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with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

eight

How many times the word 'eight' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

ruddy

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with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

always

How many times the word 'always' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

dirige

How many times the word 'dirige' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

meriker

How many times the word 'meriker' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

sir

How many times the word 'sir' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

tuer

How many times the word 'tuer' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

acquaintances

How many times the word 'acquaintances' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

well

How many times the word 'well' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

st

How many times the word 'st' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

leaving

How many times the word 'leaving' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

d'h

How many times the word 'd'h' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

high

How many times the word 'high' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

pink

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with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

treated

How many times the word 'treated' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

nigel

How many times the word 'nigel' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

ways

How many times the word 'ways' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

income

How many times the word 'income' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

savage

How many times the word 'savage' appears in the text?

with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. "Don't cry," she said; "you are not hurt, you know." The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving the group staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of her looks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns and sovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel's imagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, and limbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spear point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rude harps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Briton stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages; but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. The First Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of a spacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alone in the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; she caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly and fearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as her as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could not confront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and across the sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. "He will get away," said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. "It is no affair of mine," she said, "but it would be too bad to let him get away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know." As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. He was a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. "Wait a moment, if you please," her clear, mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper." He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. "Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon." Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the Meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. "How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence." "Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you." "He is a splendid creature," she said. "I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming." "Thank you," he said again, and strode towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coat pocket. "He is not afraid of making himself useful," thought Betty. "And the animals know him. He is not as bad as he looks." She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. "I don't see your carriage," he said. "Your man is probably round the trees." "I walked," answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to see it." He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. "There is not much to be seen from the road," he said. "Would you like to see more of it?" His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. "Is the family at home?" she inquired. "There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place." "Does he object to trespassers?" "Not if they are respectable and take no liberties." "I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. "If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?" "No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss." "I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before." "There are not many places like this," he answered, "not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone." "It is far gone," said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with my sister, Lady Anstruthers." "Beg pardon--miss," he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. "I will show you this first," he explained. "Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them." Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. "Now look up," he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, which meant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture in this exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. "There is nothing lovelier," he said in a low voice, "in all England." Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. "You--you love it!" she said. "Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. She was rather moved. "Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. "No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life." "Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?" "In his way--yes." He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yet unblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and Bettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. "But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "if it were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, his often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteous spot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless among all of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens and deserted groves. "Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!" Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. "Some of it," he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then." "And only one of them is left," she cried, "and it is like this!" "They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years," was the surly liberty of speech he took, "a bad lot." It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. "I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. "I am very much obliged, keeper," she said. "You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. "Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look. "Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself." A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. "Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan." He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. "Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment." "I am not embarrassed," said Bettina. "That is what I like," gruffly. "I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it." Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. "I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly patronising sound." As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. "I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign." "I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared." He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low: "Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!" He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. "Did you not like America?" was what she said. "Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over the park with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. "To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. "You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow--and fall into this." "It would be a splendid thing to do," she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. "Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. "That is American enough," he said. "Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you

clenching

How many times the word 'clenching' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

thief

How many times the word 'thief' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

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with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

myself

How many times the word 'myself' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

peut-

How many times the word 'peut-' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

sometimes

How many times the word 'sometimes' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

geste

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with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

volet

How many times the word 'volet' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

engineer

How many times the word 'engineer' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

bruised

How many times the word 'bruised' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

noir

How many times the word 'noir' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

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with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

familiarly

How many times the word 'familiarly' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

always

How many times the word 'always' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

wake

How many times the word 'wake' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

guilt

How many times the word 'guilt' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

tartly

How many times the word 'tartly' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

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with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

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with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

fever

How many times the word 'fever' appears in the text?

with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We shall never know." Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place, half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation. "No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to the father!" A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said: "Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago." "And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the father of----" Hans flushed angrily. "They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they did--I'd----" He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence. Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption. "Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it." "Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?" "Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been." By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser. "You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it." "Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!" "He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of him." "Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. 'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth; besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours, and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he, 'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked: "Have you ever _tried_, mother?" She understood him. "Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might as----" The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the world--wouldn't we, Gretel?" "The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing. VI SUNBEAMS Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it proved how loving and true they were. Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly, gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and looked upon them as only a mother can. "Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the market-place." [Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.] "Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake." "As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint Nicholas after all." [Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.] Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button them under your jacket very carefully." "Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance. "Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint Nicholas!" Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen. "Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often." "Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates against the fireplace. "Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning." "Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel. "I don't know, child. Probably it is." "Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece." "Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King, for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens. While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn, meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children, all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise, were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up and killed the three young gentlemen." Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if killing and murder were every-day matters to him. "That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly, and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!" "Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances. "Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the young masters to life." "And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what the answer would be. "Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh! mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't start this minute!" By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an instant-- "Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps thee?" Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of all her troubles. "My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father, something might yet be done." [Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower class.] "A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy the skates." Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme love and tenderness. Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience. "Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the same money, purchase such aid for your father!" The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to cry out, just as he was passing: "Mynheer Boekman!" The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked scowlingly about him. Hans was in for it now. "Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a great favor----" "Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars." "I am no beggar, Mynheer," retorted Hans proudly, at the same time producing his mite of silver with a grand air. "I wish to consult with you about my father. He is a living man, but sits like one dead. He cannot think. His words mean nothing--but he is not sick. He fell on the dykes." "Hey? what?" cried the doctor beginning to listen. Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest, "Oh, do see him, Mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind--I know this money is not enough; but take it, Mynheer, I will earn more--I know I will--Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my father!" What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently upon Hans' shoulder. "Put up your money, boy, I do not want it--we will see your father. It is a hopeless case, I fear. How long did you say?" "Ten years, Mynheer," sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope. "Ah! a bad case; but I shall see him. Let me think. To-day I start for Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?" "A mile south of Broek, Mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans, with a heavy sigh; "they are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." "That will do," said the doctor, hurrying on, with a bright backward nod at Hans, "I shall be there. A hopeless case," he muttered to himself, "but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens. Confound it, shall I never forget that young scoundrel!" and, scowling more darkly than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way. Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners; again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips. "Shall I hurry home," he was thinking, "to tell the good news, or shall I get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I'll go on!" And so Hans bought the skates. VIII INTRODUCING JACOB POOT AND HIS COUSIN Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas' Eve. There was a bright moon; and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband's improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester's visit, that she had yielded to the children's entreaties for an hour's skating before bedtime. Hans was delighted with his new skates, and in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked" did many things upon the ice, that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps, and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had beaten three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them, without feeling exactly like one of the party; but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends. "I say, boys, let's put a stop to those young rag-pickers from the idiot's cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don't blame them. As for the boy, if we've a spark of manhood in us we will scorn the very idea of----" "Certainly we will!" interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl's meaning, "who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!" Carl wheeled about savagely: "Not so fast, master! and I'd thank you not to put words in other people's mouths. You'd best not try it again." "Ha! ha!" laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. Something in Peter's eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost. "What are you shrieking about, you little weasel! You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!" Half a dozen bystanders and by-skaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present. Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first; but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood there could be no mistaking his form. "Hola! here comes Fatty!" exclaimed Carl, "and there's some one with him, a slender fellow, a stranger." "Ha! ha! that's like good bacon," cried Ludwig; "a streak of lean and a streak of fat." "That's Jacob's English cousin," put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information, "that's his English cousin, and, oh! he's got such a funny little name,--BEN DOBBS. He's going to stay with him until after the grand race." All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, "rolling" and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked; but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near. "This is my cousin, boys," said Jacob, rather out of breath--"Benjamin Dobbs. He's a John Bull and he's going to be in the race." All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows. If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as "Penchamin Dopps," and called him a "Shon Pull," but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin's friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that _vrouw_ means wife, and _ja_, yes; and _spoorweg_, railway; _kanaals_, canals; _stoomboot_, steamboat; _ophaalbruggen_, drawbridges; _buiten plasten_, country seats; _mynheer_, "mister;" _tweegevegt_, duel or _two-fights_; _koper_, copper; _zadel_, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his "Dutch dialogues." The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German "have you seen my grandmother's red cow?" and when he reached Germany discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch "had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter." However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben's benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a "ja," or a nod, in quite a familiar way. The project _was_ a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse. Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey--no less a one than from Broek to the Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles![15] [Footnote 15: Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5280 ft. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.] "And now, boys," added Jacob, when he had told the plan, "who will go with us?" "I will! I will!" cried the boys eagerly. "And so will I!" ventured little Voostenwalbert. "Ha! ha!" laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides, and shaking his puffy cheeks, "_you_ go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven't left off your pads yet!" Now in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob's insult was rather too great for endurance. "Look out what you say!" he squeaked. "Lucky for you when you can leave off _your_ pads--you're padded all over!" "Ha! ha!" roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. "Ha! ha!"--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any. "It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!" he explained to Ben. So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent. "Good-night!" sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might. "Good-night!" "We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ," said Peter van Holp, eagerly, "and at Leyden, too, where there's no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home." "All right!" responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker. Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration. "Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother'll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My! but it's cold," he added, "cold enough to take a fellow's head off his shoulders. We'd better go home." "What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?" cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step which he called the "double edge." "Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don't you know if it wasn't an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn't go?" "I

might

How many times the word 'might' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

willing

How many times the word 'willing' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

heel

How many times the word 'heel' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

volunteer

How many times the word 'volunteer' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

meanness

How many times the word 'meanness' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

grew

How many times the word 'grew' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

volition

How many times the word 'volition' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

probably

How many times the word 'probably' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

into

How many times the word 'into' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

t.

How many times the word 't.' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

materialistic

How many times the word 'materialistic' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

soul

How many times the word 'soul' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

redress

How many times the word 'redress' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

much

How many times the word 'much' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

teapot

How many times the word 'teapot' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

body

How many times the word 'body' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

hosiery

How many times the word 'hosiery' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

meet

How many times the word 'meet' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

taste

How many times the word 'taste' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

rushed

How many times the word 'rushed' appears in the text?

woman isn t the last word it certainly isn t. Quite, said Gerald. In fact, said Birkin, because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in. Yes, I believe you, said Gerald. You ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the _additional_ perfect relationship between man and man additional to marriage. I can never see how they can be the same, said Gerald. Not the same but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like. I know, said Gerald, you believe something like that. Only I can t _feel_ it, you see. He put his hand on Birkin s arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life. This he would do. The other way was to accept Rupert s offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage. Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert s offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed. CHAPTER XXVI. A CHAIR There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery factory. Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people. She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was having a child. When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. Look, said Birkin, there is a pretty chair. Charming! cried Ursula. Oh, charming. It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. It was once, said Birkin, gilded and it had a cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is wrong it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane gave. I like it though Ah yes, said Ursula, so do I. How much is it? Birkin asked the man. Ten shillings. And you will send it ? It was bought. So beautiful, so pure! Birkin said. It almost breaks my heart. They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. My beloved country it had something to express even when it made that chair. And hasn t it now? asked Ursula. She was always angry when he took this tone. No, it hasn t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I think of England, even Jane Austen s England it had living thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness. It isn t true, cried Ursula. Why must you always praise the past, at the expense of the present? _Really_, I don t think so much of Jane Austen s England. It was materialistic enough, if you like It could afford to be materialistic, said Birkin, because it had the power to be something other which we haven t. We are materialistic because we haven t the power to be anything else try as we may, we can t bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism. Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else. And I hate your past. I m sick of it, she cried. I believe I even hate that old chair, though it _is_ beautiful. It isn t _my_ sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I m sick of the beloved past. Not so sick as I am of the accursed present, he said. Yes, just the same. I hate the present but I don t want the past to take its place I don t want that old chair. He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. All right, he said, then let us not have it. I m sick of it all, too. At any rate one can t go on living on the old bones of beauty. One can t, she cried. I _don t_ want old things. The truth is, we don t want things at all, he replied. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me. This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: So it is to me. But one must live somewhere. Not somewhere anywhere, he said. One should just live anywhere not have a definite place. I don t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is _complete_, you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a commandment-stone. She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. But what are we going to do? she said. We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural _grandeur_ even, _splendour_. You ll never get it in houses and furniture or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside. She stood in the street contemplating. And we are never to have a complete place of our own never a home? she said. Pray God, in this world, no, he answered. But there s only this world, she objected. He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. Meanwhile, then, we ll avoid having things of our own, he said. But you ve just bought a chair, she said. I can tell the man I don t want it, he replied. She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. No, she said, we don t want it. I m sick of old things. New ones as well, he said. They retraced their steps. There in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned. Let us give it to _them_, whispered Ursula. Look they are getting a home together. _I_ won t aid abet them in it, he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female. Oh yes, cried Ursula. It s right for them there s nothing else for them. Very well, said Birkin, you offer it to them. I ll watch. Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing. We bought a chair, said Ursula, and we don t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would. The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them. Would you care for it? repeated Ursula. It s really _very_ pretty but but she smiled rather dazzlingly. The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can. We wanted to _give_ it to you, explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat. Ursula had apprehended him with a fine _frisson_ of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. Won t you have the chair? she said. The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain costermonger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened. What s the matter? he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth: What she warnt? eh? An odd smile writhed his lips. Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. To give you a chair that with the label on it, he said, pointing. The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men. What s she warnt to give it _us_ for, guvnor, he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. Thought you d like it it s a pretty chair. We bought it and don t want it. No need for you to have it, don t be frightened, said Birkin, with a wry smile. The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. Why don t you want it for yourselves, if you ve just bought it? asked the woman coolly. Taint good enough for you, now you ve had a look at it. Frightened it s got something in it, eh? She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. I d never thought of that, said Birkin. But no, the wood s too thin everywhere. You see, said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. _We_ are just going to get married, and we thought we d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn t have furniture, we d go abroad. The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence. It s all right to be some folks, said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. Cawsts something to chynge your mind, he said, in an incredibly low accent. Only ten shillings this time, said Birkin. The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. Cheap at arf a quid, guvnor, he said. Not like getting divawced. We re not married yet, said Birkin. No, no more aren t we, said the young woman loudly. But we shall be, a Saturday. Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness. Good luck to you, said Birkin. Same to you, said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: When s yours coming off, then? Birkin looked round at Ursula. It s for the lady to say, he replied. We go to the registrar the moment she s ready. Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. No urry, said the young man, grinning suggestive. Oh, don t break your neck to get there, said the young woman. Slike when you re dead you re long time married. The young man turned aside as if this hit him. The longer the better, let us hope, said Birkin. That s it, guvnor, said the young man admiringly. Enjoy it while it larsts niver whip a dead donkey. Only when he s shamming dead, said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. Aw, there s a difference, he said satirically. What about the chair? said Birkin. Yes, all right, said the woman. They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside. That s it, said Birkin. Will you take it with you, or have the address altered. Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ome. Mike use of im, said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. Ere s mother s cosy chair, he said. Warnts a cushion. And he stood it down on the market stones. Don t you think it s pretty? laughed Ursula. Oh, I do, said the young woman. Ave a sit in it, you ll wish you d kept it, said the young man. Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. Awfully comfortable, she said. But rather hard. You try it. She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. Don t spoil him, said the young woman. He s not used to arm-chairs, e isn t. The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: Only warnts legs on is. The four parted. The young woman thanked them. Thank you for the chair it ll last till it gives way. Keep it for an ornyment, said the young man. Good afternoon good afternoon, said Ursula and Birkin. Goo -luck to you, said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin s eyes, as he turned aside his head. The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. How strange they are! said Ursula. Children of men, he said. They remind me of Jesus: The meek shall inherit the earth. But they aren t the meek, said Ursula. Yes, I don t know why, but they are, he replied. They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. And are they going to inherit the earth? she said. Yes they. Then what are we going to do? she asked. We re not like them are we? We re not the meek? No. We ve got to live in the chinks they leave us. How horrible! cried Ursula. I don t want to live in chinks. Don t worry, he said. They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks. All the world, she said. Ah no but some room. The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. I don t mind it even then, said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. It doesn t concern me. No more it does, he replied, holding her hand. One needn t see. One goes one s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious It is, my love, isn t it? she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. And we will wander about on the face of the earth, he said, and we ll look at the world beyond just this bit. There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking. I don t want to inherit the earth, she said. I don t want to inherit anything. He closed his hand over hers. Neither do I. I want to be disinherited. She clasped his fingers closely. We won t care about _anything_, she said. He sat still, and laughed. And we ll be married, and have done with them, she added. Again he laughed. It s one way of getting rid of everything, she said, to get married. And one way of accepting the whole world, he added. A whole other world, yes, she said happily. Perhaps there s Gerald and Gudrun he said. If there is there is, you see, she said. It s no good our worrying. We can t really alter them, can we? No, he said. One has no right to try not with the best intentions in the world. Do you try to force them? she asked. Perhaps, he said. Why should I want him to be free, if it isn t his business? She paused for a time. We can t _make_ him happy, anyhow, she said. He d have to be it of himself. I know, he said. But we want other people with us, don t we? Why should we? she asked. I don t know, he said uneasily. One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship. But why? she insisted. Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them? This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. Does it end with just our two selves? he asked, tense. Yes what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let them. But why must you run after them? His face was tense and unsatisfied. You see, he said, I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people a little freedom with people. She pondered for a moment. Yes, one does want that. But it must _happen_. You can t do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can _force_ the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us you can t _make_ them. I know, he said. But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world the only creature in the world? You ve got me, she said. Why should you _need_ others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it s so horrid of you. You ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don t want their love. His face was full of real perplexity. Don t I? he said. It s the problem I can t solve. I _know_ I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: and we ve nearly got it we really have. But beyond that. _Do_ I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final almost extra-human relationship with him a relationship in the ultimate of me and him or don t I? She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not answer. CHAPTER XXVII. FLITTING That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous which irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in silence. Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow. Her father turned round, stiffly. You what? he said. Tomorrow! echoed Gudrun. Indeed! said the mother. But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. Married tomorrow! cried her father harshly. What are you talking about. Yes, said Ursula. Why not? Those two words, from her, always drove him mad. Everything is all right we shall go to the registrar s office There was a second s hush in the room, after Ursula s blithe vagueness. _Really_, Ursula! said Gudrun. Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy? demanded the mother, rather superbly. But there hasn t, said Ursula. You knew. Who knew? now cried the father. Who knew? What do you mean by your you knew ? He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. Of course you knew, she said coolly. You knew we were going to get married. There was a dangerous pause. We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch! Father! cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: But isn t it a _fearfully_ sudden decision, Ursula? she asked. No, not really, replied Ursula, with the same maddening cheerfulness. He s been _wanting_ me to agree for weeks he s had the licence ready. Only I I wasn t ready in myself. Now I am ready is there anything to be disagreeable about? Certainly not, said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. You are perfectly free to do as you like. Ready in yourself _yourself_, that s all that matters, isn t it! I wasn t ready in myself, he mimicked her phrase offensively. You and _yourself_, you re of some importance, aren t you? She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and dangerous. I am to myself, she said, wounded and mortified. I know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to _bully_ me you never cared for my happiness. He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still, cried her mother. Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. No, I won t, she cried. I won t hold my tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married what does it _matter!_ It doesn t affect anybody but myself. Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. Doesn t it? he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank away. No, how can it? she replied, shrinking but stubborn. It doesn t matter to _me_ then, what you do what becomes of you? he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. No, stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. You only want to She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every muscle ready. What? he challenged. Bully me, she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against the door. Father! cried Gudrun in a high voice, it is impossible! He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. It s true, she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. What has your love meant, what did it ever mean? bullying, and denial it did He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running upstairs. He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: Well, you shouldn t take so much notice of her. Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and thoughts. Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a small valise in her hand: Good-bye! she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone. I m going. And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly

condemnation

How many times the word 'condemnation' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

live

How many times the word 'live' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

occasions

How many times the word 'occasions' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

intend

How many times the word 'intend' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

modest

How many times the word 'modest' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

suburb

How many times the word 'suburb' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

astonished

How many times the word 'astonished' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

exceptionally

How many times the word 'exceptionally' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

dexterous

How many times the word 'dexterous' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

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woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

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woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

something

How many times the word 'something' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

draught

How many times the word 'draught' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

john

How many times the word 'john' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

grace

How many times the word 'grace' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

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How many times the word 'flashed' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

satisfactorily

How many times the word 'satisfactorily' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

touching

How many times the word 'touching' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

realized

How many times the word 'realized' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

spoon

How many times the word 'spoon' appears in the text?

woman who had tossed the spy's hat into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I want one!" They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself." They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply. "It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?" The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter went in. A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn, John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!" she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor. She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it. They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity. Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile. "Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the something--Me?" Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful subject." She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument he is." Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent astonishment. She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination to marry him." "Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. "Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again. "He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else." She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend. "I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also (which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose instrument he is." "How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!" Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. "How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your estimation?" "God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have." Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your mercy!" He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when I might have loved _him_?" The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again. "Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend." Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word. "Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money, after all, as Mr. Armadale's spy." Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words. "I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately, "I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!" He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own. "You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. "For both our sakes, go!" His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting word. She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?" The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. "What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_ way?" She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw. "I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them." She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!" The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. "Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. "I don't believe in his name, to begin with!" The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house. Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place. The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master. "I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman. "Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think." "Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched." At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since. "It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back." "It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him." The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them. VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM. Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon. Toward nine o'clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan's door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house. Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits. The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand. A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way. It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet. After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house. From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale's, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow's arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night's imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship! Toward ten o'clock the well-remembered sound of Allan's voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning's search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman's children. Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess's influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that

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woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

coffin

How many times the word 'coffin' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

consciously

How many times the word 'consciously' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

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woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

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woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

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woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

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woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

tower

How many times the word 'tower' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

retire

How many times the word 'retire' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

sake

How many times the word 'sake' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

pocket

How many times the word 'pocket' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

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How many times the word 'wicked' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

pity

How many times the word 'pity' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

mais

How many times the word 'mais' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

hast

How many times the word 'hast' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

maire

How many times the word 'maire' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

say?--i

How many times the word 'say?--i' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

brought

How many times the word 'brought' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

lies

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woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

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How many times the word 'shines' appears in the text?

woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death. VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking? MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light. HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh! if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors! MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more, speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door? HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is beyond the ordinary powers of man. MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft! These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre! my father! CHARLES. Stand! I say. HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered! CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak! HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you kill me. CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear? HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will! CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know all. VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann? CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this? (Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door? HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's sake desist! (He stops his way.) CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up from below.) THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy! CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice! OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has arrived. CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave? Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity? Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear! OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of misery! CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried? OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and owls screech their midnight concert. CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this? OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this. CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos! OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human heart-- CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity. OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair. CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon me! OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me-- "What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?" --and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened --I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles. I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept, and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me. CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you. OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage! There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head! CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their heads.) THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter? CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son has slain his Father! THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say? CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked, flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him! he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold-- naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father, in very truth it is. THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father? Yours? SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy command. CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night, that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger. Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.) ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains? No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so horrible. CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think, entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled! To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither, and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up sanctified. (They kneel.) SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do? CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees, breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to discharge that debt. SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you my debtor forever! CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs! (SCHWEITZER rises.) SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him? CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle! Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words-- I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole. Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward. I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done! SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow me! (Exit with a troop.) CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here. ACT V. SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night. Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle. DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter. Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.) FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber, roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there? DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one is aroused out of his sleep? FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights! (Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour. Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages? SERVANT. See whom, my lord? FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom? blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced? SERVANT. The watch has just called two. FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses? Where is Char--the Count, I would say? SERVANT. I know not, my lord. FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know not!" Begone, fetch the minister! SERVANT. My lord! FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all conspire against me! DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord! FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite tranquil. DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering. FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning. DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar? FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar! DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it. FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave me. DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill. FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.) DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come. DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses. FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I have not finished my night's rest. DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the physician. FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream! DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest. FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a good laugh at me! DANIEL. All on a sudden. FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up, and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled. DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment. FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!" DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me! FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin! DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you! FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh? DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above. FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me! DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you. FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest! DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you! [Exit.] FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them? Enter PASTOR MOSER. MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble? FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me. MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter. FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away. MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue. FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you. MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night? FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul! MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself. FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me? MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! FRANCIS. No! no! MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions, will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and, if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won! FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant! MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game? Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor, I will admit that you have won. FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy drivelling fancies? MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety.

moons

How many times the word 'moons' appears in the text?