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word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

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word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

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word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

found

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

word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

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word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

ought

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

word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

exactly

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word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

appointed

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word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

befallen

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

word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

delighted

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

word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

pounds

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

word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

correctly

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word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

long

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

word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

greens

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

word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

fond

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

word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

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word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

without

How many times the word 'without' appears in the text?

word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

cruelly

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

word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

civil

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

word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

portion

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

word, and she shall be down here before the week's end. Price shall be no obstacle--none whatever. By Jove, what a pair you would be!" This generous offer was repeated four or five times; but on each occasion Mary only half heard what was said, and on each occasion the baronet was far too much in advance to hear Mary's reply. At last he recollected that he wanted to call on one of the tenants, and begged his companion to allow him to ride on. "If you at all dislike being left alone, you know--" "Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it." "Because I don't care about it, you know; only I can't make this horse walk the same pace as that brute." "You mustn't abuse my pet, Sir Louis." "It's a d---- shame on my mother's part;" said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best behaviour, could not quite give up his ordinary mode of conversation. "When she was fortunate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had something proper for her to ride upon; but I'll look to it as soon as I am a little stronger, you see if I don't;" and, so saying, Sir Louis trotted off, leaving Mary in peace with her donkey. Sir Louis had now been living cleanly and forswearing sack for what was to him a very long period, and his health felt the good effects of it. No one rejoiced at this more cordially than did the doctor. To rejoice at it was with him a point of conscience. He could not help telling himself now and again that, circumstanced as he was, he was most specially bound to take joy in any sign of reformation which the baronet might show. Not to do so would be almost tantamount to wishing that he might die in order that Mary might inherit his wealth; and, therefore, the doctor did with all his energy devote himself to the difficult task of hoping and striving that Sir Louis might yet live to enjoy what was his own. But the task was altogether a difficult one, for as Sir Louis became stronger in health, so also did he become more exorbitant in his demands on the doctor's patience, and more repugnant to the doctor's tastes. In his worst fits of disreputable living he was ashamed to apply to his guardian for money; and in his worst fits of illness he was, through fear, somewhat patient under his doctor's hands; but just at present he had nothing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all patient. "Doctor,"--said he, one day, at Boxall Hill--"how about those Greshamsbury title-deeds?" "Oh, that will all be properly settled between my lawyer and your own." "Oh--ah--yes; no doubt the lawyers will settle it: settle it with a fine bill of costs, of course. But, as Finnie says,"--Finnie was Sir Louis's legal adviser--"I have got a tremendously large interest at stake in this matter; eighty thousand pounds is no joke. It ain't everybody that can shell out eighty thousand pounds when they're wanted; and I should like to know how the thing's going on. I've a right to ask, you know; eh, doctor?" "The title-deeds of a large portion of the Greshamsbury estate will be placed with the mortgage-deeds before the end of next month." "Oh, that's all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my father did make such a con-found-ed will, that's no reason I shouldn't know how things are going." "You shall know everything that I know, Sir Louis." "And now, doctor, what are we to do about money?" "About money?" "Yes; money, rhino, ready! 'put money in your purse and cut a dash;' eh, doctor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I'm going on the quiet line altogether now: I've done with all that sort of thing." "I'm heartily glad of it; heartily," said the doctor. "Yes, I'm not going to make way for my far-away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doctor; shan't I?" "'All right' is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with decent prudence. You shouldn't take that filth in the morning though." "Filth in the morning! That's my mother, I suppose! That's her ladyship! She's been talking, has she? Don't you believe her, doctor. There's not a young man in Barsetshire is going more regular, all right within the posts, than I am." The doctor was obliged to acknowledge that there did seem to be some improvement. "And now, doctor, how about money? Eh?" Doctor Thorne, like other guardians similarly circumstanced, began to explain that Sir Louis had already had a good deal of money, and had begun also to promise that more should be forthcoming in the event of good behaviour, when he was somewhat suddenly interrupted by Sir Louis. "Well, now; I'll tell you what, doctor; I've got a bit of news for you; something that I think will astonish you." The doctor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be surprised. "Something that will really make you look about; and something, too, that will be very much to the hearer's advantage,--as the newspaper advertisements say." "Something to my advantage?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope you'll think so. Doctor, what would you think now of my getting married?" "I should be delighted to hear of it--more delighted than I can express; that is, of course, if you were to marry well. It was your father's most eager wish that you should marry early." "That's partly my reason," said the young hypocrite. "But then, if I marry I must have an income fit to live on; eh, doctor?" The doctor had some fear that his interesting prot g e was desirous of a wife for the sake of the income, instead of desiring the income for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, marriage would probably be good for him; and he had no hesitation, therefore, in telling him, that if he married well, he should be put in possession of sufficient income to maintain the new Lady Scatcherd in a manner becoming her dignity. "As to marrying well," said Sir Louis, "you, I take it, will be the last man, doctor, to quarrel with my choice." "Shall I?" said the doctor, smiling. "Well, you won't disapprove, I guess, as the Yankee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" It must be said in Sir Louis's favour that he had probably no idea whatever of the estimation in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are nearest and dearest to them. He had no sort of conception that she was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold, baronets' incomes of eight or ten thousand a year, and such coins usually current in the world's markets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an unmarried girl without a portion. In Sir Louis's estimation he was offering everything, and asking for nothing. He certainly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and required a little wooing in the shape of presents, civil speeches--perhaps kisses also. The civil speeches he had, he thought, done, and imagined that they had been well received. The other things were to follow; an Arab pony, for instance,--and the kisses probably with it; and then all these difficulties would be smoothed. But he did not for a moment conceive that there would be any difficulty with the uncle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thousand a year coming to him? Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces? Might he not well inform the doctor that he had something to tell him for his advantage? And yet, to tell the truth, the doctor did not seem to be overjoyed when the announcement was first made to him. He was by no means overjoyed. On the contrary, even Sir Louis could perceive his guardian's surprise was altogether unmixed with delight. What a question was this that was asked him! What would he think of a marriage between Mary Thorne--his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Between the alpha of the whole alphabet, and him whom he could not but regard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the altar together. Had Sir Louis been a Hottentot, or an Esquimaux, the proposal could not have astonished him more. The two persons were so totally of a different class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the other had never occurred to him. "What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?" Sir Louis had asked; and the doctor, instead of answering him with ready and pleased alacrity, stood silent, thunderstruck with amazement. "Well, wouldn't she be a good wife?" said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of disgust at the evident disapproval shown at his choice. "I thought you'd have been so delighted." "Mary Thorne!" ejaculated the doctor at last. "Have you spoken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?" "Well, I have and yet I haven't; I haven't, and yet in a manner I have." "I don't understand you," said the doctor. "Why, you see, I haven't exactly popped to her yet; but I have been doing the civil; and if she's up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I'm after by this time." Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very disagreeable description! "I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mistake about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be disposed to avail herself of the great advantages--for great they undoubtedly are--which you are able to offer to your intended wife. If you will take my advice, you will give up thinking of Mary. She would not suit you." "Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She's got no money, you mean?" "No, I did not mean that. It will not signify to you whether your wife has money or not. You need not look for money. But you should think of some one more nearly of your own temperament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you." These last words the doctor uttered with much emphasis. His intention was to make the baronet understand that the matter was quite hopeless, and to induce him if possible to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of human beings, and gave him no credit for any strength of character. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne; and could not bring himself to believe that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon return his passion. He was, moreover, sufficiently obstinate, firm we ought perhaps to say,--for his pursuit in this case was certainly not an evil one,--and he at once made up his mind to succeed in spite of the uncle. "If she consents, however, you will do so too?" asked he. "It is impossible she should consent," said the doctor. "Impossible! I don't see anything at all impossible. But if she does?" "But she won't." "Very well,--that's to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you consent?" "The stars would fall first. It's all nonsense. Give it up, my dear friend; believe me you are only preparing unhappiness for yourself;" and the doctor put his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "She will not, cannot accept such an offer." "Will not! cannot!" said the baronet, thinking over all the reasons which in his estimation could possibly be inducing the doctor to be so hostile to his views, and shaking the hand off his arm. "Will not! cannot! But come, doctor, answer my question fairly. If she'll have me for better or worse, you won't say aught against it; will you?" "But she won't have you; why should you give her and yourself the pain of a refusal?" "Oh, as for that, I must stand my chances like another. And as for her, why d----, doctor, you wouldn't have me believe that any young lady thinks it so very dreadful to have a baronet with ten thousand pounds a year at her feet, specially when that same baronet ain't very old, nor yet particularly ugly. I ain't so green as that, doctor." "I suppose she must go through it, then," said the doctor, musing. "But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder answer from you, considering all that you so often say about your great friendship with my father. I did think you'd at any rate answer me when I asked you a question." But the doctor did not want to answer that special question. Could it be possible that Mary should wish to marry this odious man, could such a state of things be imagined to be the case, he would not refuse his consent, infinitely as he would be disgusted by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any excuse for telling Mary that her uncle approved of so odious a match. "I cannot say that in any case I should approve of such a marriage, Sir Louis. I cannot bring myself to say so; for I know it would make you both miserable. But on that matter my niece will choose wholly for herself." "And about the money, doctor?" "If you marry a decent woman you shall not want the means of supporting her decently," and so saying the doctor walked away, leaving Sir Louis to his meditations. CHAPTER XXIX The Donkey Ride Sir Louis, when left to himself, was slightly dismayed and somewhat discouraged; but he was not induced to give up his object. The first effort of his mind was made in conjecturing what private motive Dr Thorne could possibly have in wishing to debar his niece from marrying a rich young baronet. That the objection was personal to himself, Sir Louis did not for a moment imagine. Could it be that the doctor did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made of. Baronets did not grow like blackberries." And so, assuring himself with such philosophy, he determined to make his offer. The time he selected for doing this was the hour before dinner; but on the day on which his conversation with the doctor had taken place, he was deterred by the presence of a strange visitor. To account for this strange visit it will be necessary that we should return to Greshamsbury for a few minutes. Frank, when he returned home for his summer vacation, found that Mary had again flown; and the very fact of her absence added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her staunchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her. He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne. This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. "Well, mother," said Frank, at last turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, "since you press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if--" "Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted." "If," continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, "if she will consent." "Consent!" said Lady Arabella. "Oh, heavens!" and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief. "Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so." "Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you," said Lady Arabella,--not prudently. "No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly." "You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!" "I don't call you cruel; but you wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this--for I have spoken to her--she has behaved exactly as you would have wanted her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you"--Frank was beginning to be very bitter now--"but she has done nothing to deserve it. If there has been any fault it has been mine. But it is well that we should all understand each other. My intention is to marry Mary if I can." And, so speaking, certainly without due filial respect, he turned towards the door. "Frank," said his mother, raising herself up with energy to make one last appeal. "Frank, do you wish to see me die of a broken heart?" "You know, mother, I would wish to make you happy, if I could." "If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"--and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST _marry money_." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years. "Miss Dunstable, I suppose," said Frank, scornfully. "No, mother; I made an ass, and worse than an ass of myself once in that way, and I won't do it again. I hate money." "Oh, Frank!" "I hate money." "But, Frank, the estate?" "I hate the estate--at least I shall hate it if I am expected to buy it at such a price as that. The estate is my father's." "Oh, no, Frank; it is not." "It is in the sense I mean. He may do with it as he pleases; he will never have a word of complaint from me. I am ready to go into a profession to-morrow. I'll be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an engineer; I don't care what." Frank, in his enthusiasm, probably overlooked some of the preliminary difficulties. "Or I'll take a farm under him, and earn my bread that way; but, mother, don't talk to me any more about marrying money." And, so saying, Frank left the room. Frank, it will be remembered, was twenty-one when he was first introduced to the reader; he is now twenty-two. It may be said that there was a great difference between his character then and now. A year at that period will make a great difference; but the change has been, not in his character, but in his feelings. Frank went out from his mother and immediately ordered his black horse to be got ready for him. He would at once go over to Boxall Hill. He went himself to the stables to give his orders; and as he returned to get his gloves and whip he met Beatrice in the corridor. "Beatrice," said he, "step in here," and she followed him into his room. "I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill." "Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?" "You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?" "Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed." "Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!" and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback. He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back--but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary. He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. "Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings," she had said. "Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own--your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr Gresham." "No," said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, "I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own," and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor. "Hallo, doctor! is that you?" said Frank, rather disgusted. "What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here," said Dr Thorne, not much better pleased. They were now not above a mile from Boxall Hill, and the doctor, therefore, could not but surmise whither Frank was going. They had repeatedly met since Frank's return from Cambridge, both in the village and in the doctor's house; but not a word had been said between them about Mary beyond what the merest courtesy had required. Not that each did not love the other sufficiently to make a full confidence between them desirable to both; but neither had had the courage to speak out. Nor had either of them the courage to do so now. "Yes," said Frank, blushing, "I am going to Lady Scatcherd's. Shall I find the ladies at home?" "Yes; Lady Scatcherd is there; but Sir Louis is there also--an invalid: perhaps you would not wish to meet him." "Oh! I don't mind," said Frank, trying to laugh; "he won't bite, I suppose?" The doctor longed in his heart to pray to Frank to return with him; not to go and make further mischief; not to do that which might cause a more bitter estrangement between himself and the squire. But he had not the courage to do it. He could not bring himself to accuse Frank of being in love with his niece. So after a few more senseless words on either side, words which each knew to be senseless as he uttered them, they both rode on their own ways. And then the doctor silently, and almost unconsciously, made such a comparison between Louis Scatcherd and Frank Gresham as Hamlet made between the dead and live king. It was Hyperion to a satyr. Was it not as impossible that Mary should not love the one, as that she should love the other? Frank's offer of his affections had at first probably been but a boyish ebullition of feeling; but if it should now be, that this had grown into a manly and disinterested love, how could Mary remain unmoved? What could her heart want more, better, more beautiful, more rich than such a love as his? Was he not personally all that a girl could like? Were not his disposition, mind, character, acquirements, all such as women most delight to love? Was it not impossible that Mary should be indifferent to him? So meditated the doctor as he rode along, with only too true a knowledge of human nature. Ah! it was impossible, it was quite impossible that Mary should be indifferent. She had never been indifferent since Frank had uttered his first half-joking word of love. Such things are more important to women than they are to men, to girls than they are to boys. When Frank had first told her that he loved her; aye, months before that, when he merely looked his love, her heart had received the whisper, had acknowledged the glance, unconscious as she was herself, and resolved as she was to rebuke his advances. When, in her hearing, he had said soft nothings to Patience Oriel, a hated, irrepressible tear had gathered in her eye. When he had pressed in his warm, loving grasp the hand which she had offered him as a token of mere friendship, her heart had forgiven him the treachery, nay, almost thanked him for it, before her eyes or her words had been ready to rebuke him. When the rumour of his liaison with Miss Dunstable reached her ears, when she heard of Miss Dunstable's fortune, she had wept, wept outright, in her chamber--wept, as she said to herself, to think that he should be so mercenary; but she had wept, as she should have said to herself, at finding that he was so faithless. Then, when she knew at last that this rumour was false, when she found that she was banished from Greshamsbury for his sake, when she was forced to retreat with her friend Patience, how could she but love him, in that he was not mercenary? How could she not love him in that he was so faithful? It was impossible that she should not love him. Was he not the brightest and the best of men that she had ever seen, or was like to see?--that she could possibly ever see, she would have said to herself, could she have brought herself to own the truth? And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be that that should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs? When Beatrice, with would-be solemn face, but with eyes beaming with feminine affection, would gravely talk of Frank's tender love as a terrible misfortune, as a misfortune to them all, to Mary herself as well as others, how could Mary do other than love him? "Beatrice is his sister," she would say within her own mind, "otherwise she would never talk like this; were she not his sister, she could not but know the value of such love as this." Ah! yes; Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great. And now by degrees, in those lonely donkey-rides at Boxall Hill, in those solitary walks, she was beginning to own to herself the truth. And now that she did own it, what should be her course? What should she do, how should she act if this loved one persevered in his love? And, ah! what should she do, how should she act if he did not persevere? Could it be that there should be happiness in store for her? Was it not too clear that, let the matter go how it would, there was no happiness in store for her? Much as she might love Frank Gresham, she could never consent to be his wife unless the squire would smile on her as his daughter-in-law. The squire had been all that was kind, all

smoocher

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

chickasaw

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

sometimes

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

absorbed

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

shores

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

most

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

mean

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

helping

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

however

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

i

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

clearly

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

names

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

enthusiasm

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

lunar

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

her

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

berth

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

me

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

looser

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

act

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

words? Now turn to the hemisphere on the right, the women's side, and you also discover "seas," more numerous indeed, but of smaller dimensions and with gentler names, as more befitting the feminine temperament. First comes _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, so expressive of the calm, tranquil soul of an innocent maiden. Near it is _Lacus Somniorum_, the Lake of Dreams, in which she loves to gaze at her gilded and rosy future. In the southern division is seen _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, over whose soft heaving billows she is gently wafted by Love's caressing winds, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Not far off is _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, in which she becomes the happy mother of rejoicing children. A little north is _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises where her life and happiness are sometimes exposed to sudden, and unexpected dangers which fortunately, however, seldom end fatally. Far to the left, near the men's side, is _Mare Vaporum_, the Sea of Vapors, into which, though it is rather small, and full of sunken rocks, she sometimes allows herself to wander, moody, and pouting, and not exactly knowing where she wants to go or what she wants to do. Between the two last expands the great _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, into whose quiet depths are at last absorbed all her simulated passions, all her futile aspirations, all her unglutted desires, and whose unruffled waters are gliding on forever in noiseless current towards _Lacus Mortis_, the Lake of Death, whose misty shores "In ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods are girt." So at least Ardan mused as he stooped over Beer and Maedler's map. Did not these strange successive names somewhat justify his flights of fancy? Surely they had a wonderful variety of meaning. Was it by accident or by forethought deep that the two hemispheres of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of the old astronomers? His companions, however, it need hardly be said, never saw the "seas" in that light. They looked on them not with sentimental but with geographical eyes. They studied this new world and tried to get it by heart, working at it like a school boy at his lessons. They began by measuring its angles and diameters. To their practical, common sense vision _Mare Nubium_, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied a space of about 270 thousand square miles, its central point lying in 15 south latitude and 20 east longitude. Northeast from this lay _Oceanus Procellarum_, the Ocean of Tempests, the most extensive of all the plains on the lunar disc, embracing a surface of about half a million of square miles, its centre being in 10 north and 45 east. From its bosom those wonderful mountains _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_ lifted their vast ramparts glittering with innumerable streaks radiating in all directions. To the north, in the direction of _Mare Frigoris_, extends _Mare Imbrium_, the Sea of Rains, its central point in 35 north and 20 east. It is somewhat circular in shape, and it covers a space of about 300 thousand square miles. South of _Oceanus Procellarum_ and separated from _Mare Nubium_ by a goodly number of ring mountains, lies the little basin of _Mare Humorum_, the Sea of Humors, containing only about 66 thousand square miles, its central point having a latitude of 25 south and a longitude of 40 east. On the shores of these great seas three "Gulfs" are easily found: _Sinus Aestuum_, the Gulf of the Tides, northeast of the centre; _Sinus Iridium_, the Gulf of the Rainbows, northeast of the _Mare Imbrium_; and _Sinus Roris_, the Dewy Gulf, a little further northeast. All seem to be small plains enclosed between chains of lofty mountains. The western hemisphere, dedicated to the ladies, according to Ardan, and therefore naturally more capricious, was remarkable for "seas" of smaller dimensions, but much more numerous. These were principally: _Mare Serenitatis_, the Sea of Serenity, 25 north and 20 west, comprising a surface of about 130 thousand square miles; _Mare Crisium_, the Sea of Crises, a round, well defined, dark depression towards the northwestern edge, 17 north 55 west, embracing a surface of 60 thousand square miles, a regular Caspian Sea in fact, only that the plateau in which it lies buried is surrounded by a girdle of much higher mountains. Then towards the equator, with a latitude of 5 north and a longitude of 25 west, appears _Mare Tranquillitatis_, the Sea of Tranquillity, occupying about 180 thousand square miles. This communicates on the south with _Mare Nectaris_, the Sea of Nectar, embracing an extent of about 42 thousand square miles, with a mean latitude of 15 south and a longitude of 35 west. Southwest from _Mare Tranquillitatis_, lies _Mare Fecunditatis_, the Sea of Fertility, the greatest in this hemisphere, as it occupies an extent of more than 300 thousand square miles, its latitude being 3 south and its longitude 50 west. For away to the north, on the borders of the _Mare Frigoris_, or Icy Sea, is seen the small _Mare Humboldtianum_, or Humboldt Sea, with a surface of about 10 thousand square miles. Corresponding to this in the southern hemisphere lies the _Mare Australe_, or South Sea, whose surface, as it extends along the western rim, is rather difficult to calculate. Finally, right in the centre of the lunar disc, where the equator intersects the first meridian, can be seen _Sinus Medii_, the Central Gulf, the common property therefore of all the hemispheres, the northern and southern, as well as of the eastern and western. Into these great divisions the surface of our satellite resolved itself before the eyes of Barbican and M'Nicholl. Adding up the various measurements, they found that the surface of her visible hemisphere was about 7-1/2 millions of square miles, of which about the two thirds comprised the volcanoes, the mountain chains, the rings, the islands--in short, the land portion of the lunar surface; the other third comprised the "seas," the "lakes," the "marshes," the "bays" or "gulfs," and the other divisions usually assigned to water. To all this deeply interesting information, though the fruit of observation the closest, aided and confirmed by calculation the profoundest, Ardan listened with the utmost indifference. In fact, even his French politeness could not suppress two or three decided yawns, which of course the mathematicians were too absorbed to notice. In their enthusiasm they tried to make him understand that though the Moon is 13-1/2 times smaller than our Earth, she can show more than 50 thousand craters, which astronomers have already counted and designated by specific names. "To conclude this portion of our investigation therefore," cried Barbican, clearing his throat, and occupying Aldan's right ear,--"the Moon's surface is a honey combed, perforated, punctured--" "A fistulous, a rugose, salebrous,--" cut in the Captain, close on the left. --"And highly cribriform superficies--" cried Barbican. --"A sieve, a riddle, a colander--" shouted the Captain. --"A skimming dish, a buckwheat cake, a lump of green cheese--" went on Barbican--. --In fact, there is no knowing how far they would have proceeded with their designations, comparisons, and scientific expressions, had not Ardan, driven to extremities by Barbican's last profanity, suddenly jumped up, broken away from his companions, and clapped a forcible extinguisher on their eloquence by putting his hands on their lips and keeping them there awhile. Then striking a grand attitude, he looked towards the Moon and burst out in accents of thrilling indignation: "Pardon, O beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise what pleasure I should have had in hurling them at the heads of Barbican, M'Nicholl, and every other barbarous iconoclast of the nineteenth century!--" Here he stopped short, for two reasons: first he was out of breath; secondly, he saw that the irrepressible scientists had been too busy making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable to get off another syllable. CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not one word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. About half past twelve o'clock, Barbican broke the dead silence by saying that after a careful calculation they were now only about 875 miles from the Moon's surface, a distance two hundred miles less in length than the lunar radius, and which was still to be diminished as they advanced further north. They were at that moment ten degrees north of the equator, almost directly over the ridge lying between the _Mare Serenitatis_ and the _Mare Tranquillitatis_. From this latitude all the way up to the north pole the travellers enjoyed a most satisfactory view of the Moon in all directions and under the most favorable conditions. By means of their spyglasses, magnifying a hundred times, they cut down this distance of 875 miles to about 9. The great telescope of the Rocky Mountains, by its enormous magnifying power of 48,000, brought the Moon, it is true, within a distance of 5 miles, or nearly twice as near; but this advantage of nearness was considerably more than counterbalanced by a want of clearness, resulting from the haziness and refractiveness of the terrestrial atmosphere, not to mention those fatal defects in the reflector that the art of man has not yet succeeded in remedying. Accordingly, our travellers, armed with excellent telescopes--of just power enough to be no injury to clearness,--and posted on unequalled vantage ground, began already to distinguish certain details that had probably never been noticed before by terrestrial observers. Even Ardan, by this time quite recovered from his fit of sentiment and probably infected a little by the scientific enthusiasm of his companions, began to observe and note and observe and note, alternately, with all the _sangfroid_ of a veteran astronomer. "Friends," said Barbican, again interrupting a silence that had lasted perhaps ten minutes, "whither we are going I can't say; if we shall ever revisit the Earth, I can't tell. Still, it is our duty so to act in all respects as if these labors of ours were one day to be of service to our fellow-creatures. Let us keep our souls free from every distraction. We are now astronomers. We see now what no mortal eye has ever gazed on before. This Projectile is simply a work room of the great Cambridge Observatory lifted into space. Let us take observations!" With these words, he set to work with a renewed ardor, in which his companions fully participated. The consequence was that they soon had several of the outline maps covered with the best sketches they could make of the Moon's various aspects thus presented under such favorable circumstances. They could now remark not only that they were passing the tenth degree of north latitude, but that the Projectile followed almost directly the twentieth degree of east longitude. "One thing always puzzled me when examining maps of the Moon," observed Ardan, "and I can't say that I see it yet as clearly as if I had thought over the matter. It is this. I could understand, when looking through a lens at an object, why we get only its reversed image--a simple law of optics explains _that_. Therefore, in a map of the Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on the subject." "I can see what troubles you," answered Barbican, "but I can also see that one moment's reflection would have put an end to your perplexity. On ordinary maps of the Earth's surface when the north is the top, the right hand must be the east, the left hand the west, and so on. That is simply because we look _down_ from _above_. And such a map seen through a lens will appear reversed in all respects. But in looking at the Moon, that is _up_ from _down_, we change our position so far that our right hand points west and our left east. Consequently, in our reversed map, though the north becomes south, the right remains east, and--" "Enough said! I see it at a glance! Thank you, Barbican. Why did not they make you a professor of astronomy? Your hint will save me a world of trouble."[C] Aided by the _Mappa Selenographica_, the travellers could easily recognize the different portions of the Moon over which they were now moving. An occasional glance at our reduction of this map, given as a frontispiece, will enable the gentle reader to follow the travellers on the line in which they moved and to understand the remarks and observations in which they occasionally indulged. "Where are we now?" asked Ardan. "Over the northern shores of the _Mare Nubium_," replied Barbican. "But we are still too far off to see with any certainty what they are like. What is the _Mare_ itself? A sea, according to the early astronomers? a plain of solid sand, according to later authority? or an immense forest, according to De la Rue of London, so far the Moon's most successful photographer? This gentleman's authority, Ardan, would have given you decided support in your famous dispute with the Captain at the meeting near Tampa, for he says very decidedly that the Moon has an atmosphere, very low to be sure but very dense. This, however, we must find out for ourselves; and in the meantime let us affirm nothing until we have good grounds for positive assertion." _Mare Nubium_, though not very clearly outlined on the maps, is easily recognized by lying directly east of the regions about the centre. It would appear as if this vast plain were sprinkled with immense lava blocks shot forth from the great volcanoes on the right, _Ptolemaeus_, _Alphonse_, _Alpetragius_ and _Arzachel_. But the Projectile advanced so rapidly that these mountains soon disappeared, and the travellers were not long before they could distinguish the great peaks that closed the "Sea" on its northern boundary. Here a radiating mountain showed a summit so dazzling with the reflection of the solar rays that Ardan could not help crying out: "It looks like one of the carbon points of an electric light projected on a screen! What do you call it, Barbican?" "_Copernicus_," replied the President. "Let us examine old _Copernicus_!" This grand crater is deservedly considered one of the greatest of the lunar wonders. It lifts its giant ramparts to upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the lunar surface. Being quite visible from the Earth and well situated for observation, it is a favorite object for astronomical study; this is particularly the case during the phase existing between Last Quarter and the New Moon, when its vast shadows, projected boldly from the east towards the west, allow its prodigious dimensions to be measured. After _Tycho_, which is situated in the southern hemisphere, _Copernicus_ forms the most important radiating mountain in the lunar disc. It looms up, single and isolated, like a gigantic light-house, on the peninsula separating _Mare Nubium_ from _Oceanus Procellarum_ on one side and from _Mare Imbrium_ on the other; thus illuminating with its splendid radiation three "Seas" at a time. The wonderful complexity of its bright streaks diverging on all sides from its centre presented a scene alike splendid and unique. These streaks, the travellers thought, could be traced further north than in any other direction: they fancied they could detect them even in the _Mare Imbrium_, but this of course might be owing to the point from which they made their observations. At one o'clock in the morning, the Projectile, flying through space, was exactly over this magnificent mountain. In spite of the brilliant sunlight that was blazing around them, the travellers could easily recognize the peculiar features of _Copernicus_. It belongs to those ring mountains of the first class called Circuses. Like _Kepler_ and _Aristarchus_, who rule over _Oceanus Procellarum_, _Copernicus_, when viewed through our telescopes, sometimes glistens so brightly through the ashy light of the Moon that it has been frequently taken for a volcano in full activity. Whatever it may have been once, however, it is certainly nothing more now than, like all the other mountains on the visible side of the Moon, an extinct volcano, only with a crater of such exceeding grandeur and sublimity as to throw utterly into the shade everything like it on our Earth. The crater of Etna is at most little more than a mile across. The crater of _Copernicus_ has a diameter of at least 50 miles. Within it, the travellers could easily discover by their glasses an immense number of terraced ridges, probably landslips, alternating with stratifications resulting from successive eruptions. Here and there, but particularly in the southern side, they caught glimpses of shadows of such intense blackness, projected across the plateau and lying there like pitch spots, that they could not tell them from yawning chasms of incalculable depth. Outside the crater the shadows were almost as deep, whilst on the plains all around, particularly in the west, so many small craters could be detected that the eye in vain attempted to count them. "Many circular mountains of this kind," observed Barbican, "can be seen on the lunar surface, but _Copernicus_, though not one of the greatest, is one of the most remarkable on account of those diverging streaks of bright light that you see radiating from its summit. By looking steadily into its crater, you can see more cones than mortal eye ever lit on before. They are so numerous as to render the interior plateau quite rugged, and were formerly so many openings giving vent to fire and volcanic matter. A curious and very common arrangement of this internal plateau of lunar craters is its lying at a lower level than the external plains, quite the contrary to a terrestrial crater, which generally has its bottom much higher than the level of the surrounding country. It follows therefore that the deep lying curve of the bottom of these ring mountains would give a sphere with a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon's." "What can be the cause of this peculiarity?" asked M'Nicholl. "I can't tell;" answered Barbican, "but, as a conjecture, I should say that it is probably to the comparatively smaller area of the Moon and the more violent character of her volcanic action that the extremely rugged character of her surface is mainly due." "Why, it's the _Campi Phlegraei_ or the Fire Fields of Naples over again!" cried Ardan suddenly. "There's _Monte Barbaro_, there's the _Solfatara_, there is the crater of _Astroni_, and there is the _Monte Nuovo_, as plain as the hand on my body!" "The great resemblance between the region you speak of and the general surface of the Moon has been often remarked;" observed Barbican, "but it is even still more striking in the neighborhood of _Theophilus_ on the borders of _Mare Nectaris_." "That's _Mare Nectaris_, the gray spot over there on the southwest, isn't it?" asked M'Nicholl; "is there any likelihood of our getting a better view of it?" "Not the slightest," answered Barbican, "unless we go round the Moon and return this way, like a satellite describing its orbit." By this time they had arrived at a point vertical to the mountain centre. _Copernicus's_ vast ramparts formed a perfect circle or rather a pair of concentric circles. All around the mountain extended a dark grayish plain of savage aspect, on which the peak shadows projected themselves in sharp relief. In the gloomy bottom of the crater, whose dimensions are vast enough to swallow Mont Blanc body and bones, could be distinguished a magnificent group of cones, at least half a mile in height and glittering like piles of crystal. Towards the north several breaches could be seen in the ramparts, due probably to a caving in of immense masses accumulated on the summit of the precipitous walls. As already observed, the surrounding plains were dotted with numberless craters mostly of small dimensions, except _Gay Lussac_ on the north, whose crater was about 12 miles in diameter. Towards the southwest and the immediate east, the plain appeared to be very flat, no protuberance, no prominence of any kind lifting itself above the general dead level. Towards the north, on the contrary, as far as where the peninsula jutted on _Oceanus Procellarum_, the plain looked like a sea of lava wildly lashed for a while by a furious hurricane and then, when its waves and breakers and driving ridges were at their wildest, suddenly frozen into solidity. Over this rugged, rumpled, wrinkled surface and in all directions, ran the wonderful streaks whose radiating point appeared to be the summit of _Copernicus_. Many of them appeared to be ten miles wide and hundreds of miles in length. The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" Barbican readily replied: "These streaks _can't_ be mountain crests, because, if they were, under certain conditions of solar illumination they should project _shadows_--a thing which they have never been known to do under any circumstances whatever. In fact, it is only during the period of the full Moon that these streaks are seen at all; as soon as the sun's rays become oblique, they disappear altogether--a proof that their appearance is due altogether to peculiar advantages in their surface for the reflection of light." "Dear boys, will you allow me to give my little guess on the subject?" asked Ardan. His companions were profuse in expressing their desire to hear it. "Well then," he resumed, "seeing that these bright streaks invariably start from a certain point to radiate in all directions, why not suppose them to be streams of lava issuing from the crater and flowing down the mountain side until they cooled?" "Such a supposition or something like it has been put forth by Herschel," replied Barbican; "but your own sense will convince you that it is quite untenable when you consider that lava, however hot and liquid it may be at the commencement of its journey, cannot flow on for hundreds of miles, up hills, across ravines, and over plains, all the time in streams of almost exactly equal width." "That theory of yours holds no more water than mine, Ardan," observed M'Nicholl. "Correct, Captain," replied the Frenchman; "Barbican has a trick of knocking the bottom out of every weaker vessel. But let us hear what he has to say on the subject himself. What is your theory. Barbican?" "My theory," said Barbican, "is pretty much the same as that lately presented by an English astronomer, Nasmyth, who has devoted much study and reflection to lunar matters. Of course, I only formulate my theory, I don't affirm it. These streaks are cracks, made in the Moon's surface by cooling or by shrinkage, through which volcanic matter has been forced up by internal pressure. The sinking ice of a frozen lake, when meeting with some sharp pointed rock, cracks in a radiating manner: every one of its fissures then admits the water, which immediately spreads laterally over the ice pretty much as the lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought against it." "Do you know, dear boys," cried Ardan, led off as usual by the slightest fancy, "do you know what I am thinking of when I look down on the great rugged plains spread out beneath us?" "I can't say, I'm sure," replied Barbican, somewhat piqued at the little attention he had secured for his theory. "Well, what are you thinking of?" asked M'Nicholl. "Spillikins!" answered Ardan triumphantly. "Spillikins?" cried his companions, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Spillikins! These rocks, these blocks, these peaks, these streaks, these cones, these cracks, these ramparts, these escarpments,--what are they but a set of spillikins, though I acknowledge on a grand scale? I wish I had a little hook to pull them one by one!" [Illustration: AN IMMENSE BATTLEFIELD.] "Oh, do be serious, Ardan!" cried Barbican, a little impatiently. "Certainly," replied Ardan. "Let us be serious, Captain, since seriousness best befits the subject in hand. What do you think of another comparison? Does not this plain look like an immense battle field piled with the bleaching bones of myriads who had slaughtered each other to a man at the bidding of some mighty Caesar? What do you think of that lofty comparison, hey?" "It is quite on a par with the other," muttered Barbican. "He's hard to please, Captain," continued Ardan, "but let us try him again! Does not this plain look like--?" "My worthy friend," interrupted Barbican, quietly, but in a tone to discourage further discussion, "what you think the plain _looks like_ is of very slight import, as long as you know no more than a child what it really _is_!" "Bravo, Barbican! well put!" cried the irrepressible Frenchman. "Shall I ever realize the absurdity of my entering into an argument with a scientist!" But this time the Projectile, though advancing northward with a pretty uniform velocity, had neither gained nor lost in its nearness to the lunar disc. Each moment altering the character of the fleeting landscape beneath them, the travellers, as may well be imagined, never thought of taking an instant's repose. At about half past one, looking to their right on the west, they saw the summits of another mountain; Barbican, consulting his map, recognized _Eratosthenes_. This was a ring mountain, about 33 miles in diameter, having, like _Copernicus_, a crater of immense profundity containing central cones. Whilst they were directing their glasses towards its gloomy depths, Barbican mentioned to his friends Kepler's strange idea regarding the formation of these ring mountains. "They must have been constructed," he said, "by mortal hands." "With what object?" asked the Captain. "A very natural one," answered Barbican. "The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan. "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so?" asked Ardan. "In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl. "And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument. "But never mind the Selenites now. Observe _Eratosthenes_ as long as you have the opportunity." "Which will not be very long," said M'Nicholl. "He is already sinking out of view too far to the right to be carefully observed." "What are those peaks beyond him?" asked Ardan. "The _Apennines_," answered Barbican; "and those on the left are the _Carpathians_." "I have seen very few mountain chains or ranges in the Moon," remarked Ardan, after some minutes' observation. "Mountains chains are not numerous in the Moon," replied Barbican, "and in that respect her oreographic system presents a decided contrast with that of the Earth. With us the

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world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

sentimental

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

foretelling

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

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world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

curling

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

could

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

moment

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

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world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

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world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

shews

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

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world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

belied

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

brilliant

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

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world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

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world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

orsino

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

surmise

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

irony

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

convinces

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

heaven

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

world's misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because There is no creature loves me And if I die no soul will pity me, adds, with a grin, Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity for myself? Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none the less it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespear's latest works. "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend," the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespear's? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet! My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head; I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak; yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound. I grant I never saw a goddess go: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespear. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred" compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone. Jupiter and Semele This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who "dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again. which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her. And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come." The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespear found out that the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets. That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims And this word "love," which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in me: I am myself alone. Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets. I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man. The Idol of the Bardolaters There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespear. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers. Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary. Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michel Angelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shews it. There is no evidence that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator. In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespear deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all, we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets. Shakespear and Democracy Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good words" from him He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespear we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers. If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet's experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespear's power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology. Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not." He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty. Shakespear and the British Public I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted of "the pangs of love despised." I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespear was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespear did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness. Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's heads. But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespear was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About Nothing." All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried" was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such

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worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

year

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

perpetrator

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

bury

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

poor

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worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

throw

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worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

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How many times the word 'none' appears in the text?

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

whom

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

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worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

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worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

brought

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

reptiles

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

writing

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

paradise

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

wish

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

those

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

divinity

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

interest

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

worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend." "I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him." "Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it." "And he is engaged to this other girl?" "Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country." "He meant it up to the time of his leaving." "I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart." They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?" "Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?" "As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned." It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written. "I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles. "As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table." "What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while. "Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now." "There must be more than that, uncle." "I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!" Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day." Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club? CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOARD. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview. He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production. But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself. How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing. And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess. That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment. During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject. At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact." "Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office." "Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily. "But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners." "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you." "I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board." "Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie. "You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!" "Exactly so," said Crosbie. "But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain." "What! with three hundred a year more and less work?" "Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been." "Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily. "A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those parts?" "N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire." "Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?" "No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name is De Courcy." "One of the earl's daughters?" "Yes," said Crosbie. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends. "Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't break your back." Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye. He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion. But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o'clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys? [ILLUSTRATION: The Board.] Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. "Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be. Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that Mr. Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed. Mr. Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight's hated voice. Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way. As for "Old Opt," there would be, they said, no difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion. "Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him. "Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug. "Mr. Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr. Optimist. "Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum--h-m--ha. As regards my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members of the Board." And Mr. Optimist looked around him for approving words. He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had feathered his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again. "Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell. "I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr. Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr. Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr. Crosbie shall be the man,' said the Chancellor. And Mr. Crosbie is the man." "Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord Sark." "Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir Raffle. "I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well,--and also to your footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself in my favour." "I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle. "I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I will say good morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours. "As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr. Optimist continued his speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more satisfactory tone of voice--"you will find yourself quite familiar with them." "Indeed he will," said

walked

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

liked

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

treadmill

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

opinion

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would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

scold

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

held

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

poor

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

talk

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

afraid

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

said,--not

How many times the word 'said,--not' appears in the text?

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

moreover

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

failure

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

johnny

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

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would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

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would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

enemy

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

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would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

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would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

married,--almost

How many times the word 'married,--almost' appears in the text?

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

senseless

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

would promise to her all that she had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children were living so close to her! "Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face. "I was thinking," said Mrs. Dale. "Do you say that she has already refused him?" "I am afraid she has; but then you know--" "It must of course be left for her to judge." "If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we all know she can't." "I mean rather more than that." "What do you mean, then?" "That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--" "Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary;--she has always been a very good child to you--" "Indeed she has." "And a word from you would go a long way with her,--as it ought. If she knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her think it her duty--" "Ah! but that is just what I cannot try to make her think." "Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody;--not but that, as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not quite so much of their own way." "I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man." "But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and that was the case with Lily." "She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully." "Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is bound to swear and declare that she never will be so." "I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind." "Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't love him,--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--" "I think she ought to have told you." "No, Mr. Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But if she made up her mind that she must reject him--" "She oughtn't to have made up her mind." "But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to no one. She might probably think that Bernard would be as well pleased that it should not be known." "Psha,--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare." "I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is best for her welfare. But, Mr. Dale, you may be sure of this; I will speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly." In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked. "Certainly I would," said Mrs. Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any bearing." And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to him. Mrs. Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs. Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who having once desired a thing would desire it always. Mrs. Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them all the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, as regarded Mrs. Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realization to all her dreams of future happiness. But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry any man without absolutely loving him,--loving him as Lily loved her lover, with all her heart and all her strength. With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could not say much to Bell that would be of any service. CHAPTER XX. DR. CROFTS. If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr. Crofts. As to being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr. Crofts, she had thought of it, and had made up her mind;--in the manner above described. It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the matter even within her own bosom, unless authorized to do so by Dr. Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr. Crofts had given her some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so. The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them the different results of their profession,--the young doctors doing all the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life. Dr. Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man. Whereas old Dr. Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income. Now this was hard upon Dr. Crofts--unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named. He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs. Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well. He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;--to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs. Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames--; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be. It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs. Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr. Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs. Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from houses in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs. Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr. Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr. Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs. Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr. Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr. Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do? It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him. To Mrs. Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments. "It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he; "or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present." "But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs. Dale. "It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what use will it be to me then?" Mrs. Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs. Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage. "I suppose it must," said Bell. "I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the difficulty. "I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; "besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they went on walking in silence. "It is a hard thing to do," he then said,--not looking at her, but looking at the gravel on which he stood. "It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may married,--almost." "Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the world as to which she was so certain as she was of this. And now, in these days, Dr. Crofts did not come over to Allington very often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr. Gruffen. On the occasion of Mrs. Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially invited; but Mrs. Dale's special invitations to her friends were very few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his element at the workhouse and the hospital. Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The family at the Manor had employed Dr. Gruffen for the last thirty years, and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe the words. "The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to see you if possible a little before dinner." "You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts. "Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir." "It wasn't Dr. Gruffen?" "No, sir; it wasn't Dr. Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about enough of Dr. Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day." "Chaffed his lordship;--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?" suggested the doctor. "Hands and feet!" said the man. "Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs. Connor says that my lord's back was up terribly high." And so Dr. Crofts got on his horse and rode up to Guestwick Manor. The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle. "How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl. "I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr. Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship. "I know all about you, you know," said the earl. "Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You don't remember Lady Jemima?" "No," said Crofts. "I never had that honour." "An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but upon my word--" and then the earl stopped himself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a slight laugh. "Perhaps it 'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The fact is this; I'm very well, you know;--as strong as a horse." "You look pretty well." "No man could be better,--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know." "You don't look as though you were ailing." "I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing for a man." "There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly." "And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl. "There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean to lose money by it." "I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer." "Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can tell you." After this Dr. Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time. "Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl. "They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after dinner." "It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor. "I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me;--so, at least, she says." "And how's your appetite at dinner?" "Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port wine--" "And feel sleepy afterwards?" "That's just it," said the earl. It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again. "And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose you come over and dine with me to-morrow; then, if I should go to sleep, you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says about my--my snoring, you know." Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively. "Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught her napping! By-the-by, Dr. Crofts, did you know that Mr. Crosbie whom Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying at the same house now." "I met him once at Mrs. Dale's." "Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?" Whereupon Dr. Crofts explained that Mr. Crosbie was engaged to Lilian Dale. "Ah, yes; a nice girl, I'm told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of him; but of course I'm interested about the family." "They're very old friends of mine," said Crofts. "Yes, I daresay. There are two girls, are there not?" "Yes, two." "And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?" "I've not heard anything of it." "A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew." "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said Crofts. "They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble." Dr. Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. "The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself." "What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle." Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long. "It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts." And then the earl took himself off to bed. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind,--no feeling of chivalry? "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women now-a-days, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her. CHAPTER XXI. JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH. Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there. "Why, miss, they be all delivered; you know that," said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress. "But one might be left behind, I thought." "John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them.". "But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn't come up with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street." "Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so poor Lily went home discomforted. But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused

desire

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