chapters/dev.jsonl

{"original":"A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the \"parsimony of the public,\" which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed--I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.\nThis seemed to me too profound a joke to be inserted in the body of this book or I should have restored it to Conversation Kenge or to Mr. Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must have originated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an apt quotation from one of Shakespeare's sonnets:\n\"My nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand: Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed!\"\nBut as it is wholesome that the parsimonious public should know what has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, I mention here that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. The case of Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence, made public by a disinterested person who was professionally acquainted with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to end. At the present moment (August, 1853) there is a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, which is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is (I am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it was begun. There is another well-known suit in Chancery, not yet decided, which was commenced before the close of the last century and in which more than double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in costs. If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I could rain them on these pages, to the shame of--a parsimonious public.\nThere is only one other point on which I offer a word of remark. The possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied since the death of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes (quite mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me at the time when that event was chronicled, arguing that spontaneous combustion could not possibly be. I have no need to observe that I do not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before I wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject. There are about thirty cases on record, of which the most famous, that of the Countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenate, was minutely investigated and described by Giuseppe Bianchini, a prebendary of Verona, otherwise distinguished in letters, who published an account of it at Verona in 1731, which he afterwards republished at Rome. The appearances, beyond all rational doubt, observed in that case are the appearances observed in Mr. Krook's case. The next most famous instance happened at Rheims six years earlier, and the historian in that case is Le Cat, one of the most renowned surgeons produced by France. The subject was a woman, whose husband was ignorantly convicted of having murdered her; but on solemn appeal to a higher court, he was acquitted because it was shown upon the evidence that she had died the death of which this name of spontaneous combustion is given. I do not think it necessary to add to these notable facts, and that general reference to the authorities which will be found at page 30, vol. ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences of distinguished medical professors, French, English, and Scotch, in more modern days, contenting myself with observing that I shall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received.**\nIn Bleak House I have purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of familiar things.\n1853\n*Transcriber's note. This referred to a specific page in the printed book. In this Project Gutenberg edition the pertinent information is in Chapter XXX, paragraph 90.\n** Another case, very clearly described by a dentist, occurred at the town of Columbus, in the United States of America, quite recently. The subject was a German who kept a liquor-shop and was an inveterate drunkard.","abridged":"Everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of Chancery is substantially true. At the present moment (August, 1853) there is a lawsuit before the court which began twenty years ago, in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, and which is a friendly suit. There is another well-known suit in Chancery which was commenced over fifty years ago and in which more than a hundred and forty thousand pounds has been swallowed up in costs. If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I could rain them on these pages.\nThere is one other point on which I offer a word of remark. The possibility of spontaneous human combustion has been denied; but I do not wilfully mislead my readers and before I wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject. There are about thirty cases on record, of which the most famous, that of the Countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenate, was investigated and described by Giuseppe Bianchini in 1731.","book":"Bleak House","chapter":"Preface"}
{"original":"Whether or no, she, whom you are to forgive, if you can, did or did not belong to the Upper Ten Thousand of this our English world, I am not prepared to say with any strength of affirmation. By blood she was connected with big people,--distantly connected with some very big people indeed, people who belonged to the Upper Ten Hundred if there be any such division; but of these very big relations she had known and seen little, and they had cared as little for her. Her grandfather, Squire Vavasor of Vavasor Hall, in Westmoreland, was a country gentleman, possessing some thousand a year at the outside, and he therefore never came up to London, and had no ambition to have himself numbered as one in any exclusive set. A hot-headed, ignorant, honest old gentleman, he lived ever at Vavasor Hall, declaring to any who would listen to him, that the country was going to the mischief, and congratulating himself that at any rate, in his county, parliamentary reform had been powerless to alter the old political arrangements. Alice Vavasor, whose offence against the world I am to tell you, and if possible to excuse, was the daughter of his younger son; and as her father, John Vavasor, had done nothing to raise the family name to eminence, Alice could not lay claim to any high position from her birth as a Vavasor. John Vavasor had come up to London early in life as a barrister, and had failed. He had failed at least in attaining either much wealth or much repute, though he had succeeded in earning, or perhaps I might better say, in obtaining, a livelihood. He had married a lady somewhat older than himself, who was in possession of four hundred a year, and who was related to those big people to whom I have alluded. Who these were and the special nature of the relationship, I shall be called upon to explain hereafter, but at present it will suffice to say that Alice Macleod gave great offence to all her friends by her marriage. She did not, however, give them much time for the indulgence of their anger. Having given birth to a daughter within twelve months of her marriage, she died, leaving in abeyance that question as to whether the fault of her marriage should or should not be pardoned by her family.\nWhen a man marries an heiress for her money, if that money be within her own control, as was the case with Miss Macleod's fortune, it is generally well for the speculating lover that the lady's friends should quarrel with him and with her. She is thereby driven to throw herself entirely into the gentleman's arms, and he thus becomes possessed of the wife and the money without the abominable nuisance of stringent settlements. But the Macleods, though they quarrelled with Alice, did not quarrel with her _ l'outrance_. They snubbed herself and her chosen husband; but they did not so far separate themselves from her and her affairs as to give up the charge of her possessions. Her four hundred a year was settled very closely on herself and on her children, without even a life interest having been given to Mr. Vavasor, and therefore when she died the mother's fortune became the property of the little baby. But, under these circumstances, the big people did not refuse to interest themselves to some extent on behalf of the father. I do not suppose that any actual agreement or compact was made between Mr. Vavasor and the Macleods; but it came to be understood between them that if he made no demand upon them for his daughter's money, and allowed them to have charge of her education, they would do something for him. He was a practising barrister, though his practice had never amounted to much; and a practising barrister is always supposed to be capable of filling any situation which may come his way. Two years after his wife's death Mr. Vavasor was appointed assistant commissioner in some office which had to do with insolvents, and which was abolished three years after his appointment. It was at first thought that he would keep his eight hundred a year for life and be required to do nothing for it; but a wretched cheeseparing Whig government, as John Vavasor called it when describing the circumstances of the arrangement to his father, down in Westmoreland, would not permit this; it gave him the option of taking four hundred a year for doing nothing, or of keeping his whole income and attending three days a week for three hours a day during term time, at a miserable dingy little office near Chancery Lane, where his duty would consist in signing his name to accounts which he never read, and at which he was never supposed even to look. He had sulkily elected to keep the money, and this signing had been now for nearly twenty years the business of his life. Of course he considered himself to be a very hardly-used man. One Lord Chancellor after another he petitioned, begging that he might be relieved from the cruelty of his position, and allowed to take his salary without doing anything in return for it. The amount of work which he did perform was certainly a minimum of labour. Term time, as terms were counted in Mr. Vavasor's office, hardly comprised half the year, and the hours of weekly attendance did not do more than make one day's work a week for a working man; but Mr. Vavasor had been appointed an assistant commissioner, and with every Lord Chancellor he argued that all Westminster Hall, and Lincoln's Inn to boot, had no right to call upon him to degrade himself by signing his name to accounts. In answer to every memorial he was offered the alternative of freedom with half his income; and so the thing went on.\nThere can, however, be no doubt that Mr. Vavasor was better off and happier with his almost nominal employment than he would have been without it. He always argued that it kept him in London; but he would undoubtedly have lived in London with or without his official occupation. He had become so habituated to London life in a small way, before the choice of leaving London was open to him, that nothing would have kept him long away from it. After his wife's death he dined at his club every day on which a dinner was not given to him by some friend elsewhere, and was rarely happy except when so dining. They who have seen him scanning the steward's list of dishes, and giving the necessary orders for his own and his friend's dinner, at about half past four in the afternoon, have seen John Vavasor at the only moment of the day at which he is ever much in earnest. All other things are light and easy to him,--to be taken easily and to be dismissed easily. Even the eating of the dinner calls forth from him no special sign of energy. Sometimes a frown will gather on his brow as he tastes the first half glass from his bottle of claret; but as a rule that which he has prepared for himself with so much elaborate care, is consumed with only pleasant enjoyment. Now and again it will happen that the cook is treacherous even to him, and then he can hit hard; but in hitting he is quiet, and strikes with a smile on his face.\nSuch had been Mr. Vavasor's pursuits and pleasures in life up to the time at which my story commences. But I must not allow the reader to suppose that he was a man without good qualities. Had he when young possessed the gift of industry I think that he might have shone in his profession, and have been well spoken of and esteemed in the world. As it was he was a discontented man, but nevertheless he was popular, and to some extent esteemed. He was liberal as far as his means would permit; he was a man of his word; and he understood well that code of by-laws which was presumed to constitute the character of a gentleman in his circle. He knew how to carry himself well among men, and understood thoroughly what might be said, and what might not; what might be done among those with whom he lived, and what should be left undone. By nature, too, he was kindly disposed, loving many persons a little if he loved few or none passionately. Moreover, at the age of fifty, he was a handsome man, with a fine forehead, round which the hair and beard was only beginning to show itself to be grey. He stood well, with a large person, only now beginning to become corpulent. His eyes were bright and grey, and his mouth and chin were sharply cut, and told of gentle birth. Most men who knew John Vavasor well, declared it to be a pity that he should spend his time in signing accounts in Chancery Lane.\nI have said that Alice Vavasor's big relatives cared but little for her in her early years; but I have also said that they were careful to undertake the charge of her education, and I must explain away this little discrepancy. The biggest of these big people had hardly heard of her; but there was a certain Lady Macleod, not very big herself, but, as it were, hanging on to the skirts of those who were so, who cared very much for Alice. She was the widow of a Sir Archibald Macleod, K.C.B., who had been a soldier, she herself having also been a Macleod by birth; and for very many years past--from a time previous to the birth of Alice Vavasor--she had lived at Cheltenham, making short sojourns in London during the spring, when the contents of her limited purse would admit of her doing so. Of old Lady Macleod I think I may say that she was a good woman;--that she was a good woman, though subject to two of the most serious drawbacks to goodness which can afflict a lady. She was a Calvinistic Sabbatarian in religion, and in worldly matters she was a devout believer in the high rank of her noble relatives. She could almost worship a youthful marquis, though he lived a life that would disgrace a heathen among heathens; and she could and did, in her own mind, condemn crowds of commonplace men and women to all eternal torments of which her imagination could conceive, because they listened to profane music in a park on Sunday. Yet she was a good woman. Out of her small means she gave much away. She owed no man anything. She strove to love her neighbours. She bore much pain with calm unspeaking endurance, and she lived in trust of a better world. Alice Vavasor, who was after all only her cousin, she loved with an exceeding love, and yet Alice had done very much to extinguish such love. Alice, in the years of her childhood, had been brought up by Lady Macleod; at the age of twelve she had been sent to a school at Aix-la-Chapelle,--a comitatus of her relatives having agreed that such was to be her fate, much in opposition to Lady Macleod's judgement; at nineteen she had returned to Cheltenham, and after remaining there for little more than a year, had expressed her unwillingness to remain longer with her cousin. She could sympathize neither with her relative's faults or virtues. She made an arrangement, therefore, with her father, that they two would keep house together in London, and so they had lived for the last five years;--for Alice Vavasor when she will be introduced to the reader had already passed her twenty-fourth birthday.\nTheir mode of life had been singular and certainly not in all respects satisfactory. Alice when she was twenty-one had the full command of her own fortune; and when she induced her father, who for the last fifteen years had lived in lodgings, to take a small house in Queen Anne Street, of course she offered to incur a portion of the expense. He had warned her that his habits were not those of a domestic man, but he had been content simply so to warn her. He had not felt it to be his duty to decline the arrangement because he knew himself to be unable to give to his child all that attention which a widowed father under such circumstances should pay to an only daughter. The house had been taken, and Alice and he had lived together, but their lives had been quite apart. For a short time, for a month or two, he had striven to dine at home and even to remain at home through the evening; but the work had been too hard for him and he had utterly broken down. He had said to her and to himself that his health would fail him under the effects of so great a change made so late in life, and I am not sure that he had not spoken truly. At any rate the effort had been abandoned, and Mr. Vavasor now never dined at home. Nor did he and his daughter ever dine out together. Their joint means did not admit of their giving dinners, and therefore they could not make their joint way in the same circle. It thus came to pass that they lived apart,--quite apart. They saw each other, probably daily; but they did little more than see each other. They did not even breakfast together, and after three o'clock in the day Mr. Vavasor was never to be found in his own house.\nMiss Vavasor had made for herself a certain footing in society, though I am disposed to doubt her right to be considered as holding a place among the Upper Ten Thousand. Two classes of people she had chosen to avoid, having been driven to such avoidings by her aunt's preferences; marquises and such-like, whether wicked or otherwise, she had eschewed, and had eschewed likewise all Low Church tendencies. The eschewing of marquises is not generally very difficult. Young ladies living with their fathers on very moderate incomes in or about Queen Anne Street are not usually much troubled on that matter. Nor can I say that Miss Vavasor was so troubled. But with her there was a certain definite thing to be done towards such eschewal. Lady Macleod by no means avoided her noble relatives, nor did she at all avoid Alice Vavasor. When in London she was persevering in her visits to Queen Anne Street, though she considered herself, nobody knew why, not to be on speaking terms with Mr. Vavasor. And she strove hard to produce an intimacy between Alice and her noble relatives--such an intimacy as that which she herself enjoyed;--an intimacy which gave her a footing in their houses but no footing in their hearts, or even in their habits. But all this Alice declined with as much consistency as she did those other struggles which her old cousin made on her behalf,--strong, never-flagging, but ever-failing efforts to induce the girl to go to such places of worship as Lady Macleod herself frequented.\nA few words must be said as to Alice Vavasor's person; one fact also must be told, and then, I believe, I may start upon my story. As regards her character, I will leave it to be read in the story itself. The reader already knows that she appears upon the scene at no very early age, and the mode of her life had perhaps given to her an appearance of more years than those which she really possessed. It was not that her face was old, but that there was nothing that was girlish in her manners. Her demeanour was as staid, and her voice as self-possessed as though she had already been ten years married. In person she was tall and well made, rather large in her neck and shoulders, as were all the Vavasors, but by no means fat. Her hair was brown, but very dark, and she wore it rather lower upon her forehead than is customary at the present day. Her eyes, too, were dark, though they were not black, and her complexion, though not quite that of a brunette, was far away from being fair. Her nose was somewhat broad, and _retrouss_ too, but to my thinking it was a charming nose, full of character, and giving to her face at times a look of pleasant humour, which it would otherwise have lacked. Her mouth was large, and full of character, and her chin oval, dimpled, and finely chiselled, like her father's. I beg you, in taking her for all in all, to admit that she was a fine, handsome, high-spirited young woman.\nAnd now for my fact. At the time of which I am writing she was already engaged to be married.","abridged":"Did she (whom you are to forgive, if you can) belong to the Upper Ten Thousand People of England? I cannot say for sure. By blood she was connected with some very big people indeed; but she had known and seen little of these distant relations.\nHer grandfather, Squire Vavasor of Vavasor Hall, in Westmorland, was a country gentleman, with a thousand pounds a year at most. A hot-headed, ignorant, honest old gentleman, he never came to London, but lived at Vavasor Hall, declaring to any who would listen that the country was going to the dogs, and congratulating himself that in his county at least, there had been no parliamentary reform.\nAlice Vavasor, whose offence I am to tell you, and if possible to excuse, was the daughter of his younger son. Her father, John Vavasor, had been a London barrister early in life, and had failed to earn much wealth, although he obtained a livelihood through his marriage. He had married a lady somewhat older than himself, who had four hundred pounds a year, and who was related to those big people to whom I have alluded. Who these were, I shall explain later, but at present it will suffice to say that Alice Macleod gave great offence to her relations by her marriage. She did not, however, give them much time to indulge their anger, for after giving birth to a daughter, she died.\nBut the Macleods did not cut all ties. They snubbed Alice and John Vavasor; but they did not give up the charge of her money. Her four hundred a year was settled very closely on her and on her children, without any going to Mr. Vavasor, so when she died her fortune became the property of baby Alice.\nHowever, the big people gave some aid to the father. It was understood between them that if he made no demand upon them for his daughter's money, and allowed them to have charge of her education, they would do something for him. Thus Mr. Vavasor was appointed to some office to do with insolvents, a post which paid eight hundred pounds a year, and which was abolished three years later.\nAt first John Vavasor thought that he would keep his eight hundred a year for life and have to do nothing for it; but a wretched cheeseparing Whig government, as he called it, would not permit this. It gave him the option of taking four hundred a year for doing nothing, or of keeping the whole eight hundred by going three days a week, for three hours a day, to a miserable dingy little office near Chancery Lane, where his duty would consist in signing his name to accounts which he never read. He had sulkily chosen to keep the money, and this signing had been his work for nearly twenty years.\nHe considered himself to be a very ill-used man. However, there can be no doubt that he was better off and happier with his employment than he would have been without it. He had become used to London life. After his wife's death he dined at his club every day, and he was happiest when so dining. It was the only moment of the day when he was ever much in earnest.\nI must not allow the reader to suppose that John Vavasor had no good qualities. If he had been industrious as a young man he might have shone in his profession. And although he was discontented, he was popular. He was as generous as his means would permit; he was a man of his word; and he understood the code of gentleman in his circle. By nature, too, he was kindly, loving many people a little, if none passionately. At fifty he was still a handsome, upright man, whose hair and beard were only beginning to show grey.\nAlthough Alice Vavasor's big relatives cared little for her in her early years, they were careful to take charge of her education. I must explain this. There was a certain Lady Macleod, not very big herself, but, as it were, hanging on to the skirts of those who were, who cared very much for Alice. She was a widow, who for many years had lived at Cheltenham, making short stays in London when she could afford it. Old Lady Macleod was a good woman, though a Calvinist, and a devout believer in the high rank of her noble relatives. She could almost worship an aristocrat of the most disgraceful habits, although she mentally condemned crowds of ordinary men and women to eternal torments, because they listened to music in a park on Sunday.\nYet she was a good woman. Out of her small means she gave much away. She strove to love her neighbours. She bore much pain with calm, quiet endurance, and she lived in trust of a better world. She loved her cousin young Alice Vavasor exceedingly, and yet Alice had done much to extinguish such love.\nAlice, in her childhood, had been brought up by Lady Macleod. At the age of twelve she had been sent to a school at Aix-la-Chapelle, against Lady Macleod's wishes; at nineteen she had returned to Cheltenham, and after living there for a year, had expressed her unwillingness to remain any longer with her relative. She made an arrangement, therefore, with her father, that they two would keep house together in London, and so they had lived for the last five years; for Alice at the time of this story was twenty-four.\nTheir way of life had been unusual and not altogether satisfactory. At twenty-one Alice gained control of her fortune; and persuaded her father, who had lived in lodgings, to take a small house in Queen Anne Street, for which she offered to pay part of the expense. He had agreed, although he knew he would not give his child the attention which a widowed father should pay to an only daughter.\nThe house had been taken, and Alice and he had lived together, but their lives had been quite apart. For a month or two, he had tried to dine at home and even to remain at home through the evening; but the effort had been too hard for him and he had broken down. He had told her and himself that his health would fail if he made so great a change so late in life. The effort had been abandoned, and Mr. Vavasor now never dined at home.\nNor did he and his daughter ever dine out together. They could not afford to give dinners, and therefore could not mix in the same circle. They saw each other daily; but they did little more than see each other. They did not even breakfast together, and after three o'clock Mr. Vavasor was never to be found in his own house.\nMiss Vavasor had made for herself a certain footing in society, though not among the Upper Ten Thousand. Her aunt's preferences had driven her to avoid aristocrats, along with all Calvinistic people.\nHowever, Lady Macleod did not avoid Alice Vavasor. When in London she persevered in visiting Queen Anne Street, even though she was not on speaking terms with Mr. Vavasor. And she tried hard to nurture an intimacy between Alice and her noble relatives - an intimacy such as that which she herself enjoyed, which gave her a footing in their houses but no place in their hearts. But all this Alice declined.\nA few words must be said about Alice Vavasor's appearance; one fact also must be told, and then I may start my story. As for her character, I will leave it to be read in the story itself.\nThere was nothing girlish in her manners. She appeared staid and self-possessed. She was tall and well made, but by no means fat. Her hair and her eyes were dark brown; and her complexion was also dark. Her nose was somewhat broad and retrouss, but a charming nose, full of character, and giving her face a look of pleasant humour which it would otherwise have lacked. Her mouth was large, and her chin finely chiselled, like her father's. All in all, she was a fine, handsome, high-spirited young woman.\nAnd now for my fact. At the time of which I am writing she was already engaged to be married.","book":"Can You Forgive Her?","chapter":"Chapter 1: Mr. Vavasor and His Daughter"}
{"original":"Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars' unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different from his; since Science, too, reckons backward as well as forward, divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought really sets off _in medias res_. No retrospect will take us to the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our story sets out.\nWas she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the secret of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was the good or the evil genius dominant in those beams? Probably the evil; else why was the effect that of unrest rather than of undisturbed charm? Why was the wish to look again felt as coercion and not as a longing in which the whole being consents?\nShe who raised these questions in Daniel Deronda's mind was occupied in gambling: not in the open air under a southern sky, tossing coppers on a ruined wall, with rags about her limbs; but in one of those splendid resorts which the enlightenment of ages has prepared for the same species of pleasure at a heavy cost of gilt mouldings, dark-toned color and chubby nudities, all correspondingly heavy--forming a suitable condenser for human breath belonging, in great part, to the highest fashion, and not easily procurable to be breathed in elsewhere in the like proportion, at least by persons of little fashion.\nIt was near four o'clock on a September day, so that the atmosphere was well-brewed to a visible haze. There was deep stillness, broken only by a light rattle, a light chink, a small sweeping sound, and an occasional monotone in French, such as might be expected to issue from an ingeniously constructed automaton. Round two long tables were gathered two serried crowds of human beings, all save one having their faces and attention bent on the tables. The one exception was a melancholy little boy, with his knees and calves simply in their natural clothing of epidermis, but for the rest of his person in a fancy dress. He alone had his face turned toward the doorway, and fixing on it the blank gaze of a bedizened child stationed as a masquerading advertisement on the platform of an itinerant show, stood close behind a lady deeply engaged at the roulette-table.\nAbout this table fifty or sixty persons were assembled, many in the outer rows, where there was occasionally a deposit of new-comers, being mere spectators, only that one of them, usually a woman, might now and then be observed putting down a five-franc with a simpering air, just to see what the passion of gambling really was. Those who were taking their pleasure at a higher strength, and were absorbed in play, showed very distant varieties of European type: Livonian and Spanish, Graeco-Italian and miscellaneous German, English aristocratic and English plebeian. Here certainly was a striking admission of human equality. The white bejewelled fingers of an English countess were very near touching a bony, yellow, crab-like hand stretching a bared wrist to clutch a heap of coin--a hand easy to sort with the square, gaunt face, deep-set eyes, grizzled eyebrows, and ill-combed scanty hair which seemed a slight metamorphosis of the vulture. And where else would her ladyship have graciously consented to sit by that dry-lipped feminine figure prematurely old, withered after short bloom like her artificial flowers, holding a shabby velvet reticule before her, and occasionally putting in her mouth the point with which she pricked her card? There too, very near the fair countess, was a respectable London tradesman, blonde and soft-handed, his sleek hair scrupulously parted behind and before, conscious of circulars addressed to the nobility and gentry, whose distinguished patronage enabled him to take his holidays fashionably, and to a certain extent in their distinguished company. Not his the gambler's passion that nullifies appetite, but a well-fed leisure, which, in the intervals of winning money in business and spending it showily, sees no better resource than winning money in play and spending it yet more showily--reflecting always that Providence had never manifested any disapprobation of his amusement, and dispassionate enough to leave off if the sweetness of winning much and seeing others lose had turned to the sourness of losing much and seeing others win. For the vice of gambling lay in losing money at it. In his bearing there might be something of the tradesman, but in his pleasures he was fit to rank with the owners of the oldest titles. Standing close to his chair was a handsome Italian, calm, statuesque, reaching across him to place the first pile of napoleons from a new bagful just brought him by an envoy with a scrolled mustache. The pile was in half a minute pushed over to an old bewigged woman with eye-glasses pinching her nose. There was a slight gleam, a faint mumbling smile about the lips of the old woman; but the statuesque Italian remained impassive, and--probably secure in an infallible system which placed his foot on the neck of chance--immediately prepared a new pile. So did a man with the air of an emaciated beau or worn-out libertine, who looked at life through one eye-glass, and held out his hand tremulously when he asked for change. It could surely be no severity of system, but rather some dream of white crows, or the induction that the eighth of the month was lucky, which inspired the fierce yet tottering impulsiveness of his play.\nBut, while every single player differed markedly from every other, there was a certain uniform negativeness of expression which had the effect of a mask--as if they had all eaten of some root that for the time compelled the brains of each to the same narrow monotony of action.\nDeronda's first thought when his eyes fell on this scene of dull, gas-poisoned absorption, was that the gambling of Spanish shepherd-boys had seemed to him more enviable:--so far Rousseau might be justified in maintaining that art and science had done a poor service to mankind. But suddenly he felt the moment become dramatic. His attention was arrested by a young lady who, standing at an angle not far from him, was the last to whom his eyes traveled. She was bending and speaking English to a middle-aged lady seated at play beside her: but the next instant she returned to her play, and showed the full height of a graceful figure, with a face which might possibly be looked at without admiration, but could hardly be passed with indifference.\nThe inward debate which she raised in Deronda gave to his eyes a growing expression of scrutiny, tending farther and farther away from the glow of mingled undefined sensibilities forming admiration. At one moment they followed the movements of the figure, of the arms and hands, as this problematic sylph bent forward to deposit her stake with an air of firm choice; and the next they returned to the face which, at present unaffected by beholders, was directed steadily toward the game. The sylph was a winner; and as her taper fingers, delicately gloved in pale-gray, were adjusting the coins which had been pushed toward her in order to pass them back again to the winning point, she looked round her with a survey too markedly cold and neutral not to have in it a little of that nature which we call art concealing an inward exultation.\nBut in the course of that survey her eyes met Deronda's, and instead of averting them as she would have desired to do, she was unpleasantly conscious that they were arrested--how long? The darting sense that he was measuring her and looking down on her as an inferior, that he was of different quality from the human dross around her, that he felt himself in a region outside and above her, and was examining her as a specimen of a lower order, roused a tingling resentment which stretched the moment with conflict. It did not bring the blood to her cheeks, but it sent it away from her lips. She controlled herself by the help of an inward defiance, and without other sign of emotion than this lip-paleness turned to her play. But Deronda's gaze seemed to have acted as an evil eye. Her stake was gone. No matter; she had been winning ever since she took to roulette with a few napoleons at command, and had a considerable reserve. She had begun to believe in her luck, others had begun to believe in it: she had visions of being followed by a _cortge_ who would worship her as a goddess of luck and watch her play as a directing augury. Such things had been known of male gamblers; why should not a woman have a like supremacy? Her friend and chaperon who had not wished her to play at first was beginning to approve, only administering the prudent advice to stop at the right moment and carry money back to England--advice to which Gwendolen had replied that she cared for the excitement of play, not the winnings. On that supposition the present moment ought to have made the flood-tide in her eager experience of gambling. Yet, when her next stake was swept away, she felt the orbits of her eyes getting hot, and the certainty she had (without looking) of that man still watching her was something like a pressure which begins to be torturing. The more reason to her why she should not flinch, but go on playing as if she were indifferent to loss or gain. Her friend touched her elbow and proposed that they should quit the table. For reply Gwendolen put ten louis on the same spot: she was in that mood of defiance in which the mind loses sight of any end beyond the satisfaction of enraged resistance; and with the puerile stupidity of a dominant impulse includes luck among its objects of defiance. Since she was not winning strikingly, the next best thing was to lose strikingly. She controlled her muscles, and showed no tremor of mouth or hands. Each time her stake was swept off she doubled it. Many were now watching her, but the sole observation she was conscious of was Deronda's, who, though she never looked toward him, she was sure had not moved away. Such a drama takes no long while to play out: development and catastrophe can often be measured by nothing clumsier than the moment-hand. \"Faites votre jeu, mesdames et messieurs,\" said the automatic voice of destiny from between the mustache and imperial of the croupier: and Gwendolen's arm was stretched to deposit her last poor heap of napoleons. \"Le jeu ne va plus,\" said destiny. And in five seconds Gwendolen turned from the table, but turned resolutely with her face toward Deronda and looked at him. There was a smile of irony in his eyes as their glances met; but it was at least better that he should have kept his attention fixed on her than that he disregarded her as one of an insect swarm who had no individual physiognomy. Besides, in spite of his superciliousness and irony, it was difficult to believe that he did not admire her spirit as well as her person: he was young, handsome, distinguished in appearance--not one of these ridiculous and dowdy Philistines who thought it incumbent on them to blight the gaming-table with a sour look of protest as they passed by it. The general conviction that we are admirable does not easily give way before a single negative; rather when any of Vanity's large family, male or female, find their performance received coldly, they are apt to believe that a little more of it will win over the unaccountable dissident. In Gwendolen's habits of mind it had been taken for granted that she knew what was admirable and that she herself was admired. This basis of her thinking had received a disagreeable concussion, and reeled a little, but was not easily to be overthrown.\nIn the evening the same room was more stiflingly heated, was brilliant with gas and with the costumes of ladies who floated their trains along it or were seated on the ottomans.\nThe Nereid in sea-green robes and silver ornaments, with a pale sea-green feather fastened in silver falling backward over her green hat and light brown hair, was Gwendolen Harleth. She was under the wing, or rather soared by the shoulder, of the lady who had sat by her at the roulette-table; and with them was a gentleman with a white mustache and clipped hair: solid-browed, stiff and German. They were walking about or standing to chat with acquaintances, and Gwendolen was much observed by the seated groups.\n\"A striking girl--that Miss Harleth--unlike others.\"\n\"Yes, she has got herself up as a sort of serpent now--all green and silver, and winds her neck about a little more than usual.\"\n\"Oh, she must always be doing something extraordinary. She is that kind of girl, I fancy. Do you think her pretty, Mr. Vandernoodt?\"\n\"Very. A man might risk hanging for her--I mean a fool might.\"\n\"You like a _nez retrouss_, then, and long narrow eyes?\"\n\"When they go with such an _ensemble_.\"\n\"The _ensemble du serpent_?\"\n\"If you will. Woman was tempted by a serpent; why not man?\"\n\"She is certainly very graceful; but she wants a tinge of color in her cheeks. It is a sort of Lamia beauty she has.\"\n\"On the contrary, I think her complexion one of her chief charms. It is a warm paleness; it looks thoroughly healthy. And that delicate nose with its gradual little upward curve is distracting. And then her mouth--there never was a prettier mouth, the lips curled backward so finely, eh, Mackworth?\"\n\"Think so? I cannot endure that sort of mouth. It looks so self-complacent, as if it knew its own beauty--the curves are too immovable. I like a mouth that trembles more.\"\n\"For my part, I think her odious,\" said a dowager. \"It is wonderful what unpleasant girls get into vogue. Who are these Langens? Does anybody know them?\"\n\"They are quite _comme il faut_. I have dined with them several times at the _Russie_. The baroness is English. Miss Harleth calls her cousin. The girl herself is thoroughly well-bred, and as clever as possible.\"\n\"Dear me! and the baron?\".\n\"A very good furniture picture.\"\n\"Your baroness is always at the roulette-table,\" said Mackworth. \"I fancy she has taught the girl to gamble.\"\n\"Oh, the old woman plays a very sober game; drops a ten-franc piece here and there. The girl is more headlong. But it is only a freak.\"\n\"I hear she has lost all her winnings to-day. Are they rich? Who knows?\"\n\"Ah, who knows? Who knows that about anybody?\" said Mr. Vandernoodt, moving off to join the Langens.\nThe remark that Gwendolen wound her neck about more than usual this evening was true. But it was not that she might carry out the serpent idea more completely: it was that she watched for any chance of seeing Deronda, so that she might inquire about this stranger, under whose measuring gaze she was still wincing. At last her opportunity came.\n\"Mr. Vandernoodt, you know everybody,\" said Gwendolen, not too eagerly, rather with a certain languor of utterance which she sometimes gave to her clear soprano. \"Who is that near the door?\"\n\"There are half a dozen near the door. Do you mean that old Adonis in the George the Fourth wig?\"\n\"No, no; the dark-haired young man on the right with the dreadful expression.\"\n\"Dreadful, do you call it? I think he is an uncommonly fine fellow.\"\n\"But who is he?\"\n\"He is lately come to our hotel with Sir Hugo Mallinger.\"\n\"Sir Hugo Mallinger?\"\n\"Yes. Do you know him?\"\n\"No.\" (Gwendolen colored slightly.) \"He has a place near us, but he never comes to it. What did you say was the name of that gentleman near the door?\"\n\"Deronda--Mr. Deronda.\"\n\"What a delightful name! Is he an Englishman?\"\n\"Yes. He is reported to be rather closely related to the baronet. You are interested in him?\"\n\"Yes. I think he is not like young men in general.\"\n\"And you don't admire young men in general?\"\n\"Not in the least. I always know what they will say. I can't at all guess what this Mr. Deronda would say. What _does_ he say?\"\n\"Nothing, chiefly. I sat with his party for a good hour last night on the terrace, and he never spoke--and was not smoking either. He looked bored.\"\n\"Another reason why I should like to know him. I am always bored.\"\n\"I should think he would be charmed to have an introduction. Shall I bring it about? Will you allow it, baroness?\"\n\"Why not?--since he is related to Sir Hugo Mallinger. It is a new _rle_ of yours, Gwendolen, to be always bored,\" continued Madame von Langen, when Mr. Vandernoodt had moved away. \"Until now you have always seemed eager about something from morning till night.\"\n\"That is just because I am bored to death. If I am to leave off play I must break my arm or my collar-bone. I must make something happen; unless you will go into Switzerland and take me up the Matterhorn.\"\n\"Perhaps this Mr. Deronda's acquaintance will do instead of the Matterhorn.\"\n\"Perhaps.\"\nBut Gwendolen did not make Deronda's acquaintance on this occasion. Mr. Vandernoodt did not succeed in bringing him up to her that evening, and when she re-entered her own room she found a letter recalling her home.","abridged":"Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was it that gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was good or evil dominant in it? Probably evil; or why was the effect that of unrest rather than of charm? Why did he feel forced to look at her again, against his wishes?\nShe who raised these questions in Daniel Deronda's mind was occupied in gambling. They were in one of those splendid resorts which are prepared for the pleasure of fashionable persons by means of heavy gilt mouldings, dark-coloured decor and chubby nudities.\nIt was a September afternoon, so that the atmosphere was well-brewed to a visible haze. There was deep stillness, broken only by a light rattle, a chink, a small sweeping sound, and an occasional monotone in French, such as might be expected to come from an automaton. Around two long tables were gathered two crowds of humans, all save one with their attention bent on the tables. The one exception was a melancholy little boy in fancy dress; with a blank face turned toward the doorway, he stood close behind a lady deeply engaged at the roulette-table.\nAbout this table fifty or sixty persons were assembled, many being mere spectators; except that one of them, usually a woman, might now and then put down a five-franc coin with a simpering air, just to see what the passion of gambling really was. Those who were absorbed in deeper play showed wide varieties of European type: Livonian and Spanish, Graeco-Italian and miscellaneous German, English aristocratic and English plebeian.\nHere certainly was a striking admission of human equality. The white bejewelled fingers of an English countess were very near touching a bony, yellow, crab-like hand which belonged to someone not unlike a vulture. And where else would her ladyship have graciously consented to sit by that dry-lipped woman, prematurely old, withered like her artificial flowers, holding a shabby reticule, and occasionally putting in her mouth the point with which she pricked her card?\nThere too, very near the fair countess, was a respectable London tradesman, blonde and soft-handed, his sleek hair scrupulously parted, who liked to take his holidays fashionably, and who held that the only vice of gambling lay in losing. Standing close to his chair was a handsome Italian, calm and statuesque, reaching across him to place the first pile of napoleons from a new bagful. The pile was in half a minute pushed over to an old bewigged woman with eye-glasses pinching her nose.\nBut, while every single player differed markedly from every other, there was a certain uniform negativeness of expression which had the effect of a mask - as if they were all drugged into the same narrow monotony of action.\nDeronda, observing this scene of dull, gas-poisoned absorption, suddenly felt the moment become dramatic. His attention was arrested by a young lady standing nearby, who was the last to whom his eyes travelled. She was bending and speaking English to a middle-aged lady seated beside her: but the next instant she returned to her play, showing the full height of a graceful figure, and a face which might possibly be looked at without admiration, but could not be passed with indifference.\nInwardly debating her nature, Deronda looked at her with increased scrutiny rather than admiration. At one moment his eyes followed the movements of her figure, her arms and hands, as she bent forward to place her stake with an air of firm choice; and the next they returned to the face. She was a winner; and as her slender fingers, delicately gloved in pale-grey, were receiving the coins which had been pushed toward her, she looked around with a cold and neutral survey that seemed to conceal inward exultation.\nBut in the course of that survey her eyes met Deronda's and were held - how long? The darting sense that he was measuring her and looking down on her as an inferior, a specimen of a lower order, roused a tingling resentment. It did not bring the blood to her cheeks, but it sent it away from her lips. She controlled herself, and without other sign of emotion than these pale lips turned to her play.\nBut Deronda's gaze seemed to have acted as an evil eye. Her stake was gone. No matter; she had been winning from the start, and had a large reserve of coins. She had begun to believe in her luck, and so had others. Her friend and chaperon, who had not wished her to play at first, was starting to approve, only advising her to stop at the right moment and carry money back to England - to which Gwendolen replied that she cared for the excitement of play, not the winnings.\nYet, when her next stake was swept away, she felt her eyes getting hot, and the certainty she had (without looking) of that man still watching her was like a torturing pressure. The more reason why she should not flinch, but go on playing as if she were indifferent to loss or gain. Her friend touched her elbow and proposed that they should quit the table. For reply Gwendolen defiantly put ten louis on the same spot. Since she was not winning strikingly, the next best thing was to lose strikingly. Controlling her muscles, she showed no tremor of mouth or hands. Each time her stake was swept off she doubled it. Many were now watching her, but the sole observation she was conscious of was Deronda's, who, though she never looked toward him, she was sure had not moved away.\nSuch a drama takes no long while to play out. Within a few minutes, Gwendolen's arm was stretched to deposit her last poor heap of coins. And five seconds later she turned from the table, but turned resolutely with her face toward Deronda and looked at him. There was a smile of irony in his eyes as their glances met; but at least his attention had been fixed on her; that was better than to be disregarded.\nBesides, in spite of his irony, it was difficult for her to believe that he did not admire her spirit as well as her person. The general conviction that we are admirable does not easily give way. Gwendolen took it for granted that she knew what was admirable and that she herself was admired. This basis of her thinking had received a disagreeable blow, and reeled a little, but was not easily to be overthrown.\nThat evening the same room was more stiflingly heated, and brilliant with gas-lights and ladies' costumes.\nThe sea-nymph in sea-green robes and silver ornaments, with a pale green feather falling over her green hat and light brown hair, was Gwendolen Harleth. She was under the wing or rather soared by the shoulder of the lady who had sat by her at the roulette-table; and with them was a stiff, German gentleman with a white moustache. Gwendolen was much observed.\n\"A striking girl - that Miss Harleth.\"\n\"Yes, she has got herself up as a sort of serpent now, and winds her neck about a little more than usual.\"\n\"Oh, she must always be doing something extraordinary. She is that kind of girl, I fancy. Do you think her pretty, Mr. Vandernoodt?\"\n\"Very.\"\n\"You like an upturned nose, then, and long narrow eyes?\"\n\"When they go with such a costume.\"\n\"The serpent's?\"\n\"If you like. Woman was tempted by a serpent; why not man?\"\n\"She is certainly very graceful; but she needs colour in her cheeks.\"\n\"On the contrary, I think her complexion one of her chief charms. And that delicate nose with its little upward curve is distracting. And then her mouth - there never was a prettier mouth, eh, Mackworth?\"\n\"Think so? I cannot endure that sort of mouth. It looks so self-complacent, as if it knew its own beauty.\"\n\"For my part, I think her odious,\" said a dowager. \"It is amazing what unpleasant girls get into vogue. Who are these Langens? Does anybody know them?\"\n\"They are quite comme il faut. I have dined with them several times. The baroness is English, and Miss Harleth's cousin. The girl herself is thoroughly well-bred, and as clever as possible.\"\n\"Your baroness is always at the roulette-table,\" said Mackworth. \"I fancy she has taught the girl to gamble.\"\n\"Oh, the old woman plays a very sober game. The girl is more headlong. But it is only a freak.\"\n\"I hear she has lost all her winnings to-day. Are they rich?\"\n\"Who knows?\" said Mr. Vandernoodt, moving off to join the Langens.\nIt was true that Gwendolen wound her neck about more than usual this evening. This was because she watched for Deronda. She was still wincing under his measuring gaze. At last her opportunity came.\n\"Mr. Vandernoodt, you know everybody,\" said Gwendolen, not too eagerly, but rather with a certain languor. \"Who is that near the door? I mean the dark-haired young man with the dreadful expression.\"\n\"Dreadful, do you call it? I think he is an uncommonly fine fellow.\"\n\"But who is he?\"\n\"He is lately come to our hotel with Sir Hugo Mallinger.\"\n\"Sir Hugo Mallinger?\"\n\"Yes. Do you know him?\"\n\"No.\" (Gwendolen coloured slightly.) \"He has a place near us, but he never comes to it. What did you say was the name of that gentleman?\"\n\"Mr. Deronda.\"\n\"What a delightful name! Is he an Englishman?\"\n\"Yes. He is reported to be rather closely related to the baronet. You are interested in him?\"\n\"Yes. I think he is not like young men in general.\"\n\"And you don't admire young men in general?\"\n\"Not in the least. I always know what they will say. I can't at all guess what this Mr. Deronda would say. What does he say?\"\n\"Nothing, chiefly. I sat with his party for an hour last night, and he never spoke. He looked bored.\"\n\"Another reason why I should like to know him. I am always bored.\"\n\"I should think he would be charmed to have an introduction. Shall I bring it about? Will you allow it, baroness?\"\n\"Why not? - since he is related to Sir Hugo Mallinger. It is a new role of yours, Gwendolen, to be always bored,\" continued Madame von Langen, when Mr. Vandernoodt had moved away. \"Until now you have always seemed eager about something all the time.\"\n\"That is just because I am bored to death. If I am to leave off gambling I must make something happen; unless you will go into Switzerland and take me up the Matterhorn.\"\n\"Perhaps this Mr. Deronda's acquaintance will do instead of the Matterhorn.\"\n\"Perhaps.\"\nBut Gwendolen did not make Deronda's acquaintance on this occasion. Mr. Vandernoodt did not succeed in bringing him to her that evening, and when she re-entered her own room she found a letter recalling her home.","book":"Daniel Deronda","chapter":"Book 1 - THE SPOILED CHILD | Chapter 1"}
{"original":"About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income. All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match, and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it. She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation; and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss Frances quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage. But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them. Miss Ward, at the end of half a dozen years, found herself obliged to be attached to the Rev. Mr. Norris, a friend of her brother-in-law, with scarcely any private fortune, and Miss Frances fared yet worse. Miss Ward's match, indeed, when it came to the point, was not contemptible: Sir Thomas being happily able to give his friend an income in the living of Mansfield; and Mr. and Mrs. Norris began their career of conjugal felicity with very little less than a thousand a year. But Miss Frances married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a lieutenant of marines, without education, fortune, or connexions, did it very thoroughly. She could hardly have made a more untoward choice. Sir Thomas Bertram had interest, which, from principle as well as pride-from a general wish of doing right, and a desire of seeing all that were connected with him in situations of respectability, he would have been glad to exert for the advantage of Lady Bertram's sister; but her husband's profession was such as no interest could reach; and before he had time to devise any other method of assisting them, an absolute breach between the sisters had taken place. It was the natural result of the conduct of each party, and such as a very imprudent marriage almost always produces. To save herself from useless remonstrance, Mrs. Price never wrote to her family on the subject till actually married. Lady Bertram, who was a woman of very tranquil feelings, and a temper remarkably easy and indolent, would have contented herself with merely giving up her sister, and thinking no more of the matter; but Mrs. Norris had a spirit of activity, which could not be satisfied till she had written a long and angry letter to Fanny, to point out the folly of her conduct, and threaten her with all its possible ill consequences. Mrs. Price, in her turn, was injured and angry; and an answer, which comprehended each sister in its bitterness, and bestowed such very disrespectful reflections on the pride of Sir Thomas as Mrs. Norris could not possibly keep to herself, put an end to all intercourse between them for a considerable period.\nTheir homes were so distant, and the circles in which they moved so distinct, as almost to preclude the means of ever hearing of each other's existence during the eleven following years, or, at least, to make it very wonderful to Sir Thomas that Mrs. Norris should ever have it in her power to tell them, as she now and then did, in an angry voice, that Fanny had got another child. By the end of eleven years, however, Mrs. Price could no longer afford to cherish pride or resentment, or to lose one connexion that might possibly assist her. A large and still increasing family, an husband disabled for active service, but not the less equal to company and good liquor, and a very small income to supply their wants, made her eager to regain the friends she had so carelessly sacrificed; and she addressed Lady Bertram in a letter which spoke so much contrition and despondence, such a superfluity of children, and such a want of almost everything else, as could not but dispose them all to a reconciliation. She was preparing for her ninth lying-in; and after bewailing the circumstance, and imploring their countenance as sponsors to the expected child, she could not conceal how important she felt they might be to the future maintenance of the eight already in being. Her eldest was a boy of ten years old, a fine spirited fellow, who longed to be out in the world; but what could she do? Was there any chance of his being hereafter useful to Sir Thomas in the concerns of his West Indian property? No situation would be beneath him; or what did Sir Thomas think of Woolwich? or how could a boy be sent out to the East?\nThe letter was not unproductive. It re-established peace and kindness. Sir Thomas sent friendly advice and professions, Lady Bertram dispatched money and baby-linen, and Mrs. Norris wrote the letters.\nSuch were its immediate effects, and within a twelvemonth a more important advantage to Mrs. Price resulted from it. Mrs. Norris was often observing to the others that she could not get her poor sister and her family out of her head, and that, much as they had all done for her, she seemed to be wanting to do more; and at length she could not but own it to be her wish that poor Mrs. Price should be relieved from the charge and expense of one child entirely out of her great number. \"What if they were among them to undertake the care of her eldest daughter, a girl now nine years old, of an age to require more attention than her poor mother could possibly give? The trouble and expense of it to them would be nothing, compared with the benevolence of the action.\" Lady Bertram agreed with her instantly. \"I think we cannot do better,\" said she; \"let us send for the child.\"\nSir Thomas could not give so instantaneous and unqualified a consent. He debated and hesitated;-it was a serious charge;-a girl so brought up must be adequately provided for, or there would be cruelty instead of kindness in taking her from her family. He thought of his own four children, of his two sons, of cousins in love, etc.;-but no sooner had he deliberately begun to state his objections, than Mrs. Norris interrupted him with a reply to them all, whether stated or not.\n\"My dear Sir Thomas, I perfectly comprehend you, and do justice to the generosity and delicacy of your notions, which indeed are quite of a piece with your general conduct; and I entirely agree with you in the main as to the propriety of doing everything one could by way of providing for a child one had in a manner taken into one's own hands; and I am sure I should be the last person in the world to withhold my mite upon such an occasion. Having no children of my own, who should I look to in any little matter I may ever have to bestow, but the children of my sisters?-and I am sure Mr. Norris is too just-but you know I am a woman of few words and professions. Do not let us be frightened from a good deed by a trifle. Give a girl an education, and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without farther expense to anybody. A niece of ours, Sir Thomas, I may say, or at least of _yours_, would not grow up in this neighbourhood without many advantages. I don't say she would be so handsome as her cousins. I dare say she would not; but she would be introduced into the society of this country under such very favourable circumstances as, in all human probability, would get her a creditable establishment. You are thinking of your sons-but do not you know that, of all things upon earth, _that_ is the least likely to happen, brought up as they would be, always together like brothers and sisters? It is morally impossible. I never knew an instance of it. It is, in fact, the only sure way of providing against the connexion. Suppose her a pretty girl, and seen by Tom or Edmund for the first time seven years hence, and I dare say there would be mischief. The very idea of her having been suffered to grow up at a distance from us all in poverty and neglect, would be enough to make either of the dear, sweet-tempered boys in love with her. But breed her up with them from this time, and suppose her even to have the beauty of an angel, and she will never be more to either than a sister.\"\n\"There is a great deal of truth in what you say,\" replied Sir Thomas, \"and far be it from me to throw any fanciful impediment in the way of a plan which would be so consistent with the relative situations of each. I only meant to observe that it ought not to be lightly engaged in, and that to make it really serviceable to Mrs. Price, and creditable to ourselves, we must secure to the child, or consider ourselves engaged to secure to her hereafter, as circumstances may arise, the provision of a gentlewoman, if no such establishment should offer as you are so sanguine in expecting.\"\n\"I thoroughly understand you,\" cried Mrs. Norris, \"you are everything that is generous and considerate, and I am sure we shall never disagree on this point. Whatever I can do, as you well know, I am always ready enough to do for the good of those I love; and, though I could never feel for this little girl the hundredth part of the regard I bear your own dear children, nor consider her, in any respect, so much my own, I should hate myself if I were capable of neglecting her. Is not she a sister's child? and could I bear to see her want while I had a bit of bread to give her? My dear Sir Thomas, with all my faults I have a warm heart; and, poor as I am, would rather deny myself the necessaries of life than do an ungenerous thing. So, if you are not against it, I will write to my poor sister tomorrow, and make the proposal; and, as soon as matters are settled, _I_ will engage to get the child to Mansfield; _you_ shall have no trouble about it. My own trouble, you know, I never regard. I will send Nanny to London on purpose, and she may have a bed at her cousin the saddler's, and the child be appointed to meet her there. They may easily get her from Portsmouth to town by the coach, under the care of any creditable person that may chance to be going. I dare say there is always some reputable tradesman's wife or other going up.\"\nExcept to the attack on Nanny's cousin, Sir Thomas no longer made any objection, and a more respectable, though less economical rendezvous being accordingly substituted, everything was considered as settled, and the pleasures of so benevolent a scheme were already enjoyed. The division of gratifying sensations ought not, in strict justice, to have been equal; for Sir Thomas was fully resolved to be the real and consistent patron of the selected child, and Mrs. Norris had not the least intention of being at any expense whatever in her maintenance. As far as walking, talking, and contriving reached, she was thoroughly benevolent, and nobody knew better how to dictate liberality to others; but her love of money was equal to her love of directing, and she knew quite as well how to save her own as to spend that of her friends. Having married on a narrower income than she had been used to look forward to, she had, from the first, fancied a very strict line of economy necessary; and what was begun as a matter of prudence, soon grew into a matter of choice, as an object of that needful solicitude which there were no children to supply. Had there been a family to provide for, Mrs. Norris might never have saved her money; but having no care of that kind, there was nothing to impede her frugality, or lessen the comfort of making a yearly addition to an income which they had never lived up to. Under this infatuating principle, counteracted by no real affection for her sister, it was impossible for her to aim at more than the credit of projecting and arranging so expensive a charity; though perhaps she might so little know herself as to walk home to the Parsonage, after this conversation, in the happy belief of being the most liberal-minded sister and aunt in the world.\nWhen the subject was brought forward again, her views were more fully explained; and, in reply to Lady Bertram's calm inquiry of \"Where shall the child come to first, sister, to you or to us?\" Sir Thomas heard with some surprise that it would be totally out of Mrs. Norris's power to take any share in the personal charge of her. He had been considering her as a particularly welcome addition at the Parsonage, as a desirable companion to an aunt who had no children of her own; but he found himself wholly mistaken. Mrs. Norris was sorry to say that the little girl's staying with them, at least as things then were, was quite out of the question. Poor Mr. Norris's indifferent state of health made it an impossibility: he could no more bear the noise of a child than he could fly; if, indeed, he should ever get well of his gouty complaints, it would be a different matter: she should then be glad to take her turn, and think nothing of the inconvenience; but just now, poor Mr. Norris took up every moment of her time, and the very mention of such a thing she was sure would distract him.\n\"Then she had better come to us,\" said Lady Bertram, with the utmost composure. After a short pause Sir Thomas added with dignity, \"Yes, let her home be in this house. We will endeavour to do our duty by her, and she will, at least, have the advantage of companions of her own age, and of a regular instructress.\"\n\"Very true,\" cried Mrs. Norris, \"which are both very important considerations; and it will be just the same to Miss Lee whether she has three girls to teach, or only two-there can be no difference. I only wish I could be more useful; but you see I do all in my power. I am not one of those that spare their own trouble; and Nanny shall fetch her, however it may put me to inconvenience to have my chief counsellor away for three days. I suppose, sister, you will put the child in the little white attic, near the old nurseries. It will be much the best place for her, so near Miss Lee, and not far from the girls, and close by the housemaids, who could either of them help to dress her, you know, and take care of her clothes, for I suppose you would not think it fair to expect Ellis to wait on her as well as the others. Indeed, I do not see that you could possibly place her anywhere else.\"\nLady Bertram made no opposition.\n\"I hope she will prove a well-disposed girl,\" continued Mrs. Norris, \"and be sensible of her uncommon good fortune in having such friends.\"\n\"Should her disposition be really bad,\" said Sir Thomas, \"we must not, for our own children's sake, continue her in the family; but there is no reason to expect so great an evil. We shall probably see much to wish altered in her, and must prepare ourselves for gross ignorance, some meanness of opinions, and very distressing vulgarity of manner; but these are not incurable faults; nor, I trust, can they be dangerous for her associates. Had my daughters been _younger_ than herself, I should have considered the introduction of such a companion as a matter of very serious moment; but, as it is, I hope there can be nothing to fear for _them_, and everything to hope for _her_, from the association.\"\n\"That is exactly what I think,\" cried Mrs. Norris, \"and what I was saying to my husband this morning. It will be an education for the child, said I, only being with her cousins; if Miss Lee taught her nothing, she would learn to be good and clever from _them_.\"\n\"I hope she will not tease my poor pug,\" said Lady Bertram; \"I have but just got Julia to leave it alone.\"\n\"There will be some difficulty in our way, Mrs. Norris,\" observed Sir Thomas, \"as to the distinction proper to be made between the girls as they grow up: how to preserve in the minds of my _daughters_ the consciousness of what they are, without making them think too lowly of their cousin; and how, without depressing her spirits too far, to make her remember that she is not a _Miss Bertram_. I should wish to see them very good friends, and would, on no account, authorise in my girls the smallest degree of arrogance towards their relation; but still they cannot be equals. Their rank, fortune, rights, and expectations will always be different. It is a point of great delicacy, and you must assist us in our endeavours to choose exactly the right line of conduct.\"\nMrs. Norris was quite at his service; and though she perfectly agreed with him as to its being a most difficult thing, encouraged him to hope that between them it would be easily managed.\nIt will be readily believed that Mrs. Norris did not write to her sister in vain. Mrs. Price seemed rather surprised that a girl should be fixed on, when she had so many fine boys, but accepted the offer most thankfully, assuring them of her daughter's being a very well-disposed, good-humoured girl, and trusting they would never have cause to throw her off. She spoke of her farther as somewhat delicate and puny, but was sanguine in the hope of her being materially better for change of air. Poor woman! she probably thought change of air might agree with many of her children.","abridged":"About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with a handsome house and large income. She had two sisters to benefit from her elevation; but while Miss Ward and Miss Frances were thought to be quite as handsome as Miss Maria, there are not so many rich men in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them. Miss Ward, after half a dozen years, found herself obliged to be married to the Rev. Mr. Norris, a friend of her brother-in-law, with scarcely any private fortune, and Miss Frances fared yet worse.\nMiss Ward's match was not contemptible: Sir Thomas was happily able to give his friend an income in the living of Mansfield. But Miss Frances married, as they say, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a lieutenant of marines, without education, fortune, or connexions, did it very thoroughly.\nSir Thomas Bertram, having a general wish of doing right, and a desire of seeing those connected with him respectably situated, would have gladly used his influence for Lady Bertram's sister; but her husband's profession was such as no influence could reach. Before he could devise any method of assisting them, an absolute breach between the sisters had taken place.\nIt was such as a very imprudent marriage almost always produces. To save herself from remonstrance, Mrs. Price never wrote to her family about her marriage till actually married. Lady Bertram, a woman of tranquil feelings and an easy temper, would have contented herself with merely giving up her sister, and thinking no more of it; but Mrs. Norris could not be satisfied till she had written a long and angry letter to Fanny, to point out the folly of her conduct.\nMrs. Price, in her turn, was injured and angry; and her bitter, disrespectful answer, which Mrs. Norris could not possibly keep to herself, put an end to all intercourse between them for a long period. They hardly heard of each other during the next eleven years; and Sir Thomas was surprised that Mrs. Norris should ever have it in her power to tell them, as she now and then did, in an angry voice, that Fanny had got another child.\nBy the end of eleven years, however, Mrs. Price could no longer afford to cherish resentment, or to lose a connexion that might assist her. A large family, an husband disabled for active service but still equal to good liquor, and a very small income, made her eager to regain her friends; and she sent Lady Bertram a letter which spoke of so much contrition, such a superfluity of children, and such a want of almost everything else, as could only lead to a reconciliation. She was preparing for the arrival of her ninth child; and could not conceal how important she felt her relatives might be to the maintenance of the other eight. Her eldest was a boy of ten years, a fine spirited fellow, who longed to be out in the world. Was there any chance of his being useful to Sir Thomas in the concerns of his West Indian property? or elsewhere?\nThe letter re-established peace and kindness. Sir Thomas sent friendly advice, Lady Bertram dispatched money and baby-linen, and Mrs. Norris wrote the letters.\nWithin a year a more important advantage to Mrs. Price resulted from it. Mrs. Norris was often observing to the others that she could not get her poor sister out of her head; and at length she owned it to be her wish that poor Mrs. Price should be relieved from the expense of one child entirely. \"What if they were to undertake the care of her eldest daughter, a girl now nine years old? The trouble would be nothing, compared with the benevolence of the action.\" Lady Bertram agreed with her instantly. \"I think we cannot do better,\" said she; \"let us send for the child.\"\nSir Thomas could not consent so swiftly. He hesitated;-it was a serious charge;-the girl must be adequately provided for, or it would be cruel to take her from her family. He thought of his own four children, of his two sons, of cousins in love, etc.;-but no sooner had he begun to state his objections, than Mrs. Norris interrupted him.\n\"My dear Sir Thomas, I perfectly comprehend you, and I entirely agree with you in the main. Do not let us be frightened from a good deed by a trifle. Give a girl an education, and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one she has the means of settling well, without farther expense to anybody. A niece of yours, Sir Thomas, would grow up here with many advantages. I dare say she would not be so handsome as her cousins; but she would probably make a creditable marriage. You are thinking of your sons-but that is unlikely to happen, brought up as they would be like brothers and sisters. It is, in fact, a sure way of providing against the connexion. Suppose her a pretty girl, and seen by Tom or Edmund for the first time seven years hence, and I dare say there would be mischief. But bring her up with them now, and she will never be more to either than a sister.\"\n\"There is much truth in what you say,\" replied Sir Thomas. \"I only meant to observe that we must provide for the child as a gentlewoman, if no such marriage should occur.\"\n\"I thoroughly understand you,\" cried Mrs. Norris, \"you are everything that is generous and considerate. I am always ready to do whatever I can for those I love; and, though I could never feel for this little girl the hundredth part of the regard I bear your own dear children, I should hate myself if I neglected her. I have a warm heart; and, poor as I am, would rather deny myself the necessaries of life than be ungenerous. So, if you are not against it, I will write to my poor sister tomorrow, and make the proposal; and I will engage to get the child to Mansfield; you shall have no trouble. My own trouble, you know, I never regard. I will send Nanny to London, and she may have a bed at her cousin the saddler's, and the child may meet her there. They may easily get the child from Portsmouth to London by the coach, under the care of any creditable person that may chance to be going. I dare say there is always some tradesman's wife or other going up.\"\nA more respectable, though less economical rendezvous being substituted, everything was settled. Sir Thomas was resolved to be the real patron of the child, and Mrs. Norris had not the least intention of being at any expense whatever in her maintenance. Nobody knew better how to dictate liberality to others; but she knew quite as well how to save her own money as to spend that of her friends. Having married on a narrow income, she had, from the first, fancied very strict economy necessary; and what began as prudence, soon grew into a matter of choice. With no family to provide for, there was nothing to impede her frugality; yet she walked home to the Parsonage, after this conversation, in the happy belief of being the most generous sister and aunt in the world.\nWhen the subject was raised again, her views were more fully explained. In reply to Lady Bertram's calm inquiry of \"Where shall the child come to first, sister, to you or to us?\" Sir Thomas heard with some surprise that it would be totally out of Mrs. Norris's power to take any share in the personal charge of her. He had been considering her as a welcome companion to Mrs Norris at the Parsonage; but he found himself mistaken. Mrs. Norris was sorry to say that the little girl's staying with them was quite out of the question. Poor Mr. Norris's indifferent state of health made it an impossibility. Poor Mr. Norris took up every moment of her time.\n\"Then she had better come to us,\" said Lady Bertram, with composure. Sir Thomas added, \"Yes, let her home be in this house. She will, at least, have companions of her own age, and a regular instructress.\"\n\"Very true,\" cried Mrs. Norris. \"I only wish I could be more useful; but you see I do all in my power. Nanny shall fetch her, however it may inconvenience me to have my chief counsellor away for three days. I suppose, sister, you will put the child in the little white attic. It will be the best place for her, close by the housemaids, who could help to dress her, you know, and take care of her clothes.\"\nLady Bertram made no opposition.\n\"I hope she will prove a well-disposed girl,\" continued Mrs. Norris.\n\"Should her disposition be really bad,\" said Sir Thomas, \"we must not, for our own children's sake, continue her in the family; but there is no reason to expect so great an evil. We must prepare ourselves for gross ignorance, some meanness of opinions, and distressing vulgarity of manner; but these are not incurable faults; nor can they be dangerous for her associates. Had my daughters been younger, I should have considered the introduction of such a companion as a very serious matter; but, as it is, there can be nothing to fear for them, and everything to hope for her, from the association.\"\n\"That is exactly what I think,\" cried Mrs. Norris, \"It will be an education for the child, only being with her cousins; if Miss Lee taught her nothing, she would learn to be good and clever from them.\"\n\"I hope she will not tease my poor pug,\" said Lady Bertram; \"I have only just got Julia to leave it alone.\"\n\"There will be some difficulty, Mrs. Norris,\" observed Sir Thomas, \"as to the distinction to be made between the girls as they grow up: how to preserve in the minds of my daughters the consciousness of what they are, without making them think too lowly of their cousin; and how, without depressing her spirits too far, to make her remember that she is not a Miss Bertram. I should wish to see them very good friends, and would not authorise in my girls any arrogance towards their relation; but they cannot be equals. It is a point of great delicacy, and you must assist us in our endeavours to choose exactly the right line of conduct.\"\nMrs. Norris was quite at his service, and encouraged him to hope that between them it would be easily managed.\nMrs. Norris did not write to her sister in vain. Mrs. Price seemed surprised that a girl should be fixed on, when she had so many fine boys, but accepted the offer thankfully, assuring them of her daughter's being a very well-disposed, good-humoured girl. She spoke of her as somewhat delicate, but hoped of her being better for change of air. Poor woman! she probably thought change of air might agree with many of her children.","book":"Mansfield Park","chapter":"Chapter 1"}
{"original":"\"Wooed and married and a'.\"\n\"Edith!\" said Margaret, gently, \"Edith!\"\nBut as Margaret half suspected, Edith had fallen asleep. She lay curled up on the sofa in the back drawing-room in Harley Street looking very lovely in her white muslin and blue ribbons. If Titania had ever been dressed in white muslin and blue ribbons, and had fallen asleep on a crimson damask sofa in a back drawing-room, Edith might have been taken for her. Margaret was struck afresh by her cousin's beauty. They had grown up together from childhood, and all along Edith had been remarked upon by every one, except Margaret, for her prettiness; but Margaret had never thought about it until the last few days, when the prospect of soon losing her companion seemed to give force to every sweet quality and charm which Edith possessed. They had been talking about wedding dresses and wedding ceremonies; and Captain Lennox, and what he had told Edith about her future life at Corfu, where his regiment was stationed; and the difficulty of keeping a piano in good tune (a difficulty which Edith seemed to consider as one of the most formidable that could befall her in her married life), and what gowns she should want in the visits to Scotland, which would immediately succeed her marriage; but the whispered tone had latterly become more drowsy; and Margaret, after a pause of a few minutes, found, as she fancied, that in spite of the buzz in the next room, Edith had rolled herself up into a soft ball of muslin and ribbon, and silken curls, and gone off into a peaceful little after-dinner nap.\nMargaret had been on the point of telling her cousin of some of the plans and visions which she entertained as to her future life in the country parsonage, where her father and mother lived; and where her bright holidays had always been passed, though for the last ten years her aunt Shaw's house had been considered as her home. But in default of a listener, she had to brood over the change in her life silently as heretofore. It was a happy brooding, although tinged with regret at being separated for an indefinite time from her gentle aunt and dear cousin. As she thought of the delight of filling the important post of only daughter in Helstone parsonage, pieces of the conversation out of the next room came upon her ears. Her aunt Shaw was talking to the five or six ladies who had been dining there, and whose husbands were still in the dining-room. They were the familiar acquaintances of the house; neighbours whom Mrs. Shaw called friends, because she happened to dine with them more frequently than with any other people, and because if she or Edith wanted anything from them, or they from her, they did not scruple to make a call at each other's houses before luncheon. These ladies and their husbands were invited in their capacity of friends, to eat a farewell dinner in honour of Edith's approaching marriage. Edith had rather objected to this arrangement, for Captain Lennox was expected to arrive by a late train this very evening; but, although she was a spoiled child, she was too careless and idle to have a very strong will of her own, and gave way when she found that her mother had absolutely ordered those extra delicacies of the season which are always supposed to be efficacious against immoderate grief at farewell dinners. She contented herself by leaning back in her chair, merely playing with the food on her plate, and looking grave and absent; while all around her were enjoying the mots of Mr. Grey, the gentleman who always took the bottom of the table at Mrs. Shaw's dinner parties, and asked Edith to give them some music in the drawing-room. Mr. Grey was particularly agreeable over this farewell dinner, and the gentlemen staid downstairs longer than usual. It was very well they did--to judge from the fragments of conversation which Margaret overheard.\n\"I suffered too much myself; not that I was not extremely happy with the poor dear General, but still disparity of age is a drawback; one that I was resolved Edith should not have to encounter. Of course, without any maternal partiality, I foresaw that the dear child was likely to marry early; indeed, I had often said that I was sure she would be married before she was nineteen. I had quite prophetic feeling when Captain Lennox\"--and here the voice dropped into a whisper, but Margaret could easily supply the blank. The course of true love in Edith's case had run remarkably smooth. Mrs. Shaw had given way to the presentiment, as she expressed it; and had rather urged on the marriage, although it was below the expectations which many of Edith's acquaintances had formed for her, a young and pretty heiress. But Mrs. Shaw said that her only child should marry for love,--and sighed emphatically, as if love had not been her motive for marrying the General. Mrs. Shaw enjoyed the romance of the present engagement rather more than her daughter. Not but that Edith was very thoroughly and properly in love; still she would certainly have preferred a good house in Belgravia, to all the picturesqueness of the life which Captain Lennox described at Corfu. The very parts which made Margaret glow as she listened, Edith pretended to shiver and shudder at; partly for the pleasure she had in being coaxed out of her dislike by her fond lover, and partly because anything of a gipsy or make-shift life was really distasteful to her. Yet had any one come with a fine house, and a fine estate, and a fine title to boot, Edith would still have clung to Captain Lennox while the temptation lasted; when it was over, it is possible she might have had little qualms of ill-concealed regret that Captain Lennox could not have united in his person everything that was desirable. In this she was but her mother's child; who, after deliberately marrying General Shaw with no warmer feeling than respect for his character and establishment, was constantly, though quietly, bemoaning her hard lot in being united to one whom she could not love.\n\"I have spared no expense in her trousseau,\" were the next words Margaret heard. \"She has all the beautiful Indian shawls and scarfs the General gave to me, but which I shall never wear again.\"\n\"She is a lucky girl,\" replied another voice, which Margaret knew to be that of Mrs. Gibson, a lady who was taking a double interest in the conversation, from the fact of one of her daughters having been married within the last few weeks. \"Helen had set her heart upon an Indian shawl, but really when I found what an extravagant price was asked, I was obliged to refuse her. She will be quite envious when she hears of Edith having Indian shawls. What kind are they? Delhi? with the lovely little borders?\"\nMargaret heard her aunt's voice again, but this time it was as if she had raised herself up from her half-recumbent position, and were looking into the more dimly lighted back drawing-room. \"Edith! Edith!\" cried she; and then she sank as if wearied by the exertion. Margaret stepped forward.\n\"Edith is asleep, Aunt Shaw. Is it anything I can do?\"\nAll the ladies said \"poor child!\" on receiving this distressing intelligence about Edith; and the minute lap-dog in Mrs. Shaw's arms began to bark, as if excited by the burst of pity.\n\"Hush, Tiny! you naughty little girl! you will waken your mistress. It was only to ask Edith if she would tell Newton to bring down her shawls; perhaps you would go, Margaret dear?\"\nMargaret went up into the old nursery at the very top of the house, where Newton was busy getting up some laces which were required for the wedding. While Newton went (not without a muttered grumbling) to undo the shawls, which had already been exhibited four or five times that day, Margaret looked round upon the nursery; the first room in that house with which she had become familiar nine years ago, when she was brought, all untamed from the forest, to share the home, the play, and the lessons of her cousin Edith. She remembered the dark, dim look of the London nursery, presided over by an austere and ceremonious nurse, who was terribly particular about clean hands and torn frocks. She recollected the first tea up there--separate from her father and aunt, who were dining somewhere down below, an infinite depth of stairs; for unless she were up in the sky (the child thought), they must be deep down in the bowels of the earth. At home--before she came to live in Harley Street--her mother's dressing-room had been her nursery; and as they kept early hours in the country parsonage, Margaret had always had her meals with her father and mother. Oh! well did the tall stately girl of eighteen remember the tears shed with such wild passion of grief by the little girl of nine, as she hid her face under the bed-clothes in that first night; and how she was bidden not to cry by the nurse, because it would disturb Miss Edith; and how she had cried as bitterly, but more quietly, till her newly-seen, grand, pretty aunt had come softly upstairs with Mr. Hale to show him his little sleeping daughter. Then the little Margaret had hushed her sobs, and tried to lie quiet as if asleep, for fear of making her father unhappy by her grief, which she dared not express before her aunt, and which she rather thought it was wrong to feel at all after the long hoping, and planning, and contriving they had gone through at home, before her wardrobe could be arranged to suit her grander circumstances, and before papa could leave his parish to come up to London, even for a few days.\nNow she had got to love the old nursery, though it was but a dismantled place; and she looked all round with a kind of cat-like regret, at the idea of leaving it for ever in three days.\n\"Ah Newton!\" said she, \"I think we shall all be sorry to leave this dear old room.\"\n\"Indeed, miss, I shan't for one. My eyes are not so good as they were, and the light here is so bad that I can't see to mend laces except just at the window, where there's always a shocking draught--enough to give one one's death of cold.\"\n\"Well, I dare say you will have both good light and plenty of warmth at Naples. You must keep as much of your darning as you can till then. Thank you, Newton, I can take them down--you're busy.\"\nSo Margaret went down laden with shawls, and snuffing up their spicy Eastern smell. Her aunt asked her to stand as a sort of lay figure on which to display them, as Edith was still asleep. No one thought about it; but Margaret's tall, finely made figure, in the black silk dress which she was wearing as mourning for some distant relative of her father's, set off the long beautiful folds of the gorgeous shawls that would have half-smothered Edith. Margaret stood right under the chandelier, quite silent and passive, while her aunt adjusted the draperies. Occasionally, as she was turned round, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the chimney-piece, and smiled at her own appearance there--the familiar features in the usual garb of a princess. She touched the shawls gently as they hung around her, and took a pleasure in their soft feel and their brilliant colours, and rather liked to be dressed in such splendour--enjoying it much as a child would do, with a quiet pleased smile on her lips. Just then the door opened, and Mr. Henry Lennox was suddenly announced. Some of the ladies started back, as if half-ashamed of their feminine interest in dress. Mrs. Shaw held out her hand to the new-comer; Margaret stood perfectly still, thinking she might be yet wanted as a sort of block for the shawls; but looking at Mr. Lennox with a bright, amused face, as if sure of his sympathy in her sense of the ludicrousness at being thus surprised.\nHer aunt was so much absorbed in asking Mr. Henry Lennox--who had not been able to come to dinner--all sorts of questions about his brother the bridegroom, his sister the bridesmaid (coming with the Captain from Scotland for the occasion), and various other members of the Lennox family, that Margaret saw she was no more wanted as shawl-bearer, and devoted herself to the amusement of the other visitors, whom her aunt had for the moment forgotten. Almost immediately, Edith came in from the back drawing-room, winking and blinking her eyes at the stronger light, shaking back her slightly-ruffled curls, and altogether looking like the Sleeping Beauty just startled from her dreams. Even in her slumber she had instinctively felt that a Lennox was worth rousing herself for; and she had a multitude of questions to ask about dear Janet, the future, unseen sister-in-law, for whom she professed so much affection, that if Margaret had not been very proud she might have almost felt jealous of the mushroom rival. As Margaret sank rather more into the background on her aunt's joining the conversation, she saw Henry Lennox directing his look towards a vacant seat near her; and she knew perfectly well that as soon as Edith released him from her questioning, he would take possession of that chair. She had not been quite sure, from her aunt's rather confused account of his engagements, whether he would come that night; it was almost a surprise to see him; and now she was sure of a pleasant evening. He liked and disliked pretty nearly the same things that she did. Margaret's face was lightened up into an honest, open brightness. By-and-by he came. She received him with a smile which had not a tinge of shyness or self-consciousness in it.\n\"Well, I suppose you are all in the depth of business--ladies' business, I mean. Very different to my business, which is the real true law business. Playing with shawls is very different work to drawing up settlements.\"\n\"Ah, I knew how you would be amused to find us all so occupied in admiring finery. But really Indian shawls are very perfect things of their kind.\"\n\"I have no doubt they are. Their prices are very perfect, too. Nothing wanting.\"\nThe gentlemen came dropping in one by one, and the buzz and noise deepened in tone.\n\"This is your last dinner-party, is it not? There are no more before Thursday?\"\n\"No. I think after this evening we shall feel at rest, which I am sure I have not done for many weeks; at least, that kind of rest when the hands have nothing more to do, and all the arrangements are complete for an event which must occupy one's head and heart. I shall be glad to have time to think, and I am sure Edith will.\"\n\"I am not so sure about her, but I can fancy that you will. Whenever I have seen you lately, you have been carried away by a whirlwind of some other person's making.\"\n\"Yes,\" said Margaret, rather sadly, remembering the never-ending commotion about trifles that had been going on for more than a month past: \"I wonder if a marriage must always be preceded by what you call a whirlwind, or whether in some cases there might not rather be a calm and peaceful time just before it.\"\n\"Cinderella's godmother ordering the trousseau, the wedding-breakfast, writing the notes of invitation, for instance,\" said Mr. Lennox, laughing.\n\"But are all these quite necessary troubles?\" asked Margaret, looking up straight at him for an answer. A sense of indescribable weariness of all the arrangements for a pretty effect, in which Edith had been busied as supreme authority for the last six weeks, oppressed her just now; and she really wanted some one to help her to a few pleasant, quiet ideas connected with a marriage.\n\"Oh, of course,\" he replied with a change to gravity in his tone. \"There are forms and ceremonies to be gone through, not so much to satisfy oneself, as to stop the world's mouth, without which stoppage there would be very little satisfaction in life. But how would you have a wedding arranged?\"\n\"Oh, I have never thought much about it; only I should like it to be a very fine summer morning; and I should like to walk to church through the shade of trees; and not to have so many bridesmaids, and to have no wedding-breakfast. I dare say I am resolving against the very things that have given me the most trouble just now.\"\n\"No, I don't think you are. The idea of stately simplicity accords well with your character.\"\nMargaret did not quite like this speech; she winced away from it more, from remembering former occasions on which he had tried to lead her into a discussion (in which he took the complimentary part) about her own character and ways of going on. She cut his speech rather short by saying:\n\"It is natural for me to think of Helstone church, and the walk to it, rather than of driving up to a London church in the middle of a paved street.\"\n\"Tell me about Helstone. You have never described it to me. I should like to have some idea of the place you will be living in, when ninety-six Harley Street will be looking dingy and dirty, and dull, and shut up. Is Helstone a village, or a town, in the first place?\"\n\"Oh, only a hamlet; I don't think I could call it a village at all. There is the church and a few houses near it on the green--cottages, rather--with roses growing all over them.\"\n\"And flowering all the year round, especially at Christmas--make your picture complete,\" said he.\n\"No,\" replied Margaret, somewhat annoyed, \"I am not making a picture. I am trying to describe Helstone as it really is. You should not have said that.\"\n\"I am penitent,\" he answered. \"Only it really sounded like a village in a tale rather than in real life.\"\n\"And so it is,\" replied Margaret, eagerly. \"All the other places in England that I have seen seem so hard and prosaic-looking, after the New Forest. Helstone is like a village in a poem--in one of Tennyson's poems. But I won't try and describe it any more. You would only laugh at me if I told you what I think of it--what it really is.\"\n\"Indeed, I would not. But I see you are going to be very resolved. Well, then, tell me that which I should like still better to know: what the parsonage is like.\"\n\"Oh, I can't describe my home. It is home, and I can't put its charm into words.\"\n\"I submit. You are rather severe to-night, Margaret.\"\n\"How?\" said she, turning her large soft eyes round full upon him. \"I did not know I was.\"\n\"Why, because I made an unlucky remark, you will neither tell me what Helstone is like, nor will you say anything about your home, though I have told you how much I want to hear about both, the latter especially.\"\n\"But indeed I cannot tell you about my own home. I don't quite think it is a thing to be talked about, unless you knew it.\"\n\"Well, then\"--pausing for a moment--\"tell me what you do there. Here you read, or have lessons, or otherwise improve your mind, till the middle of the day; take a walk before lunch, go a drive with your aunt after, and have some kind of engagement in the evening. There, now fill up your day at Helstone. Shall you ride, drive, or walk?\"\n\"Walk, decidedly. We have no horse, not even for papa. He walks to the very extremity of his parish. The walks are so beautiful, it would be a shame to drive--almost a shame to ride.\"\n\"Shall you garden much? That, I believe, is a proper employment for young ladies in the country.\"\n\"I don't know. I am afraid I shan't like such hard work.\"\n\"Archery parties--pic-nics--race balls--hunt balls?\"\n\"Oh no!\" said she, laughing. \"Papa's living is very small; and even if we were near such things, I doubt if I should go to them.\"\n\"I see, you won't tell me anything. You will only tell me that you are not going to do this and that. Before the vacation ends, I think I shall pay you a call, and see what you really do employ yourself in.\"\n\"I hope you will. Then you will see for yourself how beautiful Helstone is. Now I must go. Edith is sitting down to play, and I just know enough of music to turn over the leaves for her; and, besides, Aunt Shaw won't like us to talk.\"\nEdith played brilliantly. In the middle of the piece the door half-opened, and Edith saw Captain Lennox hesitating whether to come in. She threw down her music, and rushed out of the room, leaving Margaret standing confused and blushing to explain to the astonished guests what vision had shown itself to cause Edith's sudden flight. Captain Lennox had come earlier than was expected; or was it really so late? They looked at their watches, were duly shocked, and took their leave.\nThen Edith came back, glowing with pleasure, half-shyly, half-proudly leading in her tall handsome Captain. His brother shook hands with him, and Mrs. Shaw welcomed him in her gentle kindly way, which had always something plaintive in it, arising from the long habit of considering herself a victim to an uncongenial marriage. Now that, the General being gone, she had every good of life, with as few drawbacks as possible, she had been rather perplexed to find an anxiety, if not a sorrow. She had, however, of late settled upon her own health as a source of apprehension; she had a nervous little cough whenever she thought about it; and some complaisant doctor ordered her just what she desired--a winter in Italy. Mrs. Shaw had as strong wishes as most people, but she never liked to do anything from the open and acknowledged motive of her own good will and pleasure; she preferred being compelled to gratify herself by some other person's command or desire. She really did persuade herself that she was submitting to some hard external necessity; and thus she was able to moan and complain in her soft manner, all the time she was in reality doing just what she liked.\nIt was in this way she began to speak of her own journey to Captain Lennox, who assented, as in duty bound, to all his future mother-in-law said, while his eyes sought Edith, who was busying herself in re-arranging the tea-table, and ordering up all sorts of good things in spite of his assurances that he had dined within the last two hours.\nMr. Henry Lennox stood leaning against the chimney-piece, amused with the family scene. He was close by his handsome brother; he was the plain one in a singularly good-looking family; but his face was intelligent, keen, and mobile; and now and then Margaret wondered what it was that he could be thinking about, while he kept silence, but was evidently observing, with an interest that was slightly sarcastic, all that Edith and she were doing. The sarcastic feeling was called out by Mrs. Shaw's conversation with his brother; it was separate from the interest which was excited by what he saw. He thought it a pretty sight to see the two cousins so busy in their little arrangements about the table. Edith chose to do most herself. She was in a humour to enjoy showing her lover how well she could behave as a soldier's wife. She found out that the water in the urn was cold, and ordered up the great kitchen tea-kettle; the only consequence of which was that when she met it at the door, and tried to carry it in, it was too heavy for her, and she came in pouting, with a black mark on her muslin gown, and a little round white hand indented by the handle, which she took to show to Captain Lennox, just like a hurt child, and, of course, the remedy was the same in both cases. Margaret's quickly-adjusted spirit-lamp was the most efficacious contrivance, though not so like the gypsy-encampment which Edith, in some of her moods, chose to consider the nearest resemblance to a barrack-life.\nAfter this evening all was bustle till the wedding was over.","abridged":"'Edith!' said Margaret gently, 'Edith!'\nBut, as Margaret half suspected, Edith had fallen asleep. She lay curled up on the sofa in the drawing-room in Harley Street, looking very lovely in her white muslin and blue ribbons. If Titania had ever been dressed in white muslin and blue ribbons, and had fallen asleep on a crimson sofa in a drawing-room, Edith might have been taken for her. Margaret was struck afresh by her cousin's beauty.\nThey had grown up together from childhood. Edith had always been noted for prettiness; but Margaret had never thought about it until recently, when the prospect of soon losing her companion gave force to Edith's charms. They had been talking about her wedding dress, and Captain Lennox, and Edith's future life at Corfu, where his regiment was stationed; and the difficulty of keeping a piano in good tune (a difficulty which Edith seemed to consider as one of the most formidable that could befall her in her married life.) But the whispers had become drowsy; and Margaret, after a few minutes, found that in spite of the buzz in the next room, Edith had rolled herself up into a soft ball of muslin and ribbon, and gone off into a peaceful little after-dinner nap.\nMargaret had been on the point of telling her cousin of her plans for her own future life, in the country parsonage where her father and mother lived; and where her bright holidays had always been passed, though for the last ten years her aunt Shaw's house had been her home. She brooded silently over the coming change in her life. It was a happy brooding, although tinged with regret at being separated from her gentle aunt and cousin. As she thought of the delight of filling the important post of only daughter in Helstone parsonage, pieces of the conversation from the next room came to her ears.\nHer aunt Shaw was talking to the five or six ladies who had dined there, and whose husbands were still in the dining-room. They were neighbours whom Mrs. Shaw called friends, because she happened to dine with them more frequently than with any other people. They had been invited to a farewell dinner in honour of Edith's approaching marriage. Edith had objected, for Captain Lennox was expected to arrive by a late train that very evening; but, although she was a spoiled child, she was too careless and idle to have a very strong will, and gave way when she heard of the delicacies which her mother had ordered. She had contented herself by playing with the food on her plate, and looking grave and absent. Now, while Edith slept, Margaret overheard her aunt's conversation.\n'I suffered myself; of course I was happy with the poor dear General, but still disparity of age is a drawback; one that I was resolved Edith should not have. I foresaw that the dear child was likely to marry early; I had quite a prophetic feeling when Captain Lennox' - and here the voice dropped into a whisper, but Margaret could easily supply the blank.\nThe course of true love in Edith's case had run remarkably smooth. Mrs. Shaw had urged on the marriage, although it was below some people's expectations for the young and pretty heiress. But Mrs. Shaw said that her only child should marry for love - and sighed emphatically, as if love had not been her motive for marrying the General.\nShe enjoyed the romance of the engagement rather more than her daughter. Although Edith was very thoroughly and properly in love, still she would have preferred a good house in Belgravia to the picturesque life which Captain Lennox described at Corfu. Anything of a gipsy or make-shift life was really distasteful to her. Yet had anyone come along with a fine house and a title, Edith would still have clung to Captain Lennox; though afterwards she might have had little qualms of ill-concealed regret. In this she was her mother's child. After deliberately marrying General Shaw with no warmer feeling than respect for his character and establishment, Mrs. Shaw was constantly, though quietly, bemoaning her hard lot in being united to one whom she could not love.\n'I have spared no expense in her trousseau,' were the next words Margaret heard. 'She has all the beautiful Indian shawls and scarfs the General gave me.'\n'She is a lucky girl,' replied another voice. 'What kind are they? Delhi?'\n'Edith! Edith!' called her aunt. Margaret stepped forward.\n'Edith is asleep, Aunt Shaw. Is it anything I can do?'\nAll the ladies said 'Poor child!' on receiving this distressing news about Edith; and the lap-dog in Mrs. Shaw's arms began to bark.\n'Hush, Tiny! you naughty girl! you will waken your mistress. It was only to ask Edith if she would tell Newton to bring down her shawls: perhaps you would go, Margaret dear?'\nMargaret went up into the old nursery at the top of the house, where Newton was busy sorting out some lace which was required for the wedding. While Newton went to find the shawls, Margaret looked round the nursery.\nIt was the first room in that house with which she had become familiar nine years ago, when she was brought, all untamed from the forest, to share the home, the play, and the lessons of her cousin Edith. She remembered the dark, dim look of the London nursery, presided over by an austere nurse, who was terribly particular about clean hands and torn frocks. She recollected the first tea up there - separate from her father and aunt, who were dining somewhere down an infinite depth of stairs. At home, Margaret had always had her meals with her father and mother.\nOh! well did the tall stately girl of eighteen remember the tears shed with such wild passion of grief by the little girl of nine, as she hid her face under the bed-clothes, that first night; and how she was told not to cry by the nurse, because it would disturb Miss Edith; and how she had cried more quietly, till her grand, pretty aunt had come softly upstairs with Mr. Hale to show him his little sleeping daughter. Then Margaret had hushed her sobs, and tried to lie as if asleep, for fear of making her father unhappy by her grief - which she rather thought it was wrong to feel after the planning and contriving they had gone through at home, before coming up to London.\nNow she had got to love the old nursery; and she looked round with regret at the idea of leaving it for ever.\n'Ah, Newton!' said she, 'We shall all be sorry to leave this dear old room.'\n'Indeed, miss, I shan't. My eyes are not so good as they were, and the light here is so bad that I can't see to darn except at the window, where there's always a shocking draught.'\n'Well, I dare say you will have both good light and warmth at Naples. You must keep your darning till then. Thank you, Newton, I can take them down.'\nSo Margaret went down laden with shawls. Her aunt asked her to stand as a model on which to display them, since Edith was still asleep. Margaret's tall figure set off the long folds of the gorgeous shawls that would have half-smothered Edith. She stood under the chandelier, quite silent and passive, while her aunt adjusted the draperies. Occasionally, as she was turned round, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and smiled at her own appearance there in the garb of a princess. She touched the shawls gently, and was enjoying their brilliant splendour as a child would do, when the door opened, and Mr. Henry Lennox was announced.\nSome of the ladies started back, as if ashamed of their feminine interest in dress. Mrs. Shaw held out her hand to the newcomer; Margaret stood perfectly still, thinking she might be yet wanted to model the shawls; but looking at Mr. Lennox with a bright, amused face, as if sure of his sympathy in her ludicrous situation.\nHer aunt became absorbed in asking Mr. Henry Lennox about his brother the bridegroom and various other members of the Lennox family; and Margaret saw she was no more wanted as shawl-bearer. She devoted herself to amusing the other visitors, whom her aunt had for the moment forgotten. Edith came in, blinking at the stronger light, shaking back her slightly-ruffled curls, and altogether looking like the Sleeping Beauty just startled from her dreams. A Lennox was worth rousing herself for; and she had questions to ask about her unseen future sister-in-law, for whom she professed so much affection that Margaret might have almost felt jealous.\nAs soon as Henry Lennox was released by Edith, he went to sit by Margaret. She had not been certain whether he would come that night; now she was sure of a pleasant evening. He liked and disliked pretty nearly the same things that she did. Her face lit up into an honest, open brightness, and she received him with a smile which had not a tinge of shyness or self-consciousness.\n'Well, I suppose you are all in the depths of ladies' business,' he said. 'Very different to my business of law. Playing with shawls is very different work to drawing up settlements.'\n'Ah, I knew you would be amused to find us all so occupied in admiring finery. But really, Indian shawls are very perfect things of their kind.'\n'No doubt. Their prices are very perfect, too. This is your last dinner-party, is it not? There are no more before Thursday?'\n'No. After this evening we shall feel at rest, which I have not done for many weeks. I shall be glad to have time to think, and I am sure Edith will.'\n'I am not so sure about her; but I can fancy that you will. Whenever I have seen you lately, you have been carried away by a whirlwind of some other person's making.'\n'Yes,' said Margaret, rather sadly, remembering the never-ending commotion about trifles that had been going on for a month. 'I wonder if a marriage must always be preceded by a whirlwind, or whether there might not rather be a calm and peaceful time before it.'\nAn indescribable weariness of all the arrangements for a pretty effect oppressed her now; and she really wanted someone to help her to a few pleasant, quiet ideas about marriage.\n'Oh, of course,' he replied in a graver tone. 'There are forms and ceremonies to be gone through, not so much to satisfy oneself, as to stop the world's mouth. But how would you have a wedding arranged?'\n'I have never thought much about it; only I should like it to be a fine summer morning; and I should like to walk to church through the shade of trees; and to have fewer bridesmaids, and no wedding-breakfast.'\n'The idea of stately simplicity accords well with your character.'\nMargaret did not quite like this speech. She winced away from it, remembering former occasions on which he had tried to compliment her about her character. She said:\n'It is natural for me to think of Helstone church, and the walk to it, rather than of driving up a paved street to a London church.'\n'Tell me about Helstone. I should like to have some idea of the place you will be living in, when this house is shut up. Is Helstone a village, or a town?'\n'Oh, only a hamlet; I don't think I could call it a village. There is the church and a few houses on the green - cottages, rather, with roses growing all over them.'\n'And flowering all the year round, especially at Christmas - make your picture complete,' said he.\n'No,' replied Margaret, somewhat annoyed, 'I am not making a picture. I am trying to describe Helstone as it really is.'\n'I am penitent,' he answered. 'Only it sounded like a village in a tale rather than in real life.'\n'And so it is,' she replied eagerly. 'All the other places in England that I have seen appear so hard and prosaic-looking, after the New Forest. Helstone is like a village in one of Tennyson's poems. But I won't try and describe it any more. You would only laugh.'\n'Indeed, I would not. But I see you are resolved. Well, then, tell me what I really want to know: what the parsonage is like.'\n'Oh, I can't describe it. It is home, and I can't put its charm into words.'\n'I submit. You are rather severe tonight, Margaret.'\n'How?' said she, turning her large soft eyes full upon him. 'I did not know I was.'\n'Why, because I made an unlucky remark, you will neither tell me what Helstone is like, nor will you say anything about your home, though I have told you how much I want to hear about it.'\n'But indeed I cannot tell you about my own home.'\n'Well, then-' pausing for a moment - 'tell me what you do there. Here, you read, or have lessons, or otherwise improve your mind, till mid-day; take a walk before lunch, go for a drive with your aunt after, and have engagements in the evening. At Helstone, shall you ride, drive, or walk?'\n'Walk, decidedly. We have no horse, not even for papa. He walks all over his parish. The walks are so beautiful, it would be a shame to drive.'\n'Shall you garden much? That, I believe, is a proper employment for young ladies in the country.'\n'I don't know. I am afraid I shan't like such hard work.'\n'Archery parties - picnics - hunt-balls?'\n'Oh, no!' said she, laughing. 'Papa's living is very small; and even if we were near such things, I doubt if I should go to them.'\n'I see; you won't tell me anything. You will only tell me that you are not going to do this and that. Before the vacation ends, I think I shall pay you a call, and see what you really do.'\n'I hope you will. Then you will see for yourself how beautiful Helstone is. Now I must go. Edith is sitting down to play the piano, and I just know enough music to turn the pages for her; and Aunt Shaw won't like us to talk.'\nEdith played brilliantly. In the middle of the piece the door half-opened, and Edith saw Captain Lennox outside. She threw down her music and rushed out of the room, leaving Margaret confused and blushing, to explain to the astonished guests what vision had caused the sudden flight. Captain Lennox had come earlier than expected; or was it really so late? They looked at their watches, were duly shocked, and took their leave.\nThen Edith came back, glowing with pleasure, half-shyly, half-proudly leading in her tall handsome Captain. Mrs. Shaw welcomed him in her kindly way, which had always something plaintive in it, arising from the long habit of considering herself a victim to an uncongenial marriage. With the General gone, she had a good life, with few drawbacks, and had been rather perplexed to find an anxiety. She had, however, settled upon her health as a source of apprehension; she had a nervous little cough whenever she thought about it; and some complaisant doctor ordered her just what she desired - a winter in Italy. Thus she was able to complain in her soft manner, while in reality doing just what she liked.\nIt was in this way she began to speak of her journey to Captain Lennox, who agreed to all she said, while his eyes sought Edith, who was ordering up good things to eat, in spite of his assurances that he had dined within the last two hours.\nMr. Henry Lennox stood leaning against the chimney-piece, amused with the family scene. He was the plain one in a singularly good-looking family; but his face was intelligent, keen, and mobile; and Margaret wondered what he was thinking about, while he kept silence, but observed her and Edith with slightly sarcastic interest. The sarcastic feeling was caused by Mrs. Shaw's conversation; his interest was in what he saw - the pretty sight of the two cousins busy in little arrangements about the table.\nEdith enjoyed showing her lover how well she could behave as a soldier's wife. She found that the water in the urn was cold, and ordered up the great kitchen tea-kettle; but when she met it at the door, and tried to carry it in, it was too heavy, and she came in pouting, with a black mark on her muslin gown, and a little round white hand indented by the handle, which she showed to Captain Lennox, just like a hurt child; and, of course, the remedy was the same in both cases. Margaret's quickly-adjusted spirit-lamp was more effective, though not so like Edith's idea of barrack-life. After this evening all was bustle till the wedding was over.","book":"North and South","chapter":"Chapter 1: \"HASTE TO THE WEDDING\""}
{"original":"Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing a great deal of good. But not of late years are we about to speak; we are going back to the beginning of this century: late years--present years are dusty, sunburnt, hot, arid; we will evade the noon, forget it in siesta, pass the midday in slumber, and dream of dawn.\nIf you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps towards the middle and close of the meal, but it is resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a Catholic--ay, even an Anglo-Catholic--might eat on Good Friday in Passion Week: it shall be cold lentils and vinegar without oil; it shall be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb.\nOf late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England; but in eighteen-hundred-eleven-twelve that affluent rain had not descended. Curates were scarce then: there was no Pastoral Aid--no Additional Curates' Society to stretch a helping hand to worn-out old rectors and incumbents, and give them the wherewithal to pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or Cambridge. The present successors of the apostles, disciples of Dr. Pusey and tools of the Propaganda, were at that time being hatched under cradle-blankets, or undergoing regeneration by nursery-baptism in wash-hand basins. You could not have guessed by looking at any one of them that the Italian-ironed double frills of its net-cap surrounded the brows of a preordained, specially-sanctified successor of St. Paul, St. Peter, or St. John; nor could you have foreseen in the folds of its long night-gown the white surplice in which it was hereafter cruelly to exercise the souls of its parishioners, and strangely to nonplus its old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in a pulpit the shirt-like raiment which had never before waved higher than the reading-desk.\nYet even in those days of scarcity there were curates: the precious plant was rare, but it might be found. A certain favoured district in the West Riding of Yorkshire could boast three rods of Aaron blossoming within a circuit of twenty miles. You shall see them, reader. Step into this neat garden-house on the skirts of Whinbury, walk forward into the little parlour. There they are at dinner. Allow me to introduce them to you: Mr. Donne, curate of Whinbury; Mr. Malone, curate of Briarfield; Mr. Sweeting, curate of Nunnely. These are Mr. Donne's lodgings, being the habitation of one John Gale, a small clothier. Mr. Donne has kindly invited his brethren to regale with him. You and I will join the party, see what is to be seen, and hear what is to be heard. At present, however, they are only eating; and while they eat we will talk aside.\nThese gentlemen are in the bloom of youth; they possess all the activity of that interesting age--an activity which their moping old vicars would fain turn into the channel of their pastoral duties, often expressing a wish to see it expended in a diligent superintendence of the schools, and in frequent visits to the sick of their respective parishes. But the youthful Levites feel this to be dull work; they prefer lavishing their energies on a course of proceeding which, though to other eyes it appear more heavy with _ennui_, more cursed with monotony, than the toil of the weaver at his loom, seems to yield them an unfailing supply of enjoyment and occupation.\nI allude to a rushing backwards and forwards, amongst themselves, to and from their respective lodgings--not a round, but a triangle of visits, which they keep up all the year through, in winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Season and weather make no difference; with unintelligible zeal they dare snow and hail, wind and rain, mire and dust, to go and dine, or drink tea, or sup with each other. What attracts them it would be difficult to say. It is not friendship, for whenever they meet they quarrel. It is not religion--the thing is never named amongst them; theology they may discuss occasionally, but piety--never. It is not the love of eating and drinking: each might have as good a joint and pudding, tea as potent, and toast as succulent, at his own lodgings, as is served to him at his brother's. Mrs. Gale, Mrs. Hogg, and Mrs. Whipp--their respective landladies--affirm that \"it is just for naught else but to give folk trouble.\" By \"folk\" the good ladies of course mean themselves, for indeed they are kept in a continual \"fry\" by this system of mutual invasion.\nMr. Donne and his guests, as I have said, are at dinner; Mrs. Gale waits on them, but a spark of the hot kitchen fire is in her eye. She considers that the privilege of inviting a friend to a meal occasionally, without additional charge (a privilege included in the terms on which she lets her lodgings), has been quite sufficiently exercised of late. The present week is yet but at Thursday, and on Monday Mr. Malone, the curate of Briarfield, came to breakfast and stayed dinner; on Tuesday Mr. Malone and Mr. Sweeting of Nunnely came to tea, remained to supper, occupied the spare bed, and favoured her with their company to breakfast on Wednesday morning; now, on Thursday, they are both here at dinner, and she is almost certain they will stay all night. \"C'en est trop,\" she would say, if she could speak French.\nMr. Sweeting is mincing the slice of roast beef on his plate, and complaining that it is very tough; Mr. Donne says the beer is flat. Ay, that is the worst of it: if they would only be civil Mrs. Gale wouldn't mind it so much, if they would only seem satisfied with what they get she wouldn't care; but \"these young parsons is so high and so scornful, they set everybody beneath their 'fit.' They treat her with less than civility, just because she doesn't keep a servant, but does the work of the house herself, as her mother did afore her; then they are always speaking against Yorkshire ways and Yorkshire folk,\" and by that very token Mrs. Gale does not believe one of them to be a real gentleman, or come of gentle kin. \"The old parsons is worth the whole lump of college lads; they know what belongs to good manners, and is kind to high and low.\"\n\"More bread!\" cries Mr. Malone, in a tone which, though prolonged but to utter two syllables, proclaims him at once a native of the land of shamrocks and potatoes. Mrs. Gale hates Mr. Malone more than either of the other two; but she fears him also, for he is a tall, strongly-built personage, with real Irish legs and arms, and a face as genuinely national--not the Milesian face, not Daniel O'Connell's style, but the high-featured, North-American-Indian sort of visage, which belongs to a certain class of the Irish gentry, and has a petrified and proud look, better suited to the owner of an estate of slaves than to the landlord of a free peasantry. Mr. Malone's father termed himself a gentleman: he was poor and in debt, and besottedly arrogant; and his son was like him.\nMrs. Gale offered the loaf.\n\"Cut it, woman,\" said her guest; and the \"woman\" cut it accordingly. Had she followed her inclinations, she would have cut the parson also; her Yorkshire soul revolted absolutely from his manner of command.\nThe curates had good appetites, and though the beef was \"tough,\" they ate a great deal of it. They swallowed, too, a tolerable allowance of the \"flat beer,\" while a dish of Yorkshire pudding, and two tureens of vegetables, disappeared like leaves before locusts. The cheese, too, received distinguished marks of their attention; and a \"spice-cake,\" which followed by way of dessert, vanished like a vision, and was no more found. Its elegy was chanted in the kitchen by Abraham, Mrs. Gale's son and heir, a youth of six summers; he had reckoned upon the reversion thereof, and when his mother brought down the empty platter, he lifted up his voice and wept sore.\nThe curates, meantime, sat and sipped their wine, a liquor of unpretending vintage, moderately enjoyed. Mr. Malone, indeed, would much rather have had whisky; but Mr. Donne, being an Englishman, did not keep the beverage. While they sipped they argued, not on politics, nor on philosophy, nor on literature--these topics were now, as ever, totally without interest for them--not even on theology, practical or doctrinal, but on minute points of ecclesiastical discipline, frivolities which seemed empty as bubbles to all save themselves. Mr. Malone, who contrived to secure two glasses of wine, when his brethren contented themselves with one, waxed by degrees hilarious after his fashion; that is, he grew a little insolent, said rude things in a hectoring tone, and laughed clamorously at his own brilliancy.\nEach of his companions became in turn his butt. Malone had a stock of jokes at their service, which he was accustomed to serve out regularly on convivial occasions like the present, seldom varying his wit; for which, indeed, there was no necessity, as he never appeared to consider himself monotonous, and did not at all care what others thought. Mr. Donne he favoured with hints about his extreme meagreness, allusions to his turned-up nose, cutting sarcasms on a certain threadbare chocolate surtout which that gentleman was accustomed to sport whenever it rained or seemed likely to rain, and criticisms on a choice set of cockney phrases and modes of pronunciation, Mr. Donne's own property, and certainly deserving of remark for the elegance and finish they communicated to his style.\nMr. Sweeting was bantered about his stature--he was a little man, a mere boy in height and breadth compared with the athletic Malone; rallied on his musical accomplishments--he played the flute and sang hymns like a seraph, some young ladies of his parish thought; sneered at as \"the ladies' pet;\" teased about his mamma and sisters, for whom poor Mr. Sweeting had some lingering regard, and of whom he was foolish enough now and then to speak in the presence of the priestly Paddy, from whose anatomy the bowels of natural affection had somehow been omitted.\nThe victims met these attacks each in his own way: Mr. Donne with a stilted self-complacency and half-sullen phlegm, the sole props of his otherwise somewhat rickety dignity; Mr. Sweeting with the indifference of a light, easy disposition, which never professed to have any dignity to maintain.\nWhen Malone's raillery became rather too offensive, which it soon did, they joined, in an attempt to turn the tables on him by asking him how many boys had shouted \"Irish Peter!\" after him as he came along the road that day (Malone's name was Peter--the Rev. Peter Augustus Malone); requesting to be informed whether it was the mode in Ireland for clergymen to carry loaded pistols in their pockets, and a shillelah in their hands, when they made pastoral visits; inquiring the signification of such words as vele, firrum, hellum, storrum (so Mr. Malone invariably pronounced veil, firm, helm, storm), and employing such other methods of retaliation as the innate refinement of their minds suggested.\nThis, of course, would not do. Malone, being neither good-natured nor phlegmatic, was presently in a towering passion. He vociferated, gesticulated; Donne and Sweeting laughed. He reviled them as Saxons and snobs at the very top pitch of his high Celtic voice; they taunted him with being the native of a conquered land. He menaced rebellion in the name of his \"counthry,\" vented bitter hatred against English rule; they spoke of rags, beggary, and pestilence. The little parlour was in an uproar; you would have thought a duel must follow such virulent abuse; it seemed a wonder that Mr. and Mrs. Gale did not take alarm at the noise, and send for a constable to keep the peace. But they were accustomed to such demonstrations; they well knew that the curates never dined or took tea together without a little exercise of the sort, and were quite easy as to consequences, knowing that these clerical quarrels were as harmless as they were noisy, that they resulted in nothing, and that, on whatever terms the curates might part to-night, they would be sure to meet the best friends in the world to-morrow morning.\nAs the worthy pair were sitting by their kitchen fire, listening to the repeated and sonorous contact of Malone's fist with the mahogany plane of the parlour table, and to the consequent start and jingle of decanters and glasses following each assault, to the mocking laughter of the allied English disputants, and the stuttering declamation of the isolated Hibernian--as they thus sat, a foot was heard on the outer door-step, and the knocker quivered to a sharp appeal.\nMr. Gale went and opened.\n\"Whom have you upstairs in the parlour?\" asked a voice--a rather remarkable voice, nasal in tone, abrupt in utterance.\n\"O Mr. Helstone, is it you, sir? I could hardly see you for the darkness; it is so soon dark now. Will you walk in, sir?\"\n\"I want to know first whether it is worth my while walking in. Whom have you upstairs?\"\n\"The curates, sir.\"\n\"What! all of them?\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\"Been dining here?\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\"That will do.\"\nWith these words a person entered--a middle-aged man, in black. He walked straight across the kitchen to an inner door, opened it, inclined his head forward, and stood listening. There was something to listen to, for the noise above was just then louder than ever.\n\"Hey!\" he ejaculated to himself; then turning to Mr. Gale--\"Have you often this sort of work?\"\nMr. Gale had been a churchwarden, and was indulgent to the clergy.\n\"They're young, you know, sir--they're young,\" said he deprecatingly.\n\"Young! They want caning. Bad boys--bad boys! And if you were a Dissenter, John Gale, instead of being a good Churchman, they'd do the like--they'd expose themselves; but I'll----\"\nBy way of finish to this sentence, he passed through the inner door, drew it after him, and mounted the stair. Again he listened a few minutes when he arrived at the upper room. Making entrance without warning, he stood before the curates.\nAnd they were silent; they were transfixed; and so was the invader. He--a personage short of stature, but straight of port, and bearing on broad shoulders a hawk's head, beak, and eye, the whole surmounted by a Rehoboam, or shovel hat, which he did not seem to think it necessary to lift or remove before the presence in which he then stood--_he_ folded his arms on his chest and surveyed his young friends, if friends they were, much at his leisure.\n\"What!\" he began, delivering his words in a voice no longer nasal, but deep--more than deep--a voice made purposely hollow and cavernous--\"what! has the miracle of Pentecost been renewed? Have the cloven tongues come down again? Where are they? The sound filled the whole house just now. I heard the seventeen languages in full action: Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians; every one of these must have had its representative in this room two minutes since.\"\n\"I beg your pardon, Mr. Helstone,\" began Mr. Donne; \"take a seat, pray, sir. Have a glass of wine?\"\nHis civilities received no answer. The falcon in the black coat proceeded,--\n\"What do I talk about the gift of tongues? Gift, indeed! I mistook the chapter, and book, and Testament--gospel for law, Acts for Genesis, the city of Jerusalem for the plain of Shinar. It was no gift but the confusion of tongues which has gabbled me deaf as a post. _You_, apostles? What! you three? Certainly not; three presumptuous Babylonish masons--neither more nor less!\"\n\"I assure you, sir, we were only having a little chat together over a glass of wine after a friendly dinner--settling the Dissenters!\"\n\"Oh! settling the Dissenters, were you? Was Malone settling the Dissenters? It sounded to me much more like settling his co-apostles. You were quarrelling together, making almost as much noise--you three alone--as Moses Barraclough, the preaching tailor, and all his hearers are making in the Methodist chapel down yonder, where they are in the thick of a revival. I know whose fault it is.--It is yours, Malone.\"\n\"Mine, sir?\"\n\"Yours, sir. Donne and Sweeting were quiet before you came, and would be quiet if you were gone. I wish, when you crossed the Channel, you had left your Irish habits behind you. Dublin student ways won't do here. The proceedings which might pass unnoticed in a wild bog and mountain district in Connaught will, in a decent English parish, bring disgrace on those who indulge in them, and, what is far worse, on the sacred institution of which they are merely the humble appendages.\"\nThere was a certain dignity in the little elderly gentleman's manner of rebuking these youths, though it was not, perhaps, quite the dignity most appropriate to the occasion. Mr. Helstone, standing straight as a ramrod, looking keen as a kite, presented, despite his clerical hat, black coat, and gaiters, more the air of a veteran officer chiding his subalterns than of a venerable priest exhorting his sons in the faith. Gospel mildness, apostolic benignity, never seemed to have breathed their influence over that keen brown visage, but firmness had fixed the features, and sagacity had carved her own lines about them.\n\"I met Supplehough,\" he continued, \"plodding through the mud this wet night, going to preach at Milldean opposition shop. As I told you, I heard Barraclough bellowing in the midst of a conventicle like a possessed bull; and I find _you_, gentlemen, tarrying over your half-pint of muddy port wine, and scolding like angry old women. No wonder Supplehough should have dipped sixteen adult converts in a day--which he did a fortnight since; no wonder Barraclough, scamp and hypocrite as he is, should attract all the weaver-girls in their flowers and ribbons, to witness how much harder are his knuckles than the wooden brim of his tub; as little wonder that _you_, when you are left to yourselves, without your rectors--myself, and Hall, and Boultby--to back you, should too often perform the holy service of our church to bare walls, and read your bit of a dry discourse to the clerk, and the organist, and the beadle. But enough of the subject. I came to see Malone.--I have an errand unto thee, O captain!\"\n\"What is it?\" inquired Malone discontentedly. \"There can be no funeral to take at this time of day.\"\n\"Have you any arms about you?\"\n\"Arms, sir?--yes, and legs.\" And he advanced the mighty members.\n\"Bah! weapons I mean.\"\n\"I have the pistols you gave me yourself. I never part with them. I lay them ready cocked on a chair by my bedside at night. I have my blackthorn.\"\n\"Very good. Will you go to Hollow's Mill?\"\n\"What is stirring at Hollow's Mill?\"\n\"Nothing as yet, nor perhaps will be; but Moore is alone there. He has sent all the workmen he can trust to Stilbro'; there are only two women left about the place. It would be a nice opportunity for any of his well-wishers to pay him a visit, if they knew how straight the path was made before them.\"\n\"I am none of his well-wishers, sir. I don't care for him.\"\n\"Soh! Malone, you are afraid.\"\n\"You know me better than that. If I really thought there was a chance of a row I would go: but Moore is a strange, shy man, whom I never pretend to understand; and for the sake of his sweet company only I would not stir a step.\"\n\"But there _is_ a chance of a row; if a positive riot does not take place--of which, indeed, I see no signs--yet it is unlikely this night will pass quite tranquilly. You know Moore has resolved to have new machinery, and he expects two wagon-loads of frames and shears from Stilbro' this evening. Scott, the overlooker, and a few picked men are gone to fetch them.\"\n\"They will bring them in safely and quietly enough, sir.\"\n\"Moore says so, and affirms he wants nobody. Some one, however, he must have, if it were only to bear evidence in case anything should happen. I call him very careless. He sits in the counting-house with the shutters unclosed; he goes out here and there after dark, wanders right up the hollow, down Fieldhead Lane, among the plantations, just as if he were the darling of the neighbourhood, or--being, as he is, its detestation--bore a 'charmed life,' as they say in tale-books. He takes no warning from the fate of Pearson, nor from that of Armitage--shot, one in his own house and the other on the moor.\"\n\"But he should take warning, sir, and use precautions too,\" interposed Mr. Sweeting; \"and I think he would if he heard what I heard the other day.\"\n\"What did you hear, Davy?\"\n\"You know Mike Hartley, sir?\"\n\"The Antinomian weaver? Yes.\"\n\"When Mike has been drinking for a few weeks together, he generally winds up by a visit to Nunnely vicarage, to tell Mr. Hall a piece of his mind about his sermons, to denounce the horrible tendency of his doctrine of works, and warn him that he and all his hearers are sitting in outer darkness.\"\n\"Well, that has nothing to do with Moore.\"\n\"Besides being an Antinomian, he is a violent Jacobin and leveller, sir.\"\n\"I know. When he is very drunk, his mind is always running on regicide. Mike is not unacquainted with history, and it is rich to hear him going over the list of tyrants of whom, as he says, 'the revenger of blood has obtained satisfaction.' The fellow exults strangely in murder done on crowned heads or on any head for political reasons. I have already heard it hinted that he seems to have a queer hankering after Moore. Is that what you allude to, Sweeting?\"\n\"You use the proper term, sir. Mr. Hall thinks Mike has no personal hatred of Moore. Mike says he even likes to talk to him and run after him, but he has a _hankering_ that Moore should be made an example of. He was extolling him to Mr. Hall the other day as the mill-owner with the most brains in Yorkshire, and for that reason he affirms Moore should be chosen as a sacrifice, an oblation of a sweet savour. Is Mike Hartley in his right mind, do you think, sir?\" inquired Sweeting simply.\n\"Can't tell, Davy. He may be crazed, or he may be only crafty, or perhaps a little of both.\"\n\"He talks of seeing visions, sir.\"\n\"Ay! He is a very Ezekiel or Daniel for visions. He came just when I was going to bed last Friday night to describe one that had been revealed to him in Nunnely Park that very afternoon.\"\n\"Tell it, sir. What was it?\" urged Sweeting.\n\"Davy, thou hast an enormous organ of wonder in thy cranium. Malone, you see, has none. Neither murders nor visions interest him. See what a big vacant Saph he looks at this moment.\"\n\"Saph! Who was Saph, sir?\"\n\"I thought you would not know. You may find it out. It is biblical. I know nothing more of him than his name and race; but from a boy upwards I have always attached a personality to Saph. Depend on it he was honest, heavy, and luckless. He met his end at Gob by the hand of Sibbechai.\"\n\"But the vision, sir?\"\n\"Davy, thou shalt hear. Donne is biting his nails, and Malone yawning, so I will tell it but to thee. Mike is out of work, like many others, unfortunately. Mr. Grame, Sir Philip Nunnely's steward, gave him a job about the priory. According to his account, Mike was busy hedging rather late in the afternoon, but before dark, when he heard what he thought was a band at a distance--bugles, fifes, and the sound of a trumpet; it came from the forest, and he wondered that there should be music there. He looked up. All amongst the trees he saw moving objects, red, like poppies, or white, like may-blossom. The wood was full of them; they poured out and filled the park. He then perceived they were soldiers--thousands and tens of thousands; but they made no more noise than a swarm of midges on a summer evening. They formed in order, he affirmed, and marched, regiment after regiment, across the park. He followed them to Nunnely Common; the music still played soft and distant. On the common he watched them go through a number of evolutions. A man clothed in scarlet stood in the centre and directed them. They extended, he declared, over fifty acres. They were in sight half an hour; then they marched away quite silently. The whole time he heard neither voice nor tread--nothing but the faint music playing a solemn march.\"\n\"Where did they go, sir?\"\n\"Towards Briarfield. Mike followed them. They seemed passing Fieldhead, when a column of smoke, such as might be vomited by a park of artillery, spread noiseless over the fields, the road, the common, and rolled, he said, blue and dim, to his very feet. As it cleared away he looked again for the soldiers, but they were vanished; he saw them no more. Mike, like a wise Daniel as he is, not only rehearsed the vision but gave the interpretation thereof. It signifies, he intimated, bloodshed and civil conflict.\"\n\"Do you credit it, sir?\" asked Sweeting.\n\"Do you, Davy?--But come, Malone; why are you not off?\"\n\"I am rather surprised, sir, you did not stay with Moore yourself. You like this kind of thing.\"\n\"So I should have done, had I not unfortunately happened to engage Boultby to sup with me on his way home from the Bible Society meeting at Nunnely. I promised to send you as my substitute; for which, by-the-bye, he did not thank me. He would much rather have had me than you, Peter. Should there be any real need of help I shall join you. The mill-bell will give warning. Meantime, go--unless (turning suddenly to Messrs. Sweeting and Donne)--unless Davy Sweeting or Joseph Donne prefers going.--What do you say, gentlemen? The commission is an honourable one, not without the seasoning of a little real peril; for the country is in a queer state, as you all know, and Moore and his mill and his machinery are held in sufficient odium. There are chivalric sentiments, there is high-beating courage, under those waistcoats of yours, I doubt not. Perhaps I am too partial to my favourite Peter. Little David shall be the champion, or spotless Joseph.--Malone, you are but a great floundering Saul after all, good only to lend your armour. Out with your firearms; fetch your shillelah. It is there--in the corner.\"\nWith a significant grin Malone produced his pistols, offering one to each of his brethren. They were not readily seized on. With graceful modesty each gentleman retired a step from the presented weapon.\n\"I never touch them. I never did touch anything of the kind,\" said Mr. Donne.\n\"I am almost a stranger to Mr. Moore,\" murmured Sweeting.\n\"If you never touched a pistol, try the feel of it now, great satrap of Egypt. As to the little minstrel, he probably prefers encountering the Philistines with no other weapon than his flute.--Get their hats, Peter. They'll both of 'em go.\"\n\"No, sir; no, Mr. Helstone. My mother wouldn't like it,\" pleaded Sweeting.\n\"And I make it a rule never to get mixed up in affairs of the kind,\" observed Donne.\nHelstone smiled sardonically; Malone laughed a horse-laugh. He then replaced his arms, took his hat and cudgel, and saying that \"he never felt more in tune for a shindy in his life, and that he wished a score of greasy cloth-dressers might beat up Moore's quarters that night,\" he made his exit, clearing the stairs at a stride or two, and making the house shake with the bang of the front-door behind him.","abridged":"Lately an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more of them. But not of recent years are we about to speak; we are going back to the beginning of this century. Present years are dusty, sunburnt, hot, arid; we will avoid the noon, forget it in siesta, pass the midday in slumber, and dream of dawn.\nIf you think, from this prelude, that a romance is waiting for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you expect sentiment, passion, and melodrama? Calm your expectations. Something real, cool, and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when people wake knowing that they must rise and go to work. You may have a taste of the exciting, perhaps towards the middle and close of the meal, but the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a Catholic might eat on Good Friday: it shall be cold lentils and vinegar; unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb.\nLately, I say, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England; but in 1811 that rain had not descended. Curates were scarce then: there was no Pastoral Aid to stretch a helping hand to worn-out old rectors, allowing them to pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or Cambridge.\nYet even in those days of scarcity, curates might be found. A certain favoured district in the West Riding of Yorkshire could boast three blossoming within a circuit of twenty miles.\nYou shall see them, reader. Step into this neat garden-house on the edge of Whinbury; walk forward into the little parlour. There they are at dinner. Allow me to introduce them to you: Mr. Donne, curate of Whinbury; Mr. Malone, curate of Briarfield; Mr. Sweeting, curate of Nunnely. These are Mr. Donne's lodgings; Mr. Donne has kindly invited his brethren to dine. You and I will join the party, and hear what is to be heard. At present, however, they are only eating; and while they eat we will talk aside.\nThese gentlemen have all the activity of youth - an activity which their moping old vicars wish would be channelled into their pastoral duties, superintending the schools, and visiting the sick. But the young curates feel this to be dull work; they prefer to lavish their energies on visiting each other, rushing backwards and forwards between their respective lodgings - a triangle of visits, which they keep up all the year through. Season and weather make no difference; through snow and hail, wind and rain, they go and dine with each other.\nWhat attracts them it would be difficult to say. It is not friendship, for whenever they meet they quarrel. It is not religion; for they may discuss theology occasionally, but piety - never. It is not the love of eating and drinking: each might have as good a joint and pudding at his own lodgings as at his brother's. Mrs. Gale, Mrs. Hogg, and Mrs. Whipp - their respective landladies - affirm that \"it is just to give folk trouble.\" By \"folk\" the good ladies of course mean themselves.\nMr. Donne and his guests, as I have said, are at dinner; Mrs. Gale waits on them, but a spark of the hot kitchen fire is in her eye. She considers that the privilege of inviting a friend to a meal has been over-exercised of late. On Monday Mr. Malone came to breakfast and stayed to dinner; on Tuesday Mr. Malone and Mr. Sweeting came to tea, stayed to supper, occupied the spare bed, and ate breakfast on Wednesday morning; now, on Thursday, they are both here at dinner, and she is almost certain they will stay all night.\nMr. Sweeting is complaining that his slice of roast beef is very tough; Mr. Donne says the beer is flat. If they would only be civil Mrs. Gale wouldn't mind it so much; but \"these young parsons is so high and scornful, they set everybody beneath them. They don't treat her civilly, and they are always speaking against Yorkshire ways and Yorkshire folk.\" Mrs. Gale does not believe them to be real gentlemen. \"The old parsons are worth the whole lump of college lads; they have good manners, and are kind to high and low.\"\n\"More bread!\" cries Mr. Malone, in an accent which proclaims him a native of Ireland. Mrs. Gale hates Mr. Malone more than the other two; but she fears him also, for he is tall and strongly-built, with a high-featured, North-American-Indian sort of face, and a petrified, proud look. Mr. Malone's father called himself a gentleman; he was poor, in debt, and arrogant; and his son was like him.\nMrs. Gale offered him the loaf.\n\"Cut it, woman,\" said her guest; and the \"woman\" cut it accordingly. Had she followed her inclinations, she would have cut the curate also.\nThe curates had good appetites, and though the beef was \"tough,\" they ate a great deal of it. They swallowed a large amount of the \"flat beer,\" while a dish of Yorkshire pudding and two tureens of vegetables disappeared like leaves before locusts. The cheese, too, was eaten, and a spice-cake vanished like a vision. It was mourned in the kitchen by Abraham, Mrs. Gale's son; he had reckoned upon leftovers, and when his mother brought down the empty plate, he lifted up his voice and wept.\nThe curates, meantime, sat and sipped their wine. Mr. Malone, indeed, would rather have had whisky; but Mr. Donne did not keep any. While they sipped they argued, not on politics, nor philosophy, nor even theology - but on minute points of ecclesiastical discipline, frivolities which seemed empty as bubbles to all except themselves. Mr. Malone, after two glasses of wine, grew hilarious after his fashion; that is, he said rude things in a hectoring tone, and laughed clamorously at his own brilliance.\nHis companions were the butt for his humour. Malone had a stock of jokes which he used regularly, seldom varying his wit; for he never considered himself monotonous, and did not care what others thought. He favoured Mr. Donne with sarcasms about his thinness, his turned-up nose, and a threadbare coat which Mr. Donne used to wear when it rained.\nMr. Sweeting was bantered about his small stature and his musical accomplishments - he played the flute and sang hymns like an angel (so some young ladies of his parish thought) - sneered at as \"the ladies' pet;\" teased about his mamma and sisters, for whom poor Mr. Sweeting had some lingering regard, and of whom he was foolish enough now and then to speak to Malone, from whose nature all feelings of affection had somehow been omitted.\nThe victims met these attacks each in his own way: Mr. Donne with a stilted complacency; Mr. Sweeting with the indifference of a light, easy nature. When Malone's raillery became too offensive, they turned the tables on him by asking him how many boys had shouted \"Irish Peter!\" after him in the street that day (his name being Peter Augustus Malone); asking whether it was the fashion in Ireland for clergymen to carry loaded pistols and a shillelagh when they made pastoral visits; and inquiring what he meant by storrum (as he pronounced storm).\nMalone was soon in a towering passion. He shouted and gesticulated; Donne and Sweeting laughed. He reviled them as Saxons and snobs at the very top of his voice; they taunted him with coming from a conquered land. The little parlour was in uproar. It seemed a wonder that Mr. and Mrs. Gale did not send for a constable to keep the peace. But they were used to these clerical quarrels, and knew that they were as harmless as they were noisy, and that the curates would be the best of friends tomorrow morning.\nAs the Gales were sitting by their kitchen fire, listening to the thump of Malone's fist on the parlour table, and to the consequent jingle of glasses - as they thus sat, a foot was heard on the door-step, and the knocker rapped sharply. Mr. Gale opened the door.\n\"Whom have you upstairs in the parlour?\" asked a voice - a rather remarkable voice, nasal and abrupt.\n\"Mr. Helstone, is it you, sir? I could hardly see you in the dusk. Will you walk in?\"\n\"I want to know first whether it is worth my while. Whom have you upstairs?\"\n\"The curates, sir.\"\n\"What! all of them?\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\"That will do.\"\nWith these words entered a middle-aged man, in black. He walked across the kitchen, opened the inner door, and stood listening to the noise above, which was louder than ever.\n\"Hey!\" he exclaimed; \"Have you often this sort of work?\"\n\"They're young, you know, sir,\" said Mr. Gale deprecatingly.\n\"Young! They want caning. Bad boys! but I'll-\"\nHe passed through the inner door and mounted the stair. Making his entrance without warning, he stood before the curates.\nThey were silent; they were transfixed. The invader - short of stature, but straight and broad shouldered, with a hawk's head, beak, and eye - folded his arms and surveyed his young friends, if friends they were.\n\"What!\" he began, in a voice made purposely deep and hollow. \"What! has the miracle of Pentecost been renewed? Have the cloven tongues come down again? The sound filled the whole house just now. I heard the seventeen languages in full action two minutes since.\"\n\"I beg your pardon, Mr. Helstone,\" began Mr. Donne; \"take a seat, sir. Have a glass of wine.\"\nBut the falcon in the black coat went on:\n\"Why do I talk about the gift of tongues? Gift, indeed! It was the confusion of tongues which has gabbled me deaf as a post!\"\n\"I assure you, sir, we were only having a little chat together over a glass of wine after dinner - settling the Dissenters!\"\n\"Oh! settling the Dissenters, were you? Was Malone settling the Dissenters? It sounded to me much more like he was settling you. Your quarrel was making almost as much noise as Moses Barraclough, the preaching tailor, makes in the Methodist chapel down yonder. It is your fault, Malone.\"\n\"Mine, sir?\"\n\"Yours, sir. Donne and Sweeting were quiet before you came. I wish you had left your Irish habits behind you. Dublin student ways won't do here. Behaviour which might pass unnoticed in a wild Irish bog will, in a decent English parish, bring disgrace on you, and, far worse, on the church you represent.\"\nMr. Helstone, standing straight as a ramrod, looked - despite his clerical hat, coat and gaiters - more like a veteran officer chiding his subalterns than a priest exhorting his sons in the faith. Gospel mildness seemed never to have breathed over that keen brown face, on which firmness and sagacity had carved their lines.\nHe continued, \"I heard Barraclough this wet night bellowing like a bull in the opposition shop; and I find you, gentlemen, tarrying over your half-pint of muddy port wine, and scolding like angry old women. Barraclough, hypocrite as he is, should not attract all the weaver-girls in their ribbons to his chapel. It's little wonder that you perform the holy service of our church to bare walls. But enough of that. I came to see Malone. I have an errand for thee, O captain!\"\n\"What is it?\" inquired Malone discontentedly. \"There can be no funeral to take at this time of day.\"\n\"Have you any weapons about you?\"\n\"I have the pistols you gave me. I never part with them. I lay them by my bedside at night. And I have my shillelagh - my blackthorn club.\"\n\"Very good. Will you go to Hollow's Mill?\"\n\"What is stirring at Hollow's Mill?\"\n\"Nothing as yet, nor perhaps will be; but Moore is alone there. He has sent all the workmen he can trust to Stilbro'; there are only two women left in the place. It would be a nice opportunity for any of his well-wishers to pay him a visit.\"\n\"I am none of his well-wishers, sir. I don't care for him.\"\n\"So! Malone, you are afraid.\"\n\"You know me better than that. If I really thought there was a chance of a row I would go: but Moore is a strange man, whom I never pretend to understand; and for the sake of his company I would not stir a step.\"\n\"But there is a chance of a row,\" said Mr. Helstone. \"Even if a positive riot does not take place, it is unlikely this night will pass tranquilly. You know Moore has resolved to have new machinery in his mill, and he expects two wagon-loads of frames and shears from Stilbro' this evening. Scott, the overlooker, and a few other men are gone to fetch them.\"\n\"They will bring them in safely enough, sir.\"\n\"Moore says so, and affirms he wants nobody. Some one, however, he must have, in case anything should happen. I call him very careless. He sits in the counting-house with the shutters open; he goes out after dark, wanders right up the hollow, and down Fieldhead Lane, just as if he were the darling of the neighbourhood, rather than its detestation. He takes no warning from the fates of the mill-owners Pearson and Armitage - both shot, one in his own house and the other on the moor.\"\n\"But he would take warning, sir,\" interposed Mr. Sweeting, \"if he heard what I heard the other day.\"\n\"What did you hear, Davy?\"\n\"You know Mike Hartley the weaver, sir? Well, when he has been drinking for a few weeks, he generally goes up to Nunnely vicarage to tell Mr. Hall a piece of his mind about his sermons, and warn him that he is sitting in outer darkness.\"\n\"That has nothing to do with Moore.\"\n\"He is a violent Jacobin and leveller, sir.\"\n\"I know,\" said Mr. Helstone. \"When he is very drunk, his mind is always running on regicide.\"\n\"Mr. Hall thinks that Mike has no personal hatred of Moore, but that he wants Moore to be made an example of. Is Mike Hartley in his right mind, do you think, sir?\" inquired Sweeting.\n\"Can't tell, Davy. He may be crazed, or only crafty, or perhaps both.\"\n\"He talks of seeing visions, sir.\"\n\"Ay! He is a very Daniel for visions. He came last Friday night to describe one that had been revealed to him in Nunnely Park that afternoon.\"\n\"Tell it, sir. What was it?\" urged Sweeting.\n\"Davy, thou shalt hear. Mike is out of work, like many others, unfortunately. Sir Philip Nunnely's steward gave him a job about the priory. Mike said he was busy hedging late in the afternoon, when he heard a band at a distance - bugles, fifes, and a trumpet. He looked up and amongst the trees he saw moving objects, red and white. The wood was full of them; they poured out and filled the park. He perceived they were soldiers - tens of thousands; but silent as they marched, regiment after regiment, across the park. He followed them to Nunnely Common; the music still played soft and distant. They were in sight half an hour; then they marched away. The whole time he heard neither voice nor footsteps - nothing but the faint music playing a march.\"\n\"Where did they go, sir?\"\n\"Towards Briarfield. Mike followed them, but a column of smoke rolled over the fields, he said, and when it cleared away the soldiers had vanished. Mike decided the vision meant bloodshed and conflict.\"\n\"Do you believe it, sir?\" asked Sweeting.\n\"Do you, Davy? - but come, Malone; why are you not off?\"\n\"I am rather surprised, sir, you did not stay with Moore yourself. You like this kind of thing.\"\n\"So I should have done,\" said Mr. Helstone, \"if I had not invited Boultby to sup with me. I promised to send you as my substitute; though Moore did not thank me. He would much rather have had me than you, Peter. Should there be any real need of help I shall join you. The mill-bell will give warning. Meantime, go - unless Davy Sweeting or Joseph Donne prefers going. - What do you say, gentlemen?\"\n\"I never touch weapons,\" said Mr. Donne.\n\"No, no, Mr. Helstone. My mother wouldn't like it,\" pleaded Sweeting.\nHelstone smiled sardonically; Malone laughed a horse-laugh. He took his pistols, hat and cudgel, and saying that \"he never felt more in tune for a shindy in his life,\" he left, making the house shake with the bang of the front door behind him.","book":"Shirley","chapter":"Chapter 1: LEVITICAL"}
{"original":"Let the reader be introduced to Lady Carbury, upon whose character and doings much will depend of whatever interest these pages may have, as she sits at her writing-table in her own room in her own house in Welbeck Street. Lady Carbury spent many hours at her desk, and wrote many letters,--wrote also very much beside letters. She spoke of herself in these days as a woman devoted to Literature, always spelling the word with a big L. Something of the nature of her devotion may be learned by the perusal of three letters which on this morning she had written with a quickly running hand. Lady Carbury was rapid in everything, and in nothing more rapid than in the writing of letters. Here is Letter No. 1;--\nThursday, Welbeck Street.\nDEAR FRIEND,--\nI have taken care that you shall have the early sheets of my two new volumes to-morrow, or Saturday at latest, so that you may, if so minded, give a poor struggler like myself a lift in your next week's paper. Do give a poor struggler a lift. You and I have so much in common, and I have ventured to flatter myself that we are really friends! I do not flatter you when I say, that not only would aid from you help me more than from any other quarter, but also that praise from you would gratify my vanity more than any other praise. I almost think you will like my \"Criminal Queens.\" The sketch of Semiramis is at any rate spirited, though I had to twist it about a little to bring her in guilty. Cleopatra, of course, I have taken from Shakespeare. What a wench she was! I could not quite make Julia a queen; but it was impossible to pass over so piquant a character. You will recognise in the two or three ladies of the empire how faithfully I have studied my Gibbon. Poor dear old Belisarius! I have done the best I could with Joanna, but I could not bring myself to care for her. In our days she would simply have gone to Broadmore. I hope you will not think that I have been too strong in my delineations of Henry VIII. and his sinful but unfortunate Howard. I don't care a bit about Anne Boleyne. I am afraid that I have been tempted into too great length about the Italian Catherine; but in truth she has been my favourite. What a woman! What a devil! Pity that a second Dante could not have constructed for her a special hell. How one traces the effect of her training in the life of our Scotch Mary. I trust you will go with me in my view as to the Queen of Scots. Guilty! guilty always! Adultery, murder, treason, and all the rest of it. But recommended to mercy because she was royal. A queen bred, born and married, and with such other queens around her, how could she have escaped to be guilty? Marie Antoinette I have not quite acquitted. It would be uninteresting;--perhaps untrue. I have accused her lovingly, and have kissed when I scourged. I trust the British public will not be angry because I do not whitewash Caroline, especially as I go along with them altogether in abusing her husband.\nBut I must not take up your time by sending you another book, though it gratifies me to think that I am writing what none but yourself will read. Do it yourself, like a dear man, and, as you are great, be merciful. Or rather, as you are a friend, be loving.\nYours gratefully and faithfully,\nMATILDA CARBURY.\nAfter all how few women there are who can raise themselves above the quagmire of what we call love, and make themselves anything but playthings for men. Of almost all these royal and luxurious sinners it was the chief sin that in some phase of their lives they consented to be playthings without being wives. I have striven so hard to be proper; but when girls read everything, why should not an old woman write anything?\nThis letter was addressed to Nicholas Broune, Esq., the editor of the \"Morning Breakfast Table,\" a daily newspaper of high character; and, as it was the longest, so was it considered to be the most important of the three. Mr. Broune was a man powerful in his profession,--and he was fond of ladies. Lady Carbury in her letter had called herself an old woman, but she was satisfied to do so by a conviction that no one else regarded her in that light. Her age shall be no secret to the reader, though to her most intimate friends, even to Mr. Broune, it had never been divulged. She was forty-three, but carried her years so well, and had received such gifts from nature, that it was impossible to deny that she was still a beautiful woman. And she used her beauty not only to increase her influence,--as is natural to women who are well-favoured,--but also with a well-considered calculation that she could obtain material assistance in the procuring of bread and cheese, which was very necessary to her, by a prudent adaptation to her purposes of the good things with which providence had endowed her. She did not fall in love, she did not wilfully flirt, she did not commit herself; but she smiled and whispered, and made confidences, and looked out of her own eyes into men's eyes as though there might be some mysterious bond between her and them--if only mysterious circumstances would permit it. But the end of all was to induce some one to do something which would cause a publisher to give her good payment for indifferent writing, or an editor to be lenient when, upon the merits of the case, he should have been severe. Among all her literary friends, Mr. Broune was the one in whom she most trusted; and Mr. Broune was fond of handsome women. It may be as well to give a short record of a scene which had taken place between Lady Carbury and her friend about a month before the writing of this letter which has been produced. She had wanted him to take a series of papers for the \"Morning Breakfast Table,\" and to have them paid for at rate No. 1, whereas she suspected that he was rather doubtful as to their merit, and knew that, without special favour, she could not hope for remuneration above rate No. 2, or possibly even No. 3. So she had looked into his eyes, and had left her soft, plump hand for a moment in his. A man in such circumstances is so often awkward, not knowing with any accuracy when to do one thing and when another! Mr. Broune, in a moment of enthusiasm, had put his arm round Lady Carbury's waist and had kissed her. To say that Lady Carbury was angry, as most women would be angry if so treated, would be to give an unjust idea of her character. It was a little accident which really carried with it no injury, unless it should be the injury of leading to a rupture between herself and a valuable ally. No feeling of delicacy was shocked. What did it matter? No unpardonable insult had been offered; no harm had been done, if only the dear susceptible old donkey could be made at once to understand that that wasn't the way to go on!\nWithout a flutter, and without a blush, she escaped from his arm, and then made him an excellent little speech. \"Mr. Broune, how foolish, how wrong, how mistaken! Is it not so? Surely you do not wish to put an end to the friendship between us!\"\n\"Put an end to our friendship, Lady Carbury! Oh, certainly not that.\"\n\"Then why risk it by such an act? Think of my son and of my daughter,--both grown up. Think of the past troubles of my life;--so much suffered and so little deserved. No one knows them so well as you do. Think of my name, that has been so often slandered but never disgraced! Say that you are sorry, and it shall be forgotten.\"\nWhen a man has kissed a woman it goes against the grain with him to say the very next moment that he is sorry for what he has done. It is as much as to declare that the kiss had not answered his expectation. Mr. Broune could not do this, and perhaps Lady Carbury did not quite expect it. \"You know that for worlds I would not offend you,\" he said. This sufficed. Lady Carbury again looked into his eyes, and a promise was given that the articles should be printed--and with generous remuneration.\nWhen the interview was over Lady Carbury regarded it as having been quite successful. Of course when struggles have to be made and hard work done, there will be little accidents. The lady who uses a street cab must encounter mud and dust which her richer neighbour, who has a private carriage, will escape. She would have preferred not to have been kissed;--but what did it matter? With Mr. Broune the affair was more serious. \"Confound them all,\" he said to himself as he left the house; \"no amount of experience enables a man to know them.\" As he went away he almost thought that Lady Carbury had intended him to kiss her again, and he was almost angry with himself in that he had not done so. He had seen her three or four times since, but had not repeated the offence.\nWe will now go on to the other letters, both of which were addressed to the editors of other newspapers. The second was written to Mr. Booker, of the \"Literary Chronicle.\" Mr. Booker was a hard-working professor of literature, by no means without talent, by no means without influence, and by no means without a conscience. But, from the nature of the struggles in which he had been engaged, by compromises which had gradually been driven upon him by the encroachment of brother authors on the one side and by the demands on the other of employers who looked only to their profits, he had fallen into a routine of work in which it was very difficult to be scrupulous, and almost impossible to maintain the delicacies of a literary conscience. He was now a bald-headed old man of sixty, with a large family of daughters, one of whom was a widow dependent on him with two little children. He had five hundred a year for editing the \"Literary Chronicle,\" which, through his energy, had become a valuable property. He wrote for magazines, and brought out some book of his own almost annually. He kept his head above water, and was regarded by those who knew about him, but did not know him, as a successful man. He always kept up his spirits, and was able in literary circles to show that he could hold his own. But he was driven by the stress of circumstances to take such good things as came in his way, and could hardly afford to be independent. It must be confessed that literary scruple had long departed from his mind. Letter No. 2 was as follows;--\nWelbeck Street, 25th February, 187--.\nDEAR MR. BOOKER,--\nI have told Mr. Leadham--[Mr. Leadham was senior partner in the enterprising firm of publishers known as Messrs. Leadham and Loiter]--to send you an early copy of my \"Criminal Queens.\" I have already settled with my friend Mr. Broune that I am to do your \"New Tale of a Tub\" in the \"Breakfast Table.\" Indeed, I am about it now, and am taking great pains with it. If there is anything you wish to have specially said as to your view of the Protestantism of the time, let me know. I should like you to say a word as to the accuracy of my historical details, which I know you can safely do. Don't put it off, as the sale does so much depend on early notices. I am only getting a royalty, which does not commence till the first four hundred are sold.\nYours sincerely,\nMATILDA CARBURY.\nALFRED BOOKER, Esq., \"Literary Chronicle,\" Office, Strand.\nThere was nothing in this which shocked Mr. Booker. He laughed inwardly, with a pleasantly reticent chuckle, as he thought of Lady Carbury dealing with his views of Protestantism,--as he thought also of the numerous historical errors into which that clever lady must inevitably fall in writing about matters of which he believed her to know nothing. But he was quite alive to the fact that a favourable notice in the \"Breakfast Table\" of his very thoughtful work, called the \"New Tale of a Tub,\" would serve him, even though written by the hand of a female literary charlatan, and he would have no compunction as to repaying the service by fulsome praise in the \"Literary Chronicle.\" He would not probably say that the book was accurate, but he would be able to declare that it was delightful reading, that the feminine characteristics of the queens had been touched with a masterly hand, and that the work was one which would certainly make its way into all drawing-rooms. He was an adept at this sort of work, and knew well how to review such a book as Lady Carbury's \"Criminal Queens,\" without bestowing much trouble on the reading. He could almost do it without cutting the book, so that its value for purposes of after sale might not be injured. And yet Mr. Booker was an honest man, and had set his face persistently against many literary malpractices. Stretched-out type, insufficient lines, and the French habit of meandering with a few words over an entire page, had been rebuked by him with conscientious strength. He was supposed to be rather an Aristides among reviewers. But circumstanced as he was he could not oppose himself altogether to the usages of the time. \"Bad; of course it is bad,\" he said to a young friend who was working with him on his periodical. \"Who doubts that? How many very bad things are there that we do! But if we were to attempt to reform all our bad ways at once, we should never do any good thing. I am not strong enough to put the world straight, and I doubt if you are.\" Such was Mr. Booker.\nThen there was letter No. 3, to Mr. Ferdinand Alf. Mr. Alf managed, and, as it was supposed, chiefly owned, the \"Evening Pulpit,\" which during the last two years had become \"quite a property,\" as men connected with the press were in the habit of saying. The \"Evening Pulpit\" was supposed to give daily to its readers all that had been said and done up to two o'clock in the day by all the leading people in the metropolis, and to prophesy with wonderful accuracy what would be the sayings and doings of the twelve following hours. This was effected with an air of wonderful omniscience, and not unfrequently with an ignorance hardly surpassed by its arrogance. But the writing was clever. The facts, if not true, were well invented; the arguments, if not logical, were seductive. The presiding spirit of the paper had the gift, at any rate, of knowing what the people for whom he catered would like to read, and how to get his subjects handled, so that the reading should be pleasant. Mr. Booker's \"Literary Chronicle\" did not presume to entertain any special political opinions. The \"Breakfast Table\" was decidedly Liberal. The \"Evening Pulpit\" was much given to politics, but held strictly to the motto which it had assumed;--\n\"Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri;\"--\nand consequently had at all times the invaluable privilege of abusing what was being done, whether by one side or by the other. A newspaper that wishes to make its fortune should never waste its columns and weary its readers by praising anything. Eulogy is invariably dull,--a fact that Mr. Alf had discovered and had utilized.\nMr. Alf had, moreover, discovered another fact. Abuse from those who occasionally praise is considered to be personally offensive, and they who give personal offence will sometimes make the world too hot to hold them. But censure from those who are always finding fault is regarded so much as a matter of course that it ceases to be objectionable. The caricaturist, who draws only caricatures, is held to be justifiable, let him take what liberties he may with a man's face and person. It is his trade, and his business calls upon him to vilify all that he touches. But were an artist to publish a series of portraits, in which two out of a dozen were made to be hideous, he would certainly make two enemies, if not more. Mr. Alf never made enemies, for he praised no one, and, as far as the expression of his newspaper went, was satisfied with nothing.\nPersonally, Mr. Alf was a remarkable man. No one knew whence he came or what he had been. He was supposed to have been born a German Jew; and certain ladies said that they could distinguish in his tongue the slightest possible foreign accent. Nevertheless it was conceded to him that he knew England as only an Englishman can know it. During the last year or two he had \"come up\" as the phrase goes, and had come up very thoroughly. He had been black-balled at three or four clubs, but had effected an entrance at two or three others, and had learned a manner of speaking of those which had rejected him calculated to leave on the minds of hearers a conviction that the societies in question were antiquated, imbecile, and moribund. He was never weary of implying that not to know Mr. Alf, not to be on good terms with Mr. Alf, not to understand that let Mr. Alf have been born where he might and how he might he was always to be recognised as a desirable acquaintance, was to be altogether out in the dark. And that which he so constantly asserted, or implied, men and women around him began at last to believe,--and Mr. Alf became an acknowledged something in the different worlds of politics, letters, and fashion.\nHe was a good-looking man, about forty years old, but carrying himself as though he was much younger, spare, below the middle height, with dark brown hair which would have shown a tinge of grey but for the dyer's art, with well-cut features, with a smile constantly on his mouth the pleasantness of which was always belied by the sharp severity of his eyes. He dressed with the utmost simplicity, but also with the utmost care. He was unmarried, had a small house of his own close to Berkeley Square at which he gave remarkable dinner parties, kept four or five hunters in Northamptonshire, and was reputed to earn 6,000 a year out of the \"Evening Pulpit\" and to spend about half of that income. He also was intimate after his fashion with Lady Carbury, whose diligence in making and fostering useful friendships had been unwearied. Her letter to Mr. Alf was as follows;--\nDEAR MR. ALF,--\nDo tell me who wrote the review on Fitzgerald Barker's last poem. Only I know you won't. I remember nothing done so well. I should think the poor wretch will hardly hold his head up again before the autumn. But it was fully deserved. I have no patience with the pretensions of would-be poets who contrive by toadying and underground influences to get their volumes placed on every drawing-room table. I know no one to whom the world has been so good-natured in this way as to Fitzgerald Barker, but I have heard of no one who has extended the good nature to the length of reading his poetry.\nIs it not singular how some men continue to obtain the reputation of popular authorship without adding a word to the literature of their country worthy of note? It is accomplished by unflagging assiduity in the system of puffing. To puff and to get one's self puffed have become different branches of a new profession. Alas, me! I wish I might find a class open in which lessons could be taken by such a poor tyro as myself. Much as I hate the thing from my very soul, and much as I admire the consistency with which the \"Pulpit\" has opposed it, I myself am so much in want of support for my own little efforts, and am struggling so hard honestly to make for myself a remunerative career, that I think, were the opportunity offered to me, I should pocket my honour, lay aside the high feeling which tells me that praise should be bought neither by money nor friendship, and descend among the low things, in order that I might one day have the pride of feeling that I had succeeded by my own work in providing for the needs of my children.\nBut I have not as yet commenced the descent downwards; and therefore I am still bold enough to tell you that I shall look, not with concern but with a deep interest, to anything which may appear in the \"Pulpit\" respecting my \"Criminal Queens.\" I venture to think that the book,--though I wrote it myself,--has an importance of its own which will secure for it some notice. That my inaccuracy will be laid bare and presumption scourged I do not in the least doubt, but I think your reviewer will be able to certify that the sketches are life-like and the portraits well considered. You will not hear me told, at any rate, that I had better sit at home and darn my stockings, as you said the other day of that poor unfortunate Mrs. Effington Stubbs.\nI have not seen you for the last three weeks. I have a few friends every Tuesday evening;--pray come next week or the week following. And pray believe that no amount of editorial or critical severity shall make me receive you otherwise than with a smile.\nMost sincerely yours,\nMATILDA CARBURY.\nLady Carbury, having finished her third letter, threw herself back in her chair, and for a moment or two closed her eyes, as though about to rest. But she soon remembered that the activity of her life did not admit of such rest. She therefore seized her pen and began scribbling further notes.","abridged":"Let me introduce Lady Carbury, as she sits at her writing-table in her house in Welbeck Street. Lady Carbury spent many hours at her desk, writing letters, and much else besides. She spoke of herself as a woman devoted to Literature, always spelling the word with a big L. The nature of her devotion may be learned by viewing the three letters she had written this morning.\nHere is Letter No. 1:\nDear Friend,\nYou shall have the early copies of my two new volumes tomorrow, so that you may, if you wish, give a poor struggler like myself a lift in your next week's paper. Do give a poor struggler a lift. You and I have so much in common, and I hope that we are really friends! Aid from you would help me more than from any other quarter; and praise from you would gratify me more than any other praise.\nI almost think you will like my \"Criminal Queens.\" The sketch of Semiramis is spirited, though I had to twist it about a little to bring her in guilty. Cleopatra I have taken from Shakespeare. I have done the best I could with Joanna, though in our days she would simply have gone to Broadmoor. I hope you will not think that I have been too strong in my depiction of Henry VIII and his unfortunate Catherine Howard. I don't care a bit about Anne Boleyn; and I trust you go with me in my view of the Queen of Scots. Guilty! guilty always! Adultery, murder, treason, and all the rest of it. Marie Antoinette I have accused lovingly. I trust the British public will not be angry because I do not whitewash Caroline.\nBut I must not take up your time. Dear man, as you are great, be merciful on my book. Or rather, as you are a friend, be loving.\nYours gratefully and faithfully,\nMatilda Carbury.\nP.S. I have tried hard to be proper; but when girls read everything, why should not an old woman write anything?\nThis letter was addressed to Nicholas Broune, the editor of the Morning Breakfast Table, a newspaper of high character, considered to be the most important of the three daily papers. Mr. Broune was a powerful man - and fond of ladies.\nLady Carbury in her letter called herself an old woman, but she was satisfied that no one else regarded her as old. She was forty-three, but still beautiful. And she used her beauty calculatingly, to increase her influence, and assist her in earning her bread. She did not fall in love, she did not flirt, she did not commit herself; but she smiled and whispered, and looked into men's eyes as though there might be some mysterious bond between her and them. This was to induce a critic to be kind, or an editor to be lenient, so that she would be well paid for indifferent writing.\nAmong her literary friends, Mr. Broune was the one she most trusted; and Mr. Broune was fond of handsome women. It may be as well to describe a scene which had taken place between them a month previously. She had wanted him to take a series of articles for the Morning Breakfast Table, and to pay her for them at rate No. 1. However, she suspected that he doubted their merit, and knew that without special favour, she could not hope for payment above rate No. 2, or even No. 3. So she had looked into his eyes, and had left her soft hand for a moment in his.\nA man in such circumstances is so often awkward! Mr. Broune, in a moment of enthusiasm, had put his arm round Lady Carbury's waist and kissed her. Lady Carbury was not angry, for no harm had been done, if only the dear susceptible old donkey could be made to understand that that wasn't the way to go on!\nWithout a flutter or a blush, she escaped from his arm, and then made an excellent little speech.\n\"Mr. Broune, how foolish, how mistaken! Surely you do not wish to put an end to the friendship between us!\"\n\"End our friendship, Lady Carbury! Oh, no.\"\n\"Then why risk it by such an act? Think of my son and my daughter - both grown up. Think of the past troubles of my life - so much suffered and so little deserved. Think of my name, so often slandered but never disgraced! Say that you are sorry, and it shall be forgotten.\"\nWhen a man has kissed a woman it goes against the grain with him to say the very next moment that he is sorry. Mr. Broune could not do this, and perhaps Lady Carbury did not quite expect it.\n\"You know that for worlds I would not offend you,\" he said. This sufficed. Lady Carbury again looked into his eyes, and he promised that the articles should be printed - with generous payment. Lady Carbury regarded this interview as quite successful. She would have preferred not to have been kissed; but what did it matter?\nWith Mr. Broune the affair was more serious.\n\"Confound all women,\" he said to himself as he left the house. He almost thought that Lady Carbury had intended him to kiss her again, and he was almost angry with himself for not doing so. He had seen her three or four times since, but had not repeated the offence.\nWe will now go on to the other letters, which were addressed to the editors of other newspapers. The second was written to Mr. Booker, of the Literary Chronicle. Mr. Booker was a hard-working professor of literature, now sixty, with a large family of daughters. He had five hundred a year for editing the Literary Chronicle, and kept his head above water; he held his own in literary circles. But he was driven by the stress of circumstances to take such good things as came in his way, and it must be confessed that literary scruple had long departed from his mind. Letter No. 2 was as follows;-\nDear Mr. Booker,\nI have told my publishers Leadham and Loiter to send you an early copy of my \"Criminal Queens.\" I have already settled with my friend Mr. Broune that I am to review your \"New Tale of a Tub\" in the Breakfast Table. Indeed, I am busy with it now, and am taking great pains with it. If there is anything you wish to have specially said about your view of the Protestantism of the time, let me know. I should like you to say a word as to the accuracy of my historical details, which I know you can safely do. Don't put it off, as the sale does so much depend on early notices. I am only getting a royalty after the first four hundred are sold.\nYours sincerely,\nMatilda Carbury.\nThere was nothing in this which shocked Mr. Booker. He laughed inwardly, as he thought of Lady Carbury dealing with his views of Protestantism - and as he thought also of the numerous historical errors into which that clever lady must fall in writing about matters of which he believed her to know nothing. But he was quite aware that a favourable notice in the Breakfast Table of his very thoughtful work, the \"New Tale of a Tub,\" would help him, and he would have no compunction about repaying her by praising her book in his newspaper. He would probably not say that the book was accurate, but he would declare that it was delightful reading, and would make its way into all drawing-rooms.\nHe was adept at this sort of work. He could almost do it without reading the book. And yet he was an honest man.\nThen there was letter No. 3, to Mr. Ferdinand Alf. Mr. Alf managed the Evening Pulpit, which aimed not only to give its readers all the daily news, but to prophesy with wonderful omniscience what would be the sayings and doings of the next twelve hours. This it frequently did with an ignorance hardly surpassed by its arrogance. But the writing was clever. The facts, if not true, were well invented; the arguments, if not logical, were seductive. Mr. Alf knew what his audience liked to read. The Evening Pulpit was much given to politics, in the form of abusing whatever was being done by either side. A newspaper should never weary its readers by praising anything. Praise is dull - a fact that Mr. Alf had discovered.\nMr. Alf had discovered another fact. Censure from those who are always finding fault becomes so much as a matter of course that it ceases to be objectionable. The caricaturist who draws only caricatures may take any liberties he likes with a man's face. It is his trade. But if an artist were to publish a series of portraits, in which two out of a dozen were hideous, he would certainly make enemies. Mr. Alf never made enemies, for in his newspaper he praised no one and nothing.\nMr. Alf was a remarkable man. No one knew whence he came. He was supposed to have been born a German Jew; yet he knew England as only an Englishman can know it. During the last year or two he had \"come up\" in society very thoroughly. He had been black-balled at three or four clubs, but had gained entrance to two or three others, and spoke of those which had rejected him as if they were imbecile, and moribund. He always implied that not to know Mr. Alf was to be altogether out in the dark. Those around him began to believe it - and Mr. Alf became an acknowledged something in the worlds of politics, letters, and fashion.\nHe was a good-looking man of about forty, with a pleasant smile belied by the sharp severity of his eyes. He also was intimate after his fashion with Lady Carbury, who was diligent in fostering useful friendships. Her letter to Mr. Alf was as follows;-\nDear Mr. Alf,\nDo tell me who wrote the review on Fitzgerald Barker's last poem. I remember nothing done so well. I should think poor Barker will hardly hold his head up again. But it was fully deserved. I have no patience with the pretensions of would-be poets who contrive by toadying to get their volumes placed on every drawing-room table. I know no one to whom the world has been so good-natured in this way as to Fitzgerald Barker, but equally no one has extended the good nature to the length of reading his poetry.\nIs it not singular how some authors continue to obtain reputations simply by puffing? To puff and to get one's self puffed have become branches of a new profession. Alas! I wish I could take lessons in it myself. Much as I hate the thing, I am struggling so hard to make a honest living, that I think, were the opportunity offered to me, I should pocket my honour, and descend among the low things, so that I might have the pride of feeling that I had succeeded by my own work in providing for my children.\nBut I have not yet commenced the descent; and therefore I am still bold enough to tell you that I shall look, not with concern but with a deep interest, for anything which may appear in the Pulpit about my \"Criminal Queens.\" That my inaccuracy will be laid bare I do not doubt, but I think your reviewer will be able to say that the sketches are life-like and well considered.\nI have not seen you for the last three weeks. I have a few friends every Tuesday evening; pray come next week or the week following. And pray believe that no amount of editorial severity shall make me receive you otherwise than with a smile.\nMost sincerely yours,\nMatilda Carbury.\nLady Carbury, having finished her third letter, threw herself back in her chair, and for a moment closed her eyes, as though about to rest. But she soon remembered that the activity of her life did not allow such rest. She seized her pen and began scribbling further notes.","book":"The Way We Live Now","chapter":"Chapter 1: Three Editors"}
{"original":"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing; --that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind; --and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost; ----Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, ----I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world from that in which the reader is likely to see me. --Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it; --you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father to son, &c., &c. --and a great deal to that purpose: --Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracts and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter, --away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it.\n_Pray, my Dear_, quoth my mother, _have you not forgot to wind up the clock? ------Good G--!_ cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time, ----_Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?_ Pray, what was your father saying? ------Nothing.","abridged":"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both, had minded what they were about when they begot me. Had they considered how much depended upon what they were doing; - that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned, but the happy formation of his body and the very cast of his mind - for all they knew, the fortunes of his whole house might depend on the humours which were uppermost in them at the time of conception - had they duly weighed all this, and proceeded accordingly, I should have made a quite different figure in the world.\n-Believe me, good folks, this is not so slight a thing as you may think.\nYou have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, and how they are transfused from father to son in the act of procreation, &c., &c. -Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and failures, depend upon those spirits' activity, and the different paths you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over, they make a road as smooth as a garden-walk, which the Devil himself shall not be able to drive them off it.\n'Pray, my Dear,' quoth my mother, 'have you not forgot to wind up the clock?'\n'Good G__!' cried my father, taking care to keep his voice down. -'Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?'\nPray, what was your father saying when she interrupted?\nSaying? -Nothing.","book":"Tristram Shandy","chapter":"Book 1 - Chapter 1"}
{"original":"BEFORE THE CURTAIN\nAs the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (OTHER quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they come off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his cheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack Puddings behind the canvas. The curtain will be up presently, and he will be turning over head and heels, and crying, \"How are you?\"\nA man with a reflective turn of mind, walking through an exhibition of this sort, will not be oppressed, I take it, by his own or other people's hilarity. An episode of humour or kindness touches and amuses him here and there--a pretty child looking at a gingerbread stall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and chooses her fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind the waggon, mumbling his bone with the honest family which lives by his tumbling; but the general impression is one more melancholy than mirthful. When you come home you sit down in a sober, contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind, and apply yourself to your books or your business.\nI have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of \"Vanity Fair.\" Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and eschew such, with their servants and families: very likely they are right. But persons who think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery and brilliantly illuminated with the Author's own candles.\nWhat more has the Manager of the Performance to say?--To acknowledge the kindness with which it has been received in all the principal towns of England through which the Show has passed, and where it has been most favourably noticed by the respected conductors of the public Press, and by the Nobility and Gentry. He is proud to think that his Puppets have given satisfaction to the very best company in this empire. The famous little Becky Puppet has been pronounced to be uncommonly flexible in the joints, and lively on the wire; the Amelia Doll, though it has had a smaller circle of admirers, has yet been carved and dressed with the greatest care by the artist; the Dobbin Figure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing and natural manner; the Little Boys' Dance has been liked by some; and please to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked Nobleman, on which no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick will fetch away at the end of this singular performance.\nAnd with this, and a profound bow to his patrons, the Manager retires, and the curtain rises.\nLONDON, June 28, 1848","abridged":"Before the Curtain\nAs the manager of the Performance sits before the theatre curtain and surveys the bustling Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him. There is a great deal of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks bawling at booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place, nor a merry one, though very noisy.\nA thoughtful man, walking through the fair, will not see much hilarity. An episode of humour or kindness touches him here and there - a child looking at a gingerbread stall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her; but the general impression is more melancholy than mirthful.\nI have no other moral than this to tag to the story of \"Vanity Fair.\" Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and very likely they are right. But persons who think otherwise may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery and brilliantly illuminated with the Author's own candles.\nWhat more has the Manager to say? - To acknowledge the kindness with which the Show has been received in England. He is proud to think that his Puppets have given satisfaction to the best company in this empire. The famous little Becky Puppet has been pronounced to be uncommonly flexible and lively; the Amelia Doll, though it has a smaller circle of admirers, has been carved with the greatest care; the Dobbin Figure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing manner; and please remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked Nobleman, on which no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick will fetch away at the end of the performance.\nAnd with this, and a bow to his patrons, the Manager retires, and the curtain rises.","book":"Vanity Fair","chapter":"Prologue"}
{"original":"1801-I have just returned from a visit to my landlord-the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's Heaven-and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name.\n\"Mr. Heathcliff?\" I said.\nA nod was the answer.\n\"Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant, sir. I do myself the honour of calling as soon as possible after my arrival, to express the hope that I have not inconvenienced you by my perseverance in soliciting the occupation of Thrushcross Grange: I heard yesterday you had had some thoughts-\"\n\"Thrushcross Grange is my own, sir,\" he interrupted, wincing. \"I should not allow any one to inconvenience me, if I could hinder it-walk in!\"\nThe \"walk in\" was uttered with closed teeth, and expressed the sentiment, \"Go to the Deuce!\" even the gate over which he leant manifested no sympathising movement to the words; and I think that circumstance determined me to accept the invitation: I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself.\nWhen he saw my horse's breast fairly pushing the barrier, he did put out his hand to unchain it, and then sullenly preceded me up the causeway, calling, as we entered the court,-\"Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood's horse; and bring up some wine.\"\n\"Here we have the whole establishment of domestics, I suppose,\" was the reflection suggested by this compound order. \"No wonder the grass grows up between the flags, and cattle are the only hedge-cutters.\"\nJoseph was an elderly, nay, an old man, very old, perhaps, though hale and sinewy. \"The Lord help us!\" he soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving me of my horse: looking, meantime, in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid to digest his dinner, and his pious ejaculation had no reference to my unexpected advent.\nWuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. \"Wuthering\" being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind, blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones.\nBefore passing the threshold, I paused to admire a quantity of grotesque carving lavished over the front, and especially about the principal door; above which, among a wilderness of crumbling griffins and shameless little boys, I detected the date \"1500,\" and the name \"Hareton Earnshaw.\" I would have made a few comments, and requested a short history of the place from the surly owner; but his attitude at the door appeared to demand my speedy entrance, or complete departure, and I had no desire to aggravate his impatience previous to inspecting the penetralium.\nOne stop brought us into the family sitting-room, without any introductory lobby or passage: they call it here \"the house\" pre-eminently. It includes kitchen and parlour, generally; but I believe at Wuthering Heights the kitchen is forced to retreat altogether into another quarter: at least I distinguished a chatter of tongues, and a clatter of culinary utensils, deep within; and I observed no signs of roasting, boiling, or baking, about the huge fireplace; nor any glitter of copper saucepans and tin cullenders on the walls. One end, indeed, reflected splendidly both light and heat from ranks of immense pewter dishes, interspersed with silver jugs and tankards, towering row after row, on a vast oak dresser, to the very roof. The latter had never been under-drawn: its entire anatomy lay bare to an inquiring eye, except where a frame of wood laden with oatcakes and clusters of legs of beef, mutton, and ham, concealed it. Above the chimney were sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols: and, by way of ornament, three gaudily-painted canisters disposed along its ledge. The floor was of smooth, white stone; the chairs, high-backed, primitive structures, painted green: one or two heavy black ones lurking in the shade. In an arch under the dresser reposed a huge, liver-coloured bitch pointer, surrounded by a swarm of squealing puppies; and other dogs haunted other recesses.\nThe apartment and furniture would have been nothing extraordinary as belonging to a homely, northern farmer, with a stubborn countenance, and stalwart limbs set out to advantage in knee-breeches and gaiters. Such an individual seated in his arm-chair, his mug of ale frothing on the round table before him, is to be seen in any circuit of five or six miles among these hills, if you go at the right time after dinner. But Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman: that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose. Possibly, some people might suspect him of a degree of under-bred pride; I have a sympathetic chord within that tells me it is nothing of the sort: I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling-to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He'll love and hate equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again. No, I'm running on too fast: I bestow my own attributes over-liberally on him. Mr. Heathcliff may have entirely dissimilar reasons for keeping his hand out of the way when he meets a would-be acquaintance, to those which actuate me. Let me hope my constitution is almost peculiar: my dear mother used to say I should never have a comfortable home; and only last summer I proved myself perfectly unworthy of one.\nWhile enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I \"never told my love\" vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return-the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame-shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp.\nBy this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.\nI took a seat at the end of the hearthstone opposite that towards which my landlord advanced, and filled up an interval of silence by attempting to caress the canine mother, who had left her nursery, and was sneaking wolfishly to the back of my legs, her lip curled up, and her white teeth watering for a snatch. My caress provoked a long, guttural gnarl.\n\"You'd better let the dog alone,\" growled Mr. Heathcliff in unison, checking fiercer demonstrations with a punch of his foot. \"She's not accustomed to be spoiled-not kept for a pet.\" Then, striding to a side door, he shouted again, \"Joseph!\"\nJoseph mumbled indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, but gave no intimation of ascending; so his master dived down to him, leaving me _vis--vis_ the ruffianly bitch and a pair of grim shaggy sheep-dogs, who shared with her a jealous guardianship over all my movements. Not anxious to come in contact with their fangs, I sat still; but, imagining they would scarcely understand tacit insults, I unfortunately indulged in winking and making faces at the trio, and some turn of my physiognomy so irritated madam, that she suddenly broke into a fury and leapt on my knees. I flung her back, and hastened to interpose the table between us. This proceeding aroused the whole hive: half-a-dozen four-footed fiends, of various sizes and ages, issued from hidden dens to the common centre. I felt my heels and coat-laps peculiar subjects of assault; and parrying off the larger combatants as effectually as I could with the poker, I was constrained to demand, aloud, assistance from some of the household in re-establishing peace.\nMr. Heathcliff and his man climbed the cellar steps with vexatious phlegm: I don't think they moved one second faster than usual, though the hearth was an absolute tempest of worrying and yelping. Happily, an inhabitant of the kitchen made more dispatch; a lusty dame, with tucked-up gown, bare arms, and fire-flushed cheeks, rushed into the midst of us flourishing a frying-pan: and used that weapon, and her tongue, to such purpose, that the storm subsided magically, and she only remained, heaving like a sea after a high wind, when her master entered on the scene.\n\"What the devil is the matter?\" he asked, eyeing me in a manner that I could ill endure, after this inhospitable treatment.\n\"What the devil, indeed!\" I muttered. \"The herd of possessed swine could have had no worse spirits in them than those animals of yours, sir. You might as well leave a stranger with a brood of tigers!\"\n\"They won't meddle with persons who touch nothing,\" he remarked, putting the bottle before me, and restoring the displaced table. \"The dogs do right to be vigilant. Take a glass of wine?\"\n\"No, thank you.\"\n\"Not bitten, are you?\"\n\"If I had been, I would have set my signet on the biter.\" Heathcliff's countenance relaxed into a grin.\n\"Come, come,\" he said, \"you are flurried, Mr. Lockwood. Here, take a little wine. Guests are so exceedingly rare in this house that I and my dogs, I am willing to own, hardly know how to receive them. Your health, sir?\"\nI bowed and returned the pledge; beginning to perceive that it would be foolish to sit sulking for the misbehaviour of a pack of curs; besides, I felt loth to yield the fellow further amusement at my expense; since his humour took that turn. He-probably swayed by prudential consideration of the folly of offending a good tenant-relaxed a little in the laconic style of chipping off his pronouns and auxiliary verbs, and introduced what he supposed would be a subject of interest to me,-a discourse on the advantages and disadvantages of my present place of retirement. I found him very intelligent on the topics we touched; and before I went home, I was encouraged so far as to volunteer another visit to-morrow. He evidently wished no repetition of my intrusion. I shall go, notwithstanding. It is astonishing how sociable I feel myself compared with him.","abridged":"1801. I have just returned from a visit to my landlord - my solitary neighbour. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have found a place so completely removed from society. A perfect misanthropist's heaven: for which Mr. Heathcliff and I are equally suited. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I saw his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, and his fingers shelter themselves jealously in his waistcoat, as I rode up.\n'Mr. Heathcliff?' I said.\nHe nodded.\n'Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant, sir. I called to express the hope that I have not inconvenienced you by renting Thrushcross Grange.'\n'Thrushcross Grange is my own, sir,' he answered, wincing. 'I should not allow anyone to inconvenience me, if I could hinder it. Walk in!'\nThe 'walk in' was uttered with closed teeth, meaning, 'Go to the Devil.' However, I decided to accept the invitation: I felt interested in a man even more exaggeratedly reserved than myself.\nHe unchained the gate and then sullenly led me up the driveway, calling, as we entered the courtyard, 'Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood's horse; and bring up some wine.'\n'Here is the whole set of servants, I suppose,' I reflected. 'No wonder the grass grows up between the flagstones.'\nJoseph was an old man: very old, perhaps, though hale and sinewy. 'The Lord help us!' he muttered in a peevish undertone, taking my horse and looking at me sourly.\nWuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff's house: 'wuthering' being a local word, describing the tumultuous weather to which the place is exposed. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind by the steep slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Luckily, the house is strongly built, with narrow windows deeply set in the walls.\nBefore entering, I paused to admire the grotesque carvings over the door; where amongst crumbling griffins and shameless little boys, I detected the date '1500,' and the name 'Hareton Earnshaw.' I would have asked the surly owner about the place's history, but he seemed impatient, and I had no desire to annoy him.\nWe walked into the family sitting-room without any introductory lobby or passage: they call it here 'the house.' It usually includes kitchen and parlour; but at Wuthering Heights the kitchen is forced to retreat into another quarter. There were no signs of cooking around the huge fireplace; no glitter of copper saucepans on the walls. At one end, indeed, were ranks of immense pewter dishes, silver jugs and tankards, towering row after row, on a vast oak dresser, to the very roof. The roof beams were bare, except for a wooden frame laden with oatcakes and legs of beef, mutton, and ham.\nAbove the chimney were several villainous old guns. The floor was of smooth, white stone; the chairs were high-backed and primitive. By the dresser lay a huge pointer, surrounded by a swarm of squealing puppies; and other dogs haunted other recesses.\nThe house and furniture were of a type that might belong to a homely, northern farmer in knee-breeches. Such a person, seated in his arm-chair with his mug of ale, may be seen everywhere amongst these hills.\nBut Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his home and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners as gentlemanly as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet despite his negligence, with an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose. Possibly, some people might suspect him of pride; I feel instinctively his reserve is nothing of the sort, but springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling. He'll love and hate equally under cover.\nNo, I'm running on too fast: I bestow my own feelings on him. Mr. Heathcliff may have entirely different reasons for his reserve from mine. Let me hope my nature is unique: my dear mother used to say I should never have a comfortable home; and only last summer I proved myself unworthy of one.\nWhile enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a fascinating girl: a goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love'; still, the merest idiot might have guessed from my looks that I was head over heels. She understood me, and looked a return - the sweetest of all looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame - shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to leave. Through this reserve I have gained the reputation of heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can know.\nI took a seat by the hearth, and filled the silence by attempting to caress the dog, who was sneaking wolfishly to the back of my legs, her lip curled up, ready to bite. My caress provoked a long, guttural snarl.\n'Let the dog alone,' growled Mr. Heathcliff, aiming a kick at her. 'She's not a pet.' Then, striding to a side door, he shouted, 'Joseph!'\nJoseph mumbled in the depths of the cellar, but did not appear; so his master dived down to him, leaving me with the ruffianly bitch and a pair of grim shaggy sheep-dogs. Not anxious to feel their fangs, I sat still; but I unfortunately indulged in winking and making faces at them, and so irritated madam that she suddenly broke into a fury and leapt on my knees.\nI flung her back, and quickly put the table between us. This aroused the whole hive: half-a-dozen four-footed fiends, of various sizes, ran out from hidden dens to attack my heels and coat-hems. Keeping them off as best I could with the poker, I was obliged to call for help.\nMr. Heathcliff and his man climbed the cellar steps without hurry; I don't think they moved one second faster than usual, though the hearth was an absolute tempest of worrying and yelping. Happily, an inhabitant of the kitchen made more haste: a lusty dame, with bare arms and fire-flushed cheeks, rushed in flourishing a frying-pan: and used that weapon to such purpose, that the storm subsided magically by the time her master entered on the scene.\n'What the devil is the matter?' he asked.\n'What the devil, indeed!' I muttered. 'You might as well leave a stranger with a brood of tigers as with those animals, sir!'\n'They won't meddle with people who touch nothing,' he remarked, putting a bottle before me. 'The dogs do right to be vigilant. A glass of wine?'\n'No, thank you.'\n'Not bitten, are you?'\n'If I had been, I would have set my mark on the biter.'\nHeathcliff's face relaxed into a grin.\n'Come, come,' he said, 'take a little wine. Guests are so rare in this house that I and my dogs hardly know how to receive them. Your health, sir!'\nI bowed, seeing that it would be foolish to sulk. Probably not wishing to offend a good tenant, he began to talk less curtly, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of my new house. I found him very intelligent on these topics; and before I went home, I offered to visit him tomorrow. He did not seem to wish for it. I shall go, all the same. It is astonishing how sociable I feel compared with him.","book":"Wuthering Heights","chapter":"Chapter 1"}