the Rev. Matthewson Helstone. "We are going to
see Miss Shirley Keeldar."

"Miss Keeldar! Is she come to Yorkshire?"

"She is; and will reside for a time on her property."

The Keeldars were the lords of the manor, and their property included
the mill rented by Mr. Robert Moore.

The visitors were received at Fieldhead by a middle-aged nervous English
lady, to whom Caroline at once found it natural to talk with a gentle
ease, until Miss Shirley Keeldar, entering the room, introduced them to
Mrs. Pryor, who, she added, "was my governess, and is still my friend."

Shirley Keeldar was no ugly heiress. She was agreeable to the eye,
gracefully made, and her face, pale, intelligent, and of varied
expression, also possessed the charm of grace.

The interview had not proceeded far before Shirley hoped they would
often have the presence of Miss Helstone at Fieldhead; a request
repeated by Mrs. Pryor.

"You are distinguished more than you think," said Shirley, "for Mrs.
Pryor often tantalises me by the extreme caution of her judgments. I
have entreated her to say what she thinks of my gentleman-tenant, Mr.
Moore, but she evades an answer. What are Mr. Moore's politics?"

"Those of a tradesman," returned the rector; "narrow, selfish, and
unpatriotic."

"He looks a gentleman, and it pleases me to think he is such."

"And decidedly he is," joined in Caroline, in distinct tones.

"You are his friend, at any rate," said Shirley, flashing a searching
glance at the speaker.

"I am both his friend and relative."

"I like that romantic Hollow with all my heart--the old mill, and the
white cottage, and the counting-house."

"And the trade?" inquired the rector.

"Half my income comes from the works in that Hollow."

"Don't enter into partnership, that's all."

"You've put it into my head!" she exclaimed, with a joyous laugh. "It
will never get out; thank you."

Some days later, the new friends were walking together towards the
rectory when the talk turned on the qualities which prove that a man can
be trusted.

"Do you know what soothsayers I would consult?" asked Caroline.

"Let me hear."

"Neither man nor woman, elderly nor young; the little Irish beggar that
comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in
the wainscot; the bird that, in frost and snow, pecks at the window for
a crumb. I know somebody to whose knee the black cat loves to climb,
against whose shoulder and cheek it loves to purr. The old dog always
comes out of his kennel and wags his tail when somebody passes."

"Is it Robert?"

"It is Robert."

"Handsome fellow!" said Shirley, with enthusiasm. "He is both graceful
and good."

"I was sure that you would see that he was. When I first looked at your
face I knew that you would."

"I was well inclined to him before I saw him; I liked him when I did see
him; I admire him now."

When they kissed each other and parted at the rectory gate, Shirley
said:

"Caroline Helstone, I have never in my whole life been able to talk to a
young lady as I have talked to you this morning."

"This is the worst passage I have come to yet," said Caroline to
herself. "Still, I was prepared for it. I gave Robert up to Shirley the
first day I heard she was come."


_III.--Caroline Finds a Mother_


The Whitsuntide school treats were being held, and it was Shirley
Keeldar who, at the head of the tea-table, kept a place for Robert
Moore, and whose temper became clouded when he was late. When he did
come he was hard and preoccupied, and presently the two girls noticed he
was shaking hands and renewing a broken friendship with a militant
rector in the playing field, and that the more vigorous of their
manufacturing neighbours had gathered in a group to talk.

"There is some mystery afloat," said Shirley. "Some event is expected,
some preparation to be made; and Robert's secrecy vexes me. See, they
are all shaking hands with emphasis, as if ratifying some league."

"We must be on the alert," said Caroline, "and perhaps we shall find a
clue."

Later, the rector came to them to mention that he would not sleep at
home that night, and Shirley had better stay with Caroline--arrangements
which they could not but connect with a glimpse of martial scarlet they
had observed on a distant moor earlier in the day, and the passage, by a
quiet route, of six cavalry soldiers.

So the girls sat up that night and watched, until, close upon midnight,
they heard the tramp of hundreds of marching feet. The mob halted by the
rectory for a muttered consultation, and then moved cautiously along
towards the Hollow's Mill.

In vain did the two watchers try to cross to the mill by fenced fields
and give the alarm. When they reached a point from which they could
overlook the mill, the attack had already begun, and the yard-gates were
being forced. A volley of stones smashed every window, but the mill
remained mute as a mausoleum.

"He cannot be alone," whispered Caroline.

"I would stake all I have that he is as little alone as he is alarmed,"
responded Shirley.

Shots were discharged by the rioters. Had the defenders waited for this
signal? It seemed so. The inert mill woke, and a volley of musketry
pealed sharp through the Hollow. It was difficult in the darkness to
distinguish what was going on now. The mill yard was full of
battle-movement; there was struggling, rushing, trampling, and shouting,
and then the rioters, who had never dreamed of encountering an organised
defence, fell back defeated, but leaving the premises a blot of
desolation on the fresh front of the summer dawn.

Caroline Helstone now fell into a state of depression and physical
weakness which she tried in vain to combat.

"It is scarcely living to measure time as I do at the rectory," she
confessed one day to Mrs. Pryor, who had become her instructress and
friend. "The hours pass, and I get over them somehow, but I do not live
I endure existence, but I barely enjoy it. I want to go away from this
place and forget it."

"You know I am at present residing with Miss Keeldar in the capacity of
companion," Mrs. Pryor replied. "Should she marry, and that she will
marry ere long many circumstances induce me to conclude, I shall cease
to be necessary to her. I possess a small independency, arising partly
from my own savings and partly from a legacy. Whenever I leave Fieldhead
I shall take a house of my own. I have no relations to invite to close
intimacy. To you, my dear, I need not say I am attached. With you I am
happier than I have been with any living thing. You will come to me
then, Caroline?"

"Indeed, I love you," was the reply, "and I should like to live with
you."

"All I have I would leave to you."

"But, my dear madam, I have no claim on this generosity--"

Mrs. Pryor now displayed such agitation that it was Caroline who had to
become comforter.

The sequel to this scene appeared when Caroline sank into so weak a
state that constant nursing was needed, and Mrs. Pryor established
herself at the rectory.

One day, when the watchful nurse could not forbear to weep--her full
heart overflowing--her patient asked:

"Do you think I shall not get better? I do not feel very ill--only
weak."

"But your mind, Caroline; your mind is crushed; your heart is broken;
you have been left so desolate."

"I sometimes think if an abundant gush of happiness came on me, I could
revive yet."

"You love me, Caroline?"

"Inexpressibly. I sometimes feel as if I could almost grow to your
heart."

"Then, if you love me so, it will be neither shock nor pain for you to
know that you are my own child."

"Mrs. Pryor! That is--that means--you have adopted me?"

"It means that I am your true mother."

"But Mrs. James Helstone--but my father's wife, whom I do not remember
to have seen, she is my mother?"

"She is your mother," Mrs. Pryor assured her. "James Helstone was my
husband."

"Is what I hear true? Is it no dream? My own mother! And one I can be so
fond of! If you are my mother, the world is all changed to me."

The offspring nestled to the parent, who gathered her to her bosom,
covered her with noiseless kisses, and murmured love over her like a
cushat fostering its young.


_IV.--An Old Acquaintance_


An uncle of Shirley Keeldar, Sympson by name, now came with his family
to stay at Feidhead, and accompanying them, as tutor to a crippled son
Harry, was Louis Moore, Robert's younger brother.

"Shirley," said Caroline one day as they sat in the summer-house, "you
are a singular being. I thought I knew you quite well; I begin to find
myself mistaken. Did you know that my cousin Louis was tutor in your
uncle's family before the Sympsons came down here?"

"Yes, of course; I knew it well."

"How chanced it that you never mentioned it to me?" asked Caroline. "You
knew Mrs. Pryor was my mother, and were silent, and now here again is
another secret."

"I never made it a secret; you never asked me who Henry's tutor was, or
I would have told you."

"I am puzzled about more things than one in this matter. You don't like
poor Louis--why? Do you wish that Robert's brother were more highly
placed?"

"Robert's brother, indeed!" was the exclamation in a tone of scorn, and,
with a movement of proud impatience, Shirley snatched a rose from a
branch peeping through the open lattice. "Robert's brother! Robert's
brother is a topic on which you and I shall quarrel if we discuss it
often; so drop it henceforth and for ever."

She would have understood the meaning of that outburst better if she had
heard a conversation in the schoolroom a few days later between Louis
Moore and Shirley.

"For two years," he was saying, "I had once a pupil who grew very dear
to me. Henry is dear, but she was dearer. Henry never gives me trouble;
she--well--she did. She spilled the draught from my cup; and having
taken from me my peace of mind and ease of life, she took from me
herself, quite coolly--just as if, when she was gone, the world would be
all the same to me. At the end of two years it fell out that we
encountered again. She received me haughtily; but then she was
inconsistent: she tantalised as before. When I thought of her only as a
lofty stranger, she would suddenly show me a glimpse of loving
simplicity, warm me with such a beam of reviving sympathy that I could
no more shut my heart to her image than I could close that door against
her presence. Explain why she distressed me so."

"She could not bear to be quite outcast," was the docile reply.

Caroline would have understood still more could she have read what Louis
Moore wrote in his diary that night: "What a child she is sometimes!
What an unsophisticated, untaught thing! I worship her perfections; but
it is her faults, or at least her foibles, that bring her near to me. If
I were a king and she were a housemaid, my eye would recognise her
qualities."

Robert Moore had long been absent from Briarfield, and no one knew why
he stayed away. It could not be that he was afraid, for he had shown the
utmost fearlessness in bringing to justice and transportation the four
ringleaders in the attack on the mill. He had now returned, and one day
as he rode over Rushedge Moore from Stilbro' market with a bluff
neighbour, he unbosomed himself of the reason why he had remained thus
long from home.

"I certainly believed she loved me," he said. "I have seen her eyes
sparkle when she found me out in a crowd. When my name was uttered she
changed countenance; I knew she did. She was cordial to me; she took an
interest in me; she was anxious about me. I saw power in her; I owed her
gratitude. She aided me substantially and effectively with a loan of
five thousand pounds. Could I believe she loved me? With an admiration
dedicated entirely to myself I smiled at her being the first to love and
to show it. That whip of yours seems to have a good heavy handle. Knock
me out of the saddle with it if you choose, for I never felt as if
nature meant her to be my other and better self. Yet I walked up to
Fieldhead and in a hard, firm fashion offered myself--my fine person--
with all my debts, of course, as a settlement. There was no
misunderstanding her aspect and voice as she indignantly ejaculated:
'God bless me!' Her eyes lightened as she said: 'You have pained me; you
have outraged me; you have deceived me. I did respect, I did admire, I
did like you, and you would immolate me to that mill--your Moloch!' I
was obliged to say, 'Forgive me!' To which she replied, 'I could if
there was not myself to forgive too, but to mislead a sagacious man so
far I must have done wrong.' She added, 'I am sorry for what has
happened.' So was I, God knows."

It was after this talk that Moore was shot down by a concealed assassin.


_V.--Love Scenes_


On the very night that Robert Moore arrived at his cottage in the
Hollow, after being nursed back to life in the house of the neighbour
who was with him when he was shot by a fanatical revolutionist, he
scribbled a note to ask his cousin Caroline to call, as was her wont
before the days of misunderstanding.

"Caroline, you look as if you had heard good tidings," said Robert.
"What is the source of the sunshine I perceive about you?"

"For one thing, I am happy in mamma. I love her more tenderly every day.
And I am glad you are better, and that we are friends."

"Cary, I mean to tell you some day a thing about myself that is not to
my credit. I cannot bear that you should think better of me than I
deserve."

"But I believe I know all about it. I inferred something, gathered more
from rumour, and made out the rest by instinct."

"I wanted to marry Shirley for the sake of her money, and she refused me
scornfully; you needn't prick your fingers with your needle, that is the
plain truth--and I had not an emotion of tenderness for her."

"Then, Robert, it was very wicked in you to want to marry her."

"And very mean, my little pastor; but, Cary, I had no love to give--no
heart that I could call my own."

It is Louis who is once more speaking to Shirley in the schoolroom.

"For the first time, Shirley, I stand before you--myself. I fling off
the tutor and introduce you to the man. My pupil."

"My master," was the low answer.

"I have to tell you that for five years you have been growing into your
tutor's heart, and that you are rooted there now. I have to declare that
you have bewitched me, in spite of sense and experience, and difference
of station and estate, and that I love you with all my life and
strength."

"Dear Louis, be faithful to me; never leave me. I don't care for life
unless I pass it at your side." She looked up with a sweet, open,
earnest countenance. "Teach me and help me to be good. Show me how to
sustain my part. Your judgment is well-balanced; your heart is kind; I
know you are wise. Be my companion through life, my guide where I am
ignorant, my master where I am faulty."

The Orders in Council are repealed, the blockaded ports are thrown open,
and the ringers in Briarfield belfry crack a bell that remains dissonant
to this day. Caroline Helstone is in the garden listening to this call
to be gay when a hand steals quietly round her waist.

"Caroline," says a manly voice. "I have sought you for an audience. The
repeal of the Orders in Council saves me. Now I shall not turn bankrupt,
now I shall be no longer poor, now I can pay my debts; now all the cloth
I have in my warehouses will be taken off my hands. This day lays my
fortune on a foundation on which for the first time I can securely
build."

"Your heavy difficulties are lifted?"

"They are lifted; I breathe; I can act. Now I can take more workmen,
give better wages, be less selfish. Now, Caroline, I can have a home
that is truly mine, and seek a wife. Will Caroline forget all I have
made her suffer; forget my poor ambition; my sordid schemes? Will she
let me prove I can love faithfully? Is Caroline mine?"

His hand was in hers still, and a gentle pressure answered him,
"Caroline is yours."

"I love you, Robert," she said simply, and mutely offered a kiss, an
offer of which he took unfair advantage.

       *       *       *       *       *




Villette

      Villette is Brussels, and the experiences of the heroine,
     Lucy Snowe, in travelling thither and teaching there are based
     on the journeys and the life of Charlotte Brontë when she was
     a teacher in the Pensionnat Héger. The principal characters in
     the story have been identified, more or less completely, with
     people whom the writer knew. Paul Emanuel resembles M. Héger
     in many ways, and Madame Beck is a severe portrait of Madame
     Héger. Dr. John Graham Bretton is a reflection of George
     Smith, Charlotte Brontë's friendly publisher; and Mrs. Bretton
     is Mr. Smith's mother. Lucy Snowe is Jane Eyre, otherwise
     Charlotte Brontë, placed amidst different surroundings; and
     Ginevra Fanshawe was sketched from one of the pupils in
     Héger's school. The materials used in "Villette" were taken,
     in part, from an earlier work, "The Professor," which suffered
     rejection nine times at the hands of publishers. Though there
     was similarity of scene, and in some degree of subject, the
     two books are in no way identical. "Villette" was published on
     January 24, 1853, and achieved an immediate success. It was
     felt to have more movement and force than "Shirley," and less
     of the crudeness that accompanied the strength of "Jane Eyre."



_I.--Little Miss Caprice_


My godmother lived in a handsome house in the ancient town of Bretton--
the widow of Bretton--and there I, Lucy Snowe, visited her about twice a
year, and liked the visit well, for time flowed smoothly for me at her
side, like the gliding of a full river through a verdant plain.

During one of my visits I was told that the little daughter of a distant
relation of my godmother was coming to be my companion, and well do I
remember the rainy night when, outside the opened door, we saw the
servant Waren with a shawled bundle in his arms and a nurse-girl by his
side.

"Put me down, please," said a small voice. "Take off the shawl; give it
to Harriet, and she can put it away."

The child who gave these orders was a tiny, neat little figure, delicate
as wax, and like a mere doll, though she was six years of age.

Mrs. Bretton drew the little stranger to her when they had entered the
drawing-room, kissed her, and asked: "What is my little one's name?"

"Polly, papa calls her," was the reply.

"And will Polly be content to live with me?"

"Not always; but till papa comes home." Her eyes filled with tears, and,
drawing away from Mrs. Bretton, she added: "I can sit on a stool."

Her emotion at finding herself among strangers was, however, only
expressed by the tiniest occasional sniff, and presently the managing
little body remarked:

"Harriet, I must be put to bed. Ask if you sleep with me."

"No, missy," said the nurse; "you are to share this young lady's
room"--designating me.

"I wish you, ma'am, good-night," said the little creature to Mrs.
Bretton; but she passed me mute.

"Good-night, Polly," I said.

"No need to say good-night, since we sleep in the same chamber," was the
reply.

Paulina Home's father was obliged to travel to recruit his health, and
her mother being dead, Mrs. Bretton had offered to take temporary charge
of the child.

During the two months Paulina stayed with us, the one member of the
household who reconciled her to absence from her father was John Graham
Bretton, Mrs. Bretton's only child, a handsome, whimsical youth of
sixteen. He began by treating her with mock seriousness as a person of
consideration, and before long was more than the Grand Turk in her
estimation; indeed, when a letter came from her father on the Continent,
asking that his little girl might join him there, we wondered how she
would take the news. I found her in the drawing-room engaged with a
picture-book.

"Miss Snowe," said she, "this is a wonderful book. It was given me by
Graham. It tells of distant countries."

"Polly," I interrupted, "should you like to travel?"

"Not just yet," was the prudent answer; "but perhaps when I am grown a
woman I may travel with Graham."

"But would you like to travel now if your papa was with you?"

"What is the good of talking in that silly way?" said she. "What is papa
to you? I was just beginning to be happy."

Then I told her of the letter, and the tidings kept her serious the
whole day. When Graham came home in the evening, she whispered, as she
heard him in the hall: "Tell him by-and-by; tell him I am going."

But Graham, who was preoccupied about some school prize, had to be told
twice before the news took proper hold of his attention. "Polly going?"
he said. "What a pity! Dear little Mouse, I shall be sorry to lose her;
she must come to us again."

On going to bed, I found the child wide awake, and in what she called
"dreadful misery!"

"Paulina," I said, "you should not grieve that Graham does not care for
you so much as you care for him. It must be so."

Her questioning eyes asked why.

"Because he is a boy and you are a girl; he is sixteen and you are only
six; his nature is strong and gay, and yours is otherwise."

"But I love him so much. He should love me a little."

"He does. He is fond of you; you are his favourite."

"Am I Graham's favourite?"

"Yes, more than any little child I know."

The assurance soothed her, and she smiled in her anguish. As I warmed
the shivering, capricious little creature in my arms I wondered how she
would battle with life, and bear its shocks, repulses, and humiliations.


_II.--Madame Beck's School_


The next eight years of my life brought changes. My own household and
that of the Brettons suffered wreck. My friends went abroad and were
lost sight of, and I, after a period of companionship with a woman of
fortune, found myself, at her death, with fifteen pounds in my pocket
looking for a new place. Then it was that I saw mentally within reach
what I had never yet beheld with my bodily eyes--I saw London.

When I awoke there next morning, my spirit shook its always fettered
wings half loose. I had a feeling as if I were at last about to taste
life. In that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah's gourd. I wandered
whither chance might lead in a still ecstasy of freedom and enjoyment.

That evening I formed a project of crossing to a continental port, and
finding a vessel was about to start, I joined her at once in the river.
When the packet sailed at sunrise, I found the only passenger on board
to whom I cared to speak--and who, indeed, insisted on speaking to
me--was a girl of seventeen on her way to school in the city of
Villette. Miss Ginevra Fanshawe carelessly ran on with a full account of
herself, her school at Madame Beck's, her poverty at home, her education
by her godfather, De Bassompièrre, who lived in France, her want of
accomplishments--except that she could talk, play, and dance--and the
need for her to marry a rather elderly gentleman with cash.

It was this irresponsible talk, no doubt, that led me, in the absence of
any other leading, to make Villette my destination. On my arrival there,
an English gentleman, young, distinguished, and handsome, observing my
inability to make myself understood at the bureau where the diligence
stopped, inquired kindly if I had any friends in the city, and on my
replying that I had not, gave me the address of such an inn as I wanted,
and personally directed me part of the way. Even then, however, I failed
in the gloom to find the inn, and was becoming quite exhausted, when
over the door of a house, loftier by a storey than those around it, I
saw a brass plate with the inscription, "Pensionnat de Demoiselles,"
and, beneath, the name, "Madame Beck." Providence said: "Stop here; this
is your inn." I rang the door-bell.

"May I see Madame Beck?" I inquired of the servant who opened the door.
As I spoke in English I was admitted without a moment's hesitation.

I sat, turning hot and cold, in a glittering salon for a quarter of an
hour, and then a voice said: "You ayre Engliss?"

The question came from a motherly, dumpy little woman in a large shawl,
a wrapping gown, a clean, trim nightcap, and shod with the shoes of
silence.

As I told my story, through a mistress who had been summoned to
translate the speech of Albion, I thought the tale won madame's ear,
though never a gleam of sympathy crossed her countenance. A man's step
was heard in the vestibule, hastily proceeding to the outer door.

"Who goes out now?" demanded Madame Beck, listening to the tread.

"M. Paul Emanuel," replied the teacher.

"The very man! Call him."

He entered: a small, dark, and square man, in spectacles.

"_Mon cousin_," began madame, "read that countenance."

The little man fixed on me his spectacles, a gathering of the brows
seeming to say that a veil would be no veil to him.

"Do you need her services?" he asked.

"I could do with them," said Madame Beck.

"Engage her." And with a _ban soir_ this sudden arbiter of my destiny
vanished.

Madame Beck possessed high administrative powers. She ruled a hundred
and twenty pupils, four teachers, eight masters, six servants and three
children, and managed the pupils' parents and friends to perfection,
without apparent effort. "Surveillance," "espionage"--these were the
watchwords of her system. She knew what honesty was, and liked it--when
it did not obtrude its clumsy scruples in the way of her will and
interest. Wise, firm, faithless, secret, crafty, passionless, watchful
and inscrutable--withal perfectly decorous--what more could be desired?

Not a soul in all Madame Beck's house, from the scullion to the
directress herself, but was above being ashamed of a lie; they thought
nothing of it.

Here Miss Ginevra Fanshawe was a thriving pupil. She had a considerable
range of acquaintances outside the school, for Mrs. Cholmondeley, her
chaperon, a gay, fashionable lady, took her to evening parties at the
houses of her acquaintances. Soon I discovered by hints that ardent
admiration, perhaps genuine love, was at the command of this pretty and
charming, but by no means refined, girl. She called her suitor
"Isidore," and bragged about the vehemence of his attachment. I asked
her if she loved him in return.

"He is handsome; he loves me to distraction; and so I am amused," was
the reply.

"But if he loves you, and it comes to nothing in the end, he will be
miserable."

"Of course he will break his heart. I should be disappointed if he
didn't."

"Do try to get a clear idea of the state of your own mind," I said, "for
to me it really seems as chaotic as a rag-bag."

"It is something in this fashion. He thinks far more of me than I find
it convenient to be, while I am more at ease with you, you old cross-
patch, you who know me to be coquettish and ignorant and fickle."

"You love M. Isidore far more than you think or will avow."

"No. I danced with a young officer the other night whom I love a
thousand times more than he. Colonel Alfred de Hamal suits me far
better. _Vive les joies et les plaisirs_!"

It was as English teacher that I was engaged at Madame Beck's school,
but the annual fête brought me into prominence in another capacity. The
programme included a dramatic performance, with pupils and teachers for
actors, and this was given under the superintendence of M. Paul Emanuel.
I was dressed a couple of hours before anyone else, and reading in my
classroom, the door was flung open, and in came M. Paul with a burst of
execrable jargon: "Mees, play you must; I am planted here."

"What can I do for you?" I inquired.

"Play you must. I will not have you shrink, or frown, or make the prude.
Let us thrust to the wall all reluctance."

What did the little man mean?

"Listen!" he said. "The case shall be stated, and you shall answer me
'Yes' or 'No.' Louise Vanderkelkov has fallen ill--at least, so her
ridiculous mother asserts. She is charged with a rôle; without that rôle
the play stopped. Englishwomen are either the best or the worst of their
sex. I apply to an Englishwoman to save me. What is her answer--'Yes,'
or 'No'?"

Seeing in his vexed, fiery and searching eye an appeal behind its
menace, my lips dropped the word "Oui."

His rigid countenance relaxed with a quiver of content; then he went on:

"Here is the book. Here is your rôle. You must withdraw." He conveyed me
to the attic, locked me in, and took away the key.

What I felt that successful night, and what I did, I no more expected to
feel and do than to be lifted in a trance to the seventh heaven. A keen
relish for dramatic expression revealed itself as part of my nature. But
the strength of longing must be put by; and I put it by, and fastened it
in with the lock of a resolution which neither time nor temptation has
since picked.

It was at this school fête that I discovered the identity of Miss
Fanshawe's M. Isidore. She whispered to me, after the play: "Isidore and
Alfred de Hamal are both here!" The latter I found was a straight-nosed,
correct-featured little dandy, nicely dressed, curled, booted, and
gloved; and Isidore was the manly English Dr. John, who attended the
pupils of the school, and was none other than the gentleman whose
directions to an hotel I had failed to follow on the night of my arrival
in Villette. And the puppet, the manikin--a mere lackey for Dr. John,
his valet, his foot-boy, was the favoured admirer of Ginevra Fanshawe!


_III.--Old Friends are Best_


During the long vacation I stayed at the school, and, in the absence of
companionship and the sedative of work, suffered such agonising
depression as led to physical illness, until one evening, after
wandering aimlessly in the city, I fell fainting as I tried to reach the
porch of a great church. When I recovered consciousness, I found myself
in a room that smiled "Auld lang syne" out of every nook.

Where was I? The furniture was that with which I had been so intimate in
the drawing-room of my godmother's house at Bretton. Nay, there, on the
linen of my bed, were my godmothers initials "L.L.B."; and there was the
portrait that used to hang over the mantelpiece in the breakfast-room in
the old house at Bretton. I audibly pronounced the name--"Graham!"

"Graham!" echoed a sudden voice at my bedside. "Do you want Graham?"

She was little changed; something sterner, something more robust, but it
was my godmother, Mrs. Bretton.

"How was I found, madam?"

"My son shall tell you by and by," said she. "I am told you are an
English teacher in a foreign school here."

Before evening I was downstairs, and seated in a corner, when Graham
arrived home, and entered with the question: "How is your patient,
mamma?"

At Mrs. Bretton's invitation, I came forward to speak for myself where
he stood at the hearth, a figure justifying his mother's pride.

"Much better," I said calmly; "much better, I thank you Dr. John."

For this tall young man, this host of mine, was Dr. John, and I had been
aware of his identity for some time.

Ere we had sat ten minutes, I caught the eye of Mrs. Bretton fixed
steadily on me, and at last she asked, "Tell me, Graham, of whom does
this young lady remind you."

"Dr. John has had so much to do and think of," said I, seeing how it
must end, "that it never occurred to me as possible that he should
recognise Lucy Snowe."

"Lucy Snowe! I thought so! I knew it!" cried Mrs. Bretton, as she
stepped across the hearth and kissed me. And I wondered if Mrs. Bretton
knew at whose feet her idolised son had laid his homage.


_IV.--A Cure for First Love_


The Brettons, who had regained some of their fortune, lived in a château
outside Villette, a course further warranted by Dr. John's professional
success. In the months, that followed I heard much of Ginevra. He
thought her so fair, so good, so innocent, and yet, though love is
blind, I saw sometimes a subtle ray sped sideways from his eye that half
led me to think his professed persuasion of Miss Fanshawe's naïveté was
in part assumed.

One morning my godmother decreed that we should go with Graham to a
concert that night, at which the most advanced pupils of the
conservatoire were to perform. There, in the suite of the British
embassy, was Ginevra Fanshawe, seated by the daughter of an English
peer. I noticed that she looked quite steadily at Dr. John, and then
raised a glass to examine his mother, and a minute or two afterwards
laughingly whispered to her neighbour.

"Miss Fanshawe is here," I whispered. "Have you noticed her?"

"Oh yes," was the reply; "and I happen to know her companion, who is a
proud girl, but not in the least insolent; and I doubt whether Ginevra
will have gained ground in her estimation by making a butt of her
neighbours."

"What neighbours?"

"Myself and my mother. As for me, it is very natural; but my mother! I
never saw her ridiculed before. Through me she could not in ten years
have done what in a moment she has done through my mother."

Never before had I seen so much fire and so little sunshine in Dr.
John's blue eyes.

"My mother shall not be ridiculed with my consent, or without my scorn,"
he added. "Mother," said he to her later, "You are better to me than ten
wives." And when we were out in the keen night air, he said to himself:
"Thank you, Miss Fanshawe. I am glad you laughed at my mother. That
sneer did me a world of good."


_V.--Reunion Completed_


One evening in December Dr. Bretton called to take me to the theatre in
place of his mother, who had been prevented by an arrival. In the course
of the performance a cry of "Fire!" rang out, and a panic ensued. Graham
remained quite cool until he saw a young girl struck from her
protector's arms and hurled under the feet of the crowd. Then he rushed
forward, thrust back the throng with the assistance of the gentleman--a
powerful man, though grey-haired--and bore the girl into the fresh
night, I following him closely.

"She is very light," he said; "like a child."

"I am not a child! I am a person of seventeen!" responded his burden,
demurely.

Her father's carriage drove up, and Graham, having introduced himself as
an English doctor, we drove to the hotel where father and daughter were
staying in handsome apartments. The injuries were not dangerous, and the
father, after earnestly expressing his obligations to Graham, asked him
to call the next day.

When next I visited the Bretton's château I found an intruder in the
room I had occupied during my illness.

"Miss de Bassompièrre, I pronounced, recognising the rescued lady, whose
name I had heard on the night of the accident.

"No," was the reply. "Not Miss de Bassompièrre to you." Then, as I
seemed at fault, she added: "You have forgotten, then, that I have sat
on your knee, been lifted in your arms, even shared your pillow. I am
Paulina Mary Home de Bassompièrre."

I often visited Mary de Bassompièrre with pleasure. That young lady had
different moods for different people. With her father she was even now a
child. With me she was serious and womanly. With Mrs. Bretton she was
docile and reliant. With Graham she was shy--very shy. At moments she
tried to be cold, and, on occasion, she endeavoured to shun him. Even
her father noticed this demeanour in her, and asked her what her old
friend had done.

"Nothing," she replied; "but we are grown strange to each other."

I became apprised of the return of M. de Bassompièrre and Paulina, after
a few weeks' absence in Paris, by seeing them riding before me in a
quiet boulevard with Dr. Bretton. How animated was Graham's face! How
true, yet how retiring the joy it expressed! They parted. He passed me
at speed, hardly feeling the earth he skimmed, and seeing nothing on
either hand.

It was after this that she made me her confession of love, and of fear
lest her father should be grieved.

"I wish papa knew! I do wish papa knew!" began now to be her anxious
murmur; but it was M. de Bassompièrre who first broached the subject of
his daughter's affections, and it was to me that he introduced it. She
came into the room while we talked and Graham followed.

"Take her, John Bretton," he said, "and may God deal with you as you
deal with her!"


_VI.--A Professor's Love-Story_


The pupils from the schools of the city were assembled for the yearly
prize distribution--a ceremony followed by an oration from one of the
professors. I think I was glad when M. Paul appeared behind the crimson
desk, fierce and frank, dark and candid, testy and fearless, for then I
knew that neither formalism nor flattery would be the doom of the
audience.

On Monsieur's birthday it was the habit of the scholars to present him
with flowers, and I had worked a beaded watch-chain, and enclosed it in
a sparkling shell-box, with his initials graved on the lid. He entered
that day in a mood that made him as good as a sunbeam, and each pupil
presented her bouquet, till he was hidden at his desk behind a pile of
flowers. I waited. Then he demanded thrice, in tragic tones: "Is that
all?" The effect was ludicrous, and the time for my presentation had
passed. Thereupon he fell, with furious abuse, upon the English, and
particularly English women. But I presented the chain to him later, and
that day closed for us both with a wordless content, so full was he of
friendliness.

The professor's care for me took curious forms. He haunted my desk with
unseen gift-bringing--the newest books, the correction of exercises, the
concealment of bonbons, of which he was fond.

One day he asked me whether, if I were his sister, I should always be
content to stay with a brother such as he. I said I believed I should.
He continued: "If I were to go beyond seas for two or three years,
should you welcome me on my return?"

"Monsieur, how could I live in the interval?" was my reply.

The explanation of that question soon came. He had, it seemed, to sail
to Basseterre, in Guadeloupe, to attend to a friend's business
interests. For what I felt there was no help, and how could I help
feeling?

Of late he had spent hours with me, with temper soothed, with eye
content, with manner home-like and mild. The mutual understanding was
settling and fixing. And when the time came for him to say good-bye, we
rambled forth into the city. He talked of his voyage. What did I propose
to do in his absence? He did not like leaving me at Madame Beck's--I
should be so desolate.

We were now returning from our walk, when, passing a small but pleasant
and neat abode in a clean _faubourg_, he took a key from his pocket,
opened, and entered. "_Voici!_" he cried, and put a prospectus in my
hand. "Externat de demoiselles. Numéro 7, Faubourg Clotilde. Directrice,
Mademoiselle Lucy Snowe."

"Now," said he, "you shall live here and have a school. You shall employ
yourself while I am away; you shall think of me; you shall mind your
health and happiness for my sake, and when I come back----"

I touched his hand with my lips. Royal to me had been its bounty.

And now three years are past. M. Emanuel's return is fixed. He is to be
with me ere the mists of November come. My school flourishes; my house
is ready.

But the skies hang full and dark--a wrack sails from the west. Peace,
peace, Banshee--"keening" at every window. The storm did not cease till
the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks. Peace, be still! Oh, a thousand
weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice;
but when the sun returned, his light was night to some!

Here pause. Enough is said. Trouble no kind heart. Leave sunny
imaginations hope. Let them picture union and a happy life.

       *       *       *       *       *




EMILY BRONTË


Wuthering Heights

      "That chainless soul," Emily Jane Brontë, was born at
     Thornton, Yorkshire, England, on August 30, 1818, and died at
     Haworth on December 19, 1848. She will always have a place in
     English literature by reason of her one weird, powerful,
     strained novel, "Wuthering Heights," and a few poems. Emily
     Brontë, like her sister Charlotte, was educated at Cowan
     School and at Brussels. For a time she became a governess, but
     it seemed impossible for her to live away from the fascination
     of the Yorkshire moors, and she went home to keep house at the
     Haworth Parsonage, while her sisters taught. Two months after
     the publication of "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte, that is, in
     December, 1847, "Wuthering Heights," by Emily, and "Agnes
     Grey," by Anne, the third sister in this remarkable trio, were
     issued in one volume. The critics, who did not discover these
     books were by women, suggested persistently that "Wuthering
     Heights" must be an immature work by Currer Bell (Charlotte).
     A year after the publication of her novel Emily died, unaware
     of her success in achieving a lasting, if restricted, fame.
     She was extraordinarily reserved, sensitive, and wayward, and
     lived in an imagined world of her own, morbidly influenced, no
     doubt, by the vagaries of her worthless brother Branwell. That
     she had true genius, allied with fine strength of intellect
     and character, is the unanimous verdict of competent
     criticism, while it grieves over unfulfilled possibilities.


_I.--A Surly Brood_


"Mr. Heathcliff?"

A nod was the answer.

"Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant at Thrushcross Grange, sir."

"Walk in." But the invitation, uttered with closed teeth, expressed the
sentiment "Go to the deuce!" And it was not till my horse's breast
fairly pushed the barrier that he put out his hand to unchain it. I felt
interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself
as he preceded me up the causeway, calling, "Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood's
horse; and bring up some wine."

Joseph was an old man, very old, though hale and sinewy. "The Lord help
us!" he soliloquised in an undertone as he relieved me of my horse.

Wuthering Heights, Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling, is a farmhouse on an
exposed and stormy edge, its name being significant of atmospheric
tumult. Its owner is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and
manners a gentleman, with erect and handsome figure, but morose
demeanour. One step from the outside brought us into the family
living-room, the recesses of which were haunted by a huge liver-coloured
bitch pointer, with a swarm of squealing puppies, and other dogs. As the
bitch sneaked wolfishly to the back of my legs I attempted to caress
her, an action that provoked a long, guttural growl.

"You'd better let the dog alone," growled Mr. Heathcliff in unison, as
he checked her with a punch of his foot. "She's not accustomed to be
spoiled."

As Joseph was mumbling indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, and
gave no sign of ascending, his master dived down to him, leaving me
_vis-à-vis_ with the ruffianly bitch and half a dozen four-footed fiends
that suddenly broke into a fury, while I parried off the attack with a
poker and called aloud for assistance.

"What the devil is the matter?" asked Heathcliff, as he returned.

"What the devil, indeed!" I muttered. "You might as well leave a
stranger with a brood of tigers!"

"They won't meddle with persons who touch nothing," he remarked. "The
dogs are right to be vigilant. Take a glass of wine."

Before I went home I determined to volunteer another visit to my sulky
landlord, though evidently he wished for no repetition of my intrusion.

       *       *       *       *       *

Yesterday I again visited Wuthering Heights, my nearest neighbours to
Thrushcross Grange. On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a
black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. As I knocked
for admittance, till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled, vinegar-
faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn, and
shouted to me.

"What are ye for? T' maister's down i' t' fowld. There's nobbut t'
missis. I'll hae no hend wi't," muttered the head, vanishing.

Then a young man, without coat and shouldering a pitchfork, hailed me to
follow him, and showed me into the apartment where I had been formerly
received with a gruff "Sit down; he'll be in soon."

In the room sat the "missis," motionless and mute. She was slender,
scarcely past girlhood, with the most exquisite little face I have ever
had the pleasure of beholding; and her eyes, had they been agreeable in
expression, would have been irresistible. But the only sentiment they
evinced hovered between scorn and a kind of desperation. As for the
young man who had brought me in, he slung on his person a shabby jacket,
and, erecting himself before the fire, gazed down on me from the corner
of his eyes as if there was some mortal feud unavenged between us. The
entrance of Heathcliff relieved me from an uncomfortable state.

I found in the course of the tea which followed that the lady was the
widow of Heathcliff's son, and that the rustic youth who sat down to the
meal with us was Hareton Earnshaw. Now, before passing the threshold, I
had noticed over the principal door, among a wilderness of crumbling
griffins and shameless little boys, the name "Hareton Earnshaw" and the
date "1500." Evidently the place had a history.

The snow had fallen so deeply since I entered the house that return
across the moor in the dusk was impossible.

Spending that night at Wuthering Heights on an old-fashioned couch that
filled a recess, or closet, in a disused chamber, I found, scratched on
the paint many times, the names "Catherine Earnshaw," "Catherine
Heathcliff," and again "Catherine Linton." There were many books in the
room in a dilapidated state, and, being unable to sleep, I examined
them. Some of them bore the inscription "Catherine Earnshaw, her book";
and on the blank leaves and margins, scrawled in a childish hand, was a
regular diary. I read: "Hindley is detestable. Heathcliff and I are
going to rebel.... How little did I dream Hindley would ever make me cry
so! Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won't let him sit
or eat with us any more."

When I slept I was harrowed by nightmare, and next morning I gladly left
the house; and, piloted by my landlord across the billowy white ocean of
the moor, I reached the Grange benumbed with cold and as feeble as a
kitten from fatigue.

When my housekeeper, Mrs. Nelly Dean, brought in my supper that night I
asked her why Heathcliff let the Grange and preferred living in a
residence so much inferior.

"He's rich enough to live in a finer house than this," said Mrs. Dean;
"but he's very close-handed. Young Mrs. Heathcliff is my late master's
daughter--Catherine Linton was her maiden name, and I nursed her, poor
thing. Hareton Earnshaw is her cousin, and the last of an old family."

"The master, Heathcliff, must have had some ups and downs to make him
such a churl. Do you know anything of his history?"

"It's a cuckoo's, sir. I know all about it, except where he was born,
and who were his parents, and how he got his money. And Hareton Earnshaw
has been cast out like an unfledged dunnock."

I asked Mrs. Dean to bring her sewing, and continue the story. This she
did, evidently pleased to find me companionable.


_II.--The Story Runs Backward_


Before I came to live here (began Mrs. Dean), I was almost always at
Wuthering Heights, because my mother nursed Mr. Hindley Earnshaw, that
was Hareton's father, and I used to run errands and play with the
children. One day, old Mr. Earnshaw, Hareton's grandfather, went to
Liverpool, and promised Hindley and Cathy, his son and daughter, to
bring each of them a present. He was absent three days, and at the end
of that time brought home, bundled up in his arms under his great-coat,
a dirty, ragged, black-haired child, big enough both to walk and talk,
but only able to talk gibberish nobody could understand. He had picked
it up, he said, starving and homeless in the streets of Liverpool. Mrs.
Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors, but Mr. Earnshaw told her
to wash it, give it clean things, and let it sleep with the children.
The children's presents were forgotten. This was how Heathcliff, as they
called him, came to Wuthering Heights.

Miss Cathy and he soon became very thick; but Hindley hated him. He was
a patient, sullen child, who would stand blows without winking or
shedding a tear. From the beginning he bred bad feeling in the house.
Old Earnshaw took to him strangely, and Hindley regarded him as having
usurped his father's affections. As for Heathcliff, he was insensible to
kindness. Cathy, a wild slip, with the bonniest eye, the sweetest smile,
and the lightest foot in the parish, was much too fond of Heathcliff.

Old Mr. Earnshaw died quietly in his chair by the fireside one October
evening.

Mr. Hindley, who had been to college, came home to the funeral, and set
the neighbours gossiping right and left, for he brought a wife with him.
What she was and where she was born he never informed us. She evinced a
dislike to Heathcliff, and drove him to the company of the servants, but
Cathy clung to him, and the two promised to grow up together as rude as
savages. Once Hindley shut them out for the night and they came to
Thrushcross Grange, where the Lintons took Cathy in, but would not have
anything to do with Heathcliff, the Spanish castaway, as they called
him. She stayed five weeks with the Lintons, and became very friendly
with the children, Edgar and Isabella, and when she came back was a
dignified little person, and quite a beauty.

Soon after, Hindley's son, Hareton, was born, the mother died, and the
child fell wholly into my hands, for the father grew desperate in his
sorrow, and gave himself up to reckless dissipation. His treatment of
Heathcliff now was enough to make a fiend of a saint, and daily the lad
became more savagely sullen. I could not half-tell what an infernal
house we had, till at last nobody decent came near us, except that Edgar
Linton called to see Cathy, who at fifteen was the queen of the
countryside--a haughty and headstrong creature.

One day after Edgar Linton had been over from the Grange, Cathy came
into the kitchen to me and said, "Nelly, will you keep a secret for me?
To-day Edgar Linton has asked me to marry him, and I've given him an
answer. I accepted him, Nelly. Be quick and say whether I was wrong."

"First and foremost," I said sententiously, "do you love Mr. Edgar?"

"I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and
everything he touches, and every word he says. I love his looks, and all
his actions, and him entirely and altogether. There now!"

"Then," said I, "all seems smooth and easy. Where is the obstacle?"

"Here, and here!" replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead,
and the other on her breast. "In my soul and in my heart I'm convinced
I'm wrong! I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be
in heaven; and if the wicked man in there, my brother, had not brought
Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to
marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him, and that
not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I
am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and
Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from
fire. Nelly, I dreamed I was in heaven, but heaven did not seem to be my
home, and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the
angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath
on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy."

Ere this speech was ended, Heathcliff, who had been lying out of sight
on a bench by the kitchen wall, stole out. He had heard Catherine say it
would degrade her to marry him, and he had heard no further.

That night, while a storm rattled over the heights in full fury,
Heathcliff disappeared. Catherine suffered uncontrollable grief, and
became dangerously ill. When she was convalescent she went to
Thrushcross Grange. But Edgar Linton, when he married her, three years
subsequent to his father's death, and brought her here to the Grange,
was the happiest man alive. I accompanied her, leaving little Hareton,
who was now nearly five years old, and had just begun to learn his
letters.

On a mellow evening in September, I was coming from the garden with a
basket of apples I had been gathering, when, as I approached the kitchen
door, I heard a voice say, "Nelly, is that you?"

Something stirred in the porch, and, moving nearer, I saw a tall man,
dressed in dark clothes, with dark hair and face.

"What," I cried, "you come back?"

"Yes, Nelly. You needn't be so disturbed. I want one word with your
mistress."

I went in, and explained to Mr. Edgar and Catherine who was waiting
below.

"Oh, Edgar darling," she panted, flinging her arms round his neck,
"Heathcliff's come back--he is!"

"Well, well," he said, "don't strangle me for that. There's no need to
be frantic. Try to be glad without being absurd!"

When Heathcliff came in, she seized his hands and laughed like one
beside herself.

It seemed that he was staying at Wuthering Heights, invited by Mr.
Earnshaw! When I heard this I had a presentiment that he had better have
remained away.

Later, we learned from Joseph that Heathcliff had called on Earnshaw,
whom he found sitting at cards, had joined in the play, and, seeming
plentifully supplied with money, had been asked by his ancient
persecutor to come again in the evening. He then offered liberal payment
for permission to lodge at the Heights, which Earnshaw's covetousness
made him accept.

Heathcliff now commenced visiting Thrushcross Grange, and gradually
established his right to be expected. A new source of trouble sprang up
in an unexpected form--Isabella Linton evincing a sudden and
irresistible attraction towards Heathcliff. At that time she was a
charming young lady of eighteen. I tried to persuade her to banish him
from her thoughts.

"He's a bird of bad omen, miss," I said, "and no mate for you. How has
he been living? How has he got rich? Why is he staying at Wuthering
Heights in the house of the man whom he abhors? They say Mr. Earnshaw is
worse and worse since he came. They sit up all night together
continually, and Hindley has been borrowing money on his land, and does
nothing but play and drink."

"You are leagued with the rest," she replied, "and I'll not listen to
your slanders." The antipathy of Mr. Linton towards Heathcliff reached a
point at last at which he called on his servants one day to turn him out
of the Grange, whereupon Heathcliff's revenge took the form of an
elopement with Linton's sister. Six weeks later I received a letter of
bitter regret from Isabella, asking me distractedly whether I thought
her husband was a man or a devil, and how I had preserved the common
sympathies of human nature at Wuthering Heights, where they had
returned.

On receiving this letter, I obtained permission from Mr. Linton to go to
the Heights to see his sister, and Heathcliff, on meeting me, urged me
to secure for him an interview with Catherine.

"Nelly," said he, "you know as well as I do that for every thought she
spends on Linton she spends a thousand on me. If he loved her with all
the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years
as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have. The
sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough as her whole
affection be monopolised by him."

Well, I argued, and refused, but in the long run he forced me to agree
to put a missive into Mrs. Linton's hand.

When he met her, I saw that he could hardly bear, for downright agony,
to look into her face, for he was stricken with the conviction that she
was fated to die.

"Oh, Cathy, how can I bear it?" was the first sentence he uttered.

"You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff," was her reply. "You
have killed me and thriven on it, I think."

"Are you possessed with a devil," he asked, "to talk in that manner to
me when you are dying? You know you lie to say I have killed you, and
you know that I could as soon forget my existence as forget you. Is it
not sufficient that while you are at peace, I shall be in the torments
of hell?"

"I shall not be at peace," moaned Catherine.

"Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart? You loved
me. What right had you to leave me?"

"Let me alone!" sobbed Catherine. "I've done wrong, and I'm dying for
it! Forgive me!"

That night was born the Catherine you, Mr. Lockwood, saw at the Heights,
and her mother's spirit was at home with God.

When in the morning I told Heathcliff, who had been watching near all
night, he dashed his head against the knotted trunk of the tree by which
he stood and howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast, as he
besought her ghost to haunt him. "Be with me always--take any form!" he
cried. "Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"

Life with Heathcliff becoming impossible to Isabella, she left the
neighbourhood, never to revisit it, and lived near London; and there her
son, whom she christened Linton, was born a few months after her escape.
He was an ailing, peevish creature. When Linton was twelve, or a little
more, and Catherine thirteen, Isabella died, and the boy was brought to
Thrushcross Grange. Hindley Earnshaw drank himself to death about the
same time, after mortgaging every yard of his land for cash; and
Heathcliff was the mortgagee. So Hareton Earnshaw, who should have been
the first gentleman in the neighbourhood, was reduced to dependence on
his father's enemy, in whose house he lived, ignorant that he had been
wronged.

The motives of Heathcliff now became clear. Under the influence of a
passionate but calculating revenge, allied with greed, he was planning
the destruction of the Earnshaw family, and the union of the Wuthering
Heights and Thrushcross Grange estates. To this end, having brought his
weakly son home to the Heights and terrorised him into a pitiable
slavery, he schemed a marriage between him and young Catherine Linton,
who was induced to accept the arrangement through sympathy with her
cousin, and the hope of removing him from the paralysing influence of
his father. The marriage was almost immediately followed by the death of
both Catherine's father and her boyish husband, who, it was afterwards
found, had been coaxed or threatened into bequeathing all his property
to his father. Thus ended Mrs. Dean's story of how the strangely
assorted occupants of Wuthering Heights had come together, my landlord
Heathcliff, the disinherited, poor Hareton Earnshaw, and Catherine
Heathcliff, who had been Catherine Linton and the daughter of Catherine
Earnshaw. I propose riding over to Wuthering Heights to inform my
landlord that I shall spend the next six months in London, and that he
may look out for another tenant for the Grange.


_III.--The Story Runs Forward_


Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty, and I went to the Heights as I
proposed. My housekeeper entreated me to bear a little note from her to
her young lady, and I did not refuse, for the worthy woman was not
conscious of anything odd in her request. Hareton Earnshaw unchained the
gate for me. The fellow is as handsome a rustic as need be seen, but he
does his best, apparently, to make the least of his advantages.
Catherine, who was preparing vegetables for a meal, looked more sulky
and less spirited than when I had seen her first.

"She does not seem so amiable," I thought, "as Mrs. Dean would persuade
me to believe. She's a beauty, it is true, but not an angel."

I approached her, pretending to desire a view of the garden, and dropped
Mrs. Dean's note on her knee unnoticed by Hareton. But she asked aloud,
"What is that?" and chucked it off.

"A letter from your old acquaintance, the housekeeper at the Grange," I
answered. She would gladly have gathered it up at this information, but
Hareton beat her. He seized and put it in his waistcoat, saying Mr.
Heathcliff should look at it first; but later he pulled out the letter,
and flung it on the floor as ungraciously as he could. Catherine perused
it eagerly, and then asked, "Does Ellen like you?"

"Yes, very well," I replied hesitatingly.

Whereupon she became more communicative, and told me how dull she was
now Heathcliff had taken her books away.

When Heathcliff came in, looking restless and anxious, he sent her to
the kitchen to get her dinner with Joseph; and with the master of the
house, grim and saturnine, and Hareton absolutely dumb, I made a
cheerless meal, and bade adieu early.

       *       *       *       *       *

Next September, when going north for shooting, a sudden impulse seized
me to visit Thrushcross Grange and pass a night under my own roof, for
the tenancy had not yet expired. When I reached the Grange before sunset
I found a girl knitting under the porch, and an old woman reclining on
the house-steps, smoking a meditative pipe.

"Is Mrs. Dean within?" I demanded.

"Mistress Dean? Nay!" she answered. "She doesn't bide here; shoo's up at
th' Heights."

"Are you housekeeper, then?"

"Eea, aw keep th' house," she replied.

"Well, I'm Mr. Lockwood, the master. Are there any rooms to lodge me in,
I wonder? I wish to stay all night."

"T' maister!" she cried in astonishment. "Yah sud ha' sent word. They's
nowt norther dry nor mensful abaht t' place!"

Leaving her scurrying about making preparations, I climbed the stony
by-road that branches off to Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. On reaching it I
had neither to climb the gate nor to knock--it yielded to my hand. "This
is an improvement," I thought. I noticed, too, a fragrance of flowers
wafted on the air from among the homely fruit-trees.

"Con-_trary_!" said a voice as sweet as a silver bell "That for the
third time, you dunce! I'm not going to tell you again."

"Contrary, then," answered another in deep but softened tones. "And now
kiss me for minding so well."

The male speaker was a young man, respectably dressed and seated at a
table, having a book before him. His handsome features glowed with
pleasure, and his eyes kept impatiently wandering from the page to a
small white hand over his shoulder. So, not to interrupt Hareton
Earnshaw and Catherine Heathcliff, I went round to the kitchen, where my
old friend Nelly Dean sat sewing and singing a song.

Mrs. Dean jumped to her feet as she recognised me. "Why, bless you, Mr.
Lockwood!" she exclaimed. "Pray step in! Have you walked from
Gimmerton?"

"No, from the Grange," I replied; "and while they make me a lodging room
there I want to finish my business with your master."

"What business, sir?" said Nelly.

"About the rent," I answered.

"Oh, then it is Catherine you must settle with, or rather me, as she has
not learned to arrange her affairs yet."

I looked surprised.

"Ah! You have not heard of Heathcliff's death, I see," she continued.

"Heathcliff dead!" I exclaimed. "How long ago?"

"Three months since; but sit down, and I'll tell you all about it."

"I was summoned to Wuthering Heights," she said, "within a fortnight of
your leaving us, and I went gladly for Catherine's sake. Mr. Heathcliff,
who grew more and more disinclined to society, almost banished Earnshaw
from his apartment, and was tired of seeing Catherine--that was the
reason why I was sent for--and the two young people were thrown perforce
much in each other's company in the house, and presently Catherine began
to make it clear to her obstinate cousin that she wished to be friends.
The intimacy ripened rapidly, and, Mr. Lockwood, on their wedding day
there won't be a happier woman in England than myself. Joseph was the
only objector, and he appealed to Heathcliff against 'yon flaysome
graceless quean, that's witched our lad wi' her bold een and her forrad
ways.' But after a burst of passion at the news, Mr. Heathcliff suddenly
calmed down and said to me, 'Nelly, there is a strange change
approaching; I'm in its shadow.'

"Soon after that he took to wandering alone, in a state approaching
distraction. He could not rest; he could not eat; and he would not see
the doctor. One morning as I walked round the house I observed the
master's window swinging open and the rain driving straight in. 'He
cannot be in bed,' I thought, 'those showers would drench him through.'
And so it was, for when I entered the chamber his face and throat were
washed with rain, the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly
still--dead and stark. I called up Joseph. 'Eh, what a wicked 'un he
looks, girning at death,' exclaimed the old man, and then he fell on his
knees and returned thanks that the ancient Earnshaw stock were restored
to their rights.

"I shall be glad when they leave the Heights for the Grange," concluded
Mrs. Dean.

"They are going to the Grange, then?"

"Yes, as soon as they are married; and that will be on New Year's Day."

       *       *       *       *       *




ROBERT BUCHANAN


The Shadow of the Sword

      Robert Buchanan, poet, novelist, and playwright, was born on
     Aug. 18, 1841, at Caverswall, Staffordshire, England, the son
     of a poor journeyman tailor from Ayrshire, in Scotland, who
     wrote poetry, and wandered about the country preaching
     socialism of the Owen type, afterwards editing a Glasgow
     journal. Owing, perhaps, in part to his very unconventional
     training, Robert Buchanan entered on life with a strange
     freshness of vision. Nothing in ordinary human life seemed
     common or mean to him, and this sense of wonder, combined with
     a power of judgment much steadier than his father's, made him
     a poet of considerable genius. "Undertones," published in
     1863, and "Idylls and Legends of Inverburn," which appeared
     two years later, made him famous. The same qualities which he
     displayed in his poetry Buchanan exhibited in his earliest and
     best novels. "The Shadow of the Sword," published in 1876, was
     originally conceived as a poem, and it still remains one of
     the best of modern English prose romances. In his latter years
     Robert Buchanan, tortured by the long and painful illness of
     his beautiful and gentle wife, wrote a considerable amount of
     work with no literary merit; but this does not diminish the
     value of his best and earliest work, which undoubtedly
     entitles him to a place of importance in English literature.
     He died on June 10, 1901.


_I.--The King of the Conscripts_


"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant, in a voice that rang like a
trumpet through the length of the town hall.

No one answered. The crowd of young Kromlaix men looked at each other in
consternation. Was the handsomest, the strongest, and the most daring
lad in their village a coward? It was the dark year of 1813, when
Napoleon was draining France of all its manhood. Even the only sons of
poor widowed women, such as Rohan Gwenfern was, were no longer exempted
from conscription. Having lost half a million men amid the snows of
Russia, Napoleon had called for 200,000 more soldiers, and the little
Breton fishing village of Kromlaix had to provide twenty-five recruits.

"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant again.

The mayor rose up behind the ballot-box on the large table, about which
the villagers were gathered, and looked around in vain for the splendid
figure of the young fisherman.

"Where is your nephew?" he said to Corporal Derval, in an angry voice.

Derval, one of Napoleon's veterans, who had been pensioned after losing
his leg at Austerlitz, looked at his pretty niece, Marcelle, with a
strange pallor on his furrowed, sunburnt face.

"Rohan was too ill to come," said Marcelle, with a troubled look in her
sweet grey eyes. "I will draw in his name."

"Very well, my pretty lass," said the mayor, his grim face softening
into a smile as he looked at the beautiful girl, "you shall draw for
him, and bring him luck."

Marcelle's hand trembled as she put it into the ballot-box. She let it
stay there so long that some of the soldiers began to laugh. But the
village women, gathered in a dense crowd at the back of the hall, gazed
at her with tears in their eyes. They knew what she was doing. She was
praying that she might draw a lucky number for her lover, Rohan.
Twenty-five conscripts were wanted, and those who drew a paper numbered
twenty-six or upwards were free.

"Come, come, my dear!" said the mayor, stroking his moustache, and
nodding encouragingly at Marcelle.

She slowly drew forth a paper, and handed it to her uncle, who opened
it, read it with a stare, and uttered his usual expletive. "Soul of a
crow!" in an awstricken whisper.

"Read it, corporal!" said the mayor, while Marcelle looked wildly at her
uncle.

"It is incredible!" said Corporal Derval, handing the paper to the
sergeant, with the look of amazement still on his face.

"Rohan Gwenfern--one!" shouted the sergeant, while Marcelle clung to her
uncle, and hid her face upon his arm.

Rohan Gwenfern, who had taken a solemn oath that he would never go forth
to slay his fellow-men at the bidding of Napoleon, whom he regarded as a
horrible, murderous monster, found himself, when he returned to Kromlaix
late that evening, in the sorry position of King of the Conscripts. He
was a young man who had led a very solitary life, but solitude, instead
of making him morbid, had strengthened his natural feelings of pity and
affection. His immense physical 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/10643