4. “The citadel” by Archibald Joseph Cronin

CHAPTER I (Extract)

At this point in his reflections he arrived at Riskin Street and entered Number 3. Here he found the patient to be a small boy of nine years of age, named Joey Howells, who was exhibiting a mild, seasonal attack of measles. The case was of little consequence; yet, because of the circumstances of the household, which was a poor one, it promised inconvenience to Joey’s mother. Howells himself, a day labourer at the quarries, had been laid up three months with pleurisy, for which no compensation was payable; and now Mrs. Howells, a delicate woman, already run off- her feet attending to one invalid in addition to her work of cleaning Bethesda Chapel was called upon to make provision for another.

At the end of his visit, as Andrew stood talking to her at the door of her house, he remarked with regret:

“You have your hands full. It’s a pity you must keep Idris home from school.” Idris was Joey’s younger brother.

Mrs. Howells raised her head quickly. She was a resigned little woman with shiny red hands and work-swollen finger-knuckles.

“But Miss Barlow said I needn’t have him back.”

In spite of his sympathy Andrew felt a throb of annoyance.

“Oh?” he inquired. “And who is Miss Barlow?”

“She’s the teacher at Bank Street School,” said the unsuspecting Mrs. Howells. “She’s come round to see me this morning. And seein’ how hard put I was, she’s let little Idris stop on in her class. Goodness knows 5 what I’d have done if I’d had him fallin’ over me as well.”

Andrew had a sharp impulse to tell her that she must obey his instructions and not those of a meddling schoolmistress. However, he saw well enough that Mrs. Howells was not to blame. For the moment he made no comment, but as he took his leave and came down Riskin Street his face wore a resentful frown. He hated interference, especially with his work, and beyond everything he hated interfering women. The more he thought of it the angrier he became. It was a distinct contravention of the regulations to keep Idris at school when Joey, his brother, was suffering from measles.

He decided suddenly to call upon this officious Miss Barlow and have the matter out with her.

Five minutes later he ascended the incline of Bank Street, walked into the school, and, having inquired his way of the janitor, found himself outside the classroom of Standard I. He knocked at the door, entered.

It was a large detached robm, well-ventilated, with a fire burning at one end. All the children were under seven and, as it was the afternoon break when he entered, each was having a glass of milk-part of an assistance scheme introduced by the local branch of the M.W.U.8 His eyes fell upon the mistress at once. She was busy writing out sums upon the blackboard, her back towards him, and she did not immediately observe him. But suddenly she turned round.

She was so different from the intrusive female of his indignant fancy that he hesitated. Or perhaps it was the surprise in her brown eyes which made him immediately ill at ease.

He flushed and said: “Are you Miss Barlow?”

“Yes.” She was a slight figure in a brown tweed skirt, woollen stockings, and small stout shoes: His own age, he guessed; no, younger- about twenty-two. She inspected him, a little doubtful, faintly smiling, as though, weary of infantile arithmetic, she welcomed distraction on this fine spring day. “Aren’t you Doctor Page’s new assistant?”

“That’s hardly the point,” he answered stiffly; “though, as a matter of fact, I am Doctor Manson. I believe you have a contact here: Idris Howells. You know his brother has measles.”

There was a pause. Her eyes, though questioning now, were persistently friendly. Brushing back untidy hair she answered: “Yes, I know.”

Her failure to take his visit seriously was sending his temper up again.

“Don’t you realize it’s quite against the rules to have him here?”

At his tone her colour rose and she losf her air of comradeship. He could not help thinking how clear and fresh her skin was, with a tiny brown mole, exactly the colour of her eyes, high on her right cheek. She was very fragile in her white blouse, and ridiculously young. Now she was breathing rather quickly, yet she spoke slowly:

“Mrs. Howells was at her wits’ end. Most of the children here have had measles. Those that haven’t are sure to get it sooner or later. If Idris had stopped off, he’d have missed his milk, which is doing him such a lot of good.”

“It isn’t a question of his milk,” he snapped. “He ought to be isolated.”

She answered stubbornly, “I have got him isolated in a kind of way. If you don’t believe me, look for yourself.”

He followed her glance. Idris, aged five, at a little desk all by himself near the fire, was looking extraordinarily pleased with life. His pale blue eyes goggled contentedly over the rim of his milk mug.

The sight infuriated Andrew. He laughed contemptuously, offensively.

“That may be your idea of isolation. I’m afraid it isn’t mine. You must send that child home at once.”

Tiny points of light glinted in her eyes.

“Doesn’t it occur to you that I’m the mistress of this class? You may be able to order people about in more exalted spheres. But here it’s my word that counts.”

He glared at her with raging dignity.

“You’re breaking the law! You can’t keep him here. If you do, I’ll have to report you.”

A short silence followed. He could see her hand tighten on the chalk she held. That sign of her emotion added to his anger against her - yes, against himself.

She said disdainfully: “Then you had better report me. Or have me arrested. I’ve no doubt it will give you immense satisfaction.”

Furious, he did not answer, feeling himself in an utterly false position. He tried to rally himself, raising his eyes, attempting to beat down hers, which now sparkled frostily-towards him. For an instant they faced each other, so close he could see the soft beating in her neck, the gleam of her teeth between her parted lips.

Then she said: “There’s nothing more, is there?” She swung round tensely to the class. “Stand up children, and say: ‘Good morning, Doctor Manson. Thank you for coming.’”

There was a clatter of chairs as the infants rose and chanted her ironic bidding. His ears were burning as she escorted him to the door. He had an exasperating sense’ of discomfiture, and added to it the wretched suspicion that he had behaved badly in losing his temper while she had so admirably controlled hers. He sought for a crushing phrase, some final intimidating repartee. But before that came the door closed quietly in his face.

5. “Mrs Packletide's Tiger” by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)

It was Mrs. Packletide's pleasure and intention that she should shoot a tiger. Not that the lust to kill had suddenly descended on her, or that she felt that she would leave India safer and more wholesome than she had found it, with one fraction less of wild beast per million of inhabitants. The compelling motive for her sudden deviation towards the footsteps of Nimrod was the fact that Loona Bimberton had recently been carried eleven miles in an aeroplane by an Algerian aviator, and talked of nothing else; only a personally procured tiger-skin and a heavy harvest of Press photographs could successfully counter that sort of thing. Mrs. Packletide had already arranged in her mind the lunch she would give at her house in Curzon Street, ostensibly in Loona Bimberton's honour, with a tiger-skin rug occupying most of the foreground and all of the conversation. She had also already designed in her mind the tiger-claw broach that she was going to give Loona Bimberton on her next birthday. In a world that is supposed to be chiefly swayed by hunger and by love Mrs. Packletide was an exception; her movements and motives were largely governed by dislike of Loona Bimberton.

     Circumstances proved propitious. Mrs. Packletide had offered a thousand rupees for the opportunity of shooting a tiger without over-much risk or exertion, and it so happened that a neighbouring village could boast of being the favoured rendezvous of an animal of respectable antecedents, which had been driven by the increasing infirmities of age to abandon game-killing and confine its appetite to the smaller domestic animals. The prospect of earning the thousand rupees had stimulated the sporting and commercial instinct of the villagers; children were posted night and day on the outskirts of the local jungle to head the tiger back in the unlikely event of his attempting to roam away to fresh hunting-grounds, and the cheaper kinds of goats were left about with elaborate carelessness to keep him satisfied with his present quarters. The one great anxiety was lest he should die of old age before the date appointed for the memsahib's shoot. Mothers carrying their babies home through the jungle after the day's work in the fields hushed their singing lest they might curtail the restful sleep of the venerable herd-robber.

     The great night duly arrived, moonlit and cloudless. A platform had been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placed tree, and thereon crouched Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion, Miss Mebbin. A goat, gifted with a particularly persistent bleat, such as even a partially deaf tiger might be reasonably expected to hear on a still night, was tethered at the correct distance. With an accurately sighted rifle and a thumb-nail pack of patience cards the sportswoman awaited the coming of the quarry.

     "I suppose we are in some danger?" said Miss Mebbin.

     She was not actually nervous about the wild beast, but she had a morbid dread of performing an atom more service than she had been paid for.

     "Nonsense," said Mrs. Packletide; "it's a very old tiger. It couldn't spring up here even if it wanted to."

     "If it's an old tiger I think you ought to get it cheaper. A thousand rupees is a lot of money."

     Louisa Mebbin adopted a protective elder-sister attitude towards money in general, irrespective of nationality or denomination. Her energetic intervention had saved many a rouble from dissipating itself in tips in some Moscow hotel, and francs and centimes clung to her instinctively under circumstances which would have driven them headlong from less sympathetic hands. Her speculations as to the market depreciation of tiger remnants were cut short by the appearance on the scene of the animal itself. As soon as it caught sight of the tethered goat it lay flat on the earth, seemingly less from a desire to take advantage of all available cover than for the purpose of snatching a short rest before commencing the grand attack.

     "I believe it's ill," said Louisa Mebbin, loudly in Hindustani, for the benefit of the village headman, who was in ambush in a neighbouring tree.

     "Hush!" said Mrs. Packletide, and at that moment the tiger commenced ambling towards his victim.

     "Now, now!" urged Miss Mebbin with some excitement; "if he doesn't touch the goat we needn't pay for it." (The bait was an extra.)

     The rifle flashed out with a loud report, and the great tawny beast sprang to one side and then rolled over in the stillness of death. In a moment a crowd of excited natives had swarmed on to the scene, and their shouting speedily carried the glad news to the village, where a thumping of tom-toms took up the chorus of triumph. And their triumph and rejoicing found a ready echo in the heart of Mrs. Packletide; already that luncheon-party in Curzon Street seemed immeasurably nearer.

     It was Louisa Mebbin who drew attention to the fact that the goat was in death-throes from a mortal bullet-wound, while no trace of the rifle's deadly work could be found on the tiger. Evidently the wrong animal had been hit, and the beast of prey had succumbed to heart-failure, caused by the sudden report of the rifle, accelerated by senile decay. Mrs. Packletide was pardonably annoyed at the discovery; but, at any rate, she was the possessor of a dead tiger, and the villagers, anxious for their thousand rupees, gladly connived at the fiction that she had shot the beast. And Miss Mebbin was a paid companion. Therefore did Mrs. Packletide face the cameras with a light heart, and her pictured fame reached from the pages of the Texas Weekly Snapshot to the illustrated Monday supplement of the Novoe Vremya. As for Loona Bimberton, she refused to look at an illustrated paper for weeks, and her letter of thanks for the gift of a tiger-claw brooch was a model of repressed emotions. The luncheon-party she declined; there are limits beyond which repressed emotions become dangerous.

     From Curzon Street the tiger-skin rug travelled down to the Manor House, and was duly inspected and admired by the county, and it seemed a fitting and appropriate thing when Mrs. Packletide went to the County Costume Ball in the character of Diana. She refused to fall in, however, with Clovis's tempting suggestion of a primeval dance party, at which every one should wear the skins of beasts they had recently slain. "I should be in rather a Baby Bunting condition," confessed Clovis, "with a miserable rabbit-skin or two to wrap up in, but then," he added, with a rather malicious glance at Diana's proportions, "my figure is quite as good as that Russian dancing boy's."

     "How amused every one would be if they knew what really happened," said Louisa Mebbin a few days after the ball.

     "What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Packletide quickly.

     "How you shot the goat and frightened the tiger to death," said Miss Mebbin, with her disagreeably pleasant laugh.

     "No one would believe it," said Mrs. Packletide, her face changing colour as rapidly as though it were going through a book of patterns before post-time.

     "Loona Bimberton would," said Miss Mebbin. Mrs. Packletide's face settled on an unbecoming shade of greenish white.v

     "You surely wouldn't give me away?" she asked.

     "I've seen a week-end cottage near Darking that I should rather like to buy," said Miss Mebbin with seeming irrelevance. "Six hundred and eighty, freehold. Quite a bargain, only I don't happen to have the money."

*

Louisa Mebbin's pretty week-end cottage, christened by her "Les Fauves," and gay in summer-time with its garden borders of tiger-lilies, is the wonder and admiration of her friends.

     "It is a marvel how Louisa manages to do it," is the general verdict.

     Mrs. Packletide indulges in no more big-game shooting.

     "The incidental expenses are so heavy," she confides to inquiring friends.

6. “Tea” by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)

James Cushat-Prinkly was a young man who had always had a settled conviction that one of these days he would marry; up to the age of thirty-four he had done nothing to justify that conviction. He liked and admired a great many women collectively and dispassionately without singling out one for especial matrimonial consideration, just as one might admire the Alps without feeling that one wanted any particular peak as one's own private property. His lack of initiative in this matter aroused a certain amount of impatience among the sentimentally-minded women-folk of his home circle; his mother, his sisters, an aunt-in-residence, and two or three intimate matronly friends regarded his dilatory approach to the married state with a disapproval that was far from being inarticulate. His most innocent flirtations were watched with the straining eagerness which a group of unexercised terriers concentrates on the slightest movements of a human being who may be reasonably considered likely to take them for a walk. No decent-souled mortal can long resist the pleading of several pairs of walk-beseeching dog-eyes; James Cushat-Prinkly was not sufficiently obstinate or indifferent to home influences to disregard the obviously expressed wish of his family that he should become enamoured of some nice marriageable girl, and when his Uncle Jules departed this life and bequeathed him a comfortable little legacy it really seemed the correct thing to do to set about discovering some one to share it with him. The process of discovery was carried on more by the force of suggestion and the weight of public opinion than by any initiative of his own; a clear working majority of his female relatives and the aforesaid matronly friends had pitched on Joan Sebastable as the most suitable young woman in his range of acquaintance to whom he might propose marriage, and James became gradually accustomed to the idea that he and Joan would go together through the prescribed stages of congratulations, present-receiving, Norwegian or Mediterranean hotels, and eventual domesticity. It was necessary, however to ask the lady what she thought about the matter; the family had so far conducted and directed the flirtation with ability and discretion, but the actual proposal would have to be an individual effort.

     Cushat-Prinkly walked across the Park towards the Sebastable residence in a frame of mind that was moderately complacent. As the thing was going to be done he was glad to feel that he was going to get it settled and off his mind that afternoon. Proposing marriage, even to a nice girl like Joan, was a rather irksome business, but one could not have a honeymoon in Minorca and a subsequent life of married happiness without such preliminary. He wondered what Minorca was really like as a place to stop in; in his mind's eye it was an island in perpetual half-mourning, with black or white Minorca hens running all over it. Probably it would not be a bit like that when one came to examine it. People who had been in Russia had told him that they did not remember having seen any Muscovy ducks there, so it was possible that there would be no Minorca fowls on the island.

     His Mediterranean musings were interrupted by the sound of a clock striking the half-hour. Half-past four. A frown of dissatisfaction settled on his face. He would arrive at the Sebastable mansion just at the hour of afternoon tea. Joan would be seated at a low table, spread with an array of silver kettles and cream-jugs and delicate porcelain tea-cups, behind which her voice would tinkle pleasantly in a series of little friendly questions about weak or strong tea, how much, if any, sugar, milk, cream, and so forth. "Is it one lump? I forgot. You do take milk, don't you? Would you like some more hot water, if it's too strong?"

     Cushat-Prinkly had read of such things in scores of novels, and hundreds of actual experiences had told him that they were true to life. Thousands of women, at this solemn afternoon hour, were sitting behind dainty porcelain and silver fittings, with their voices tinkling pleasantly in a cascade of solicitous little questions. Cushat-Prinkly detested the whole system of afternoon tea. According to his theory of life a woman should lie on a divan or couch, talking with incomparable charm or looking unutterable thoughts, or merely silent as a thing to be looked on, and from behind a silken curtain a small Nubian page should silently bring in a tray with cups and dainties, to be accepted silently, as a matter of course, without drawn-out chatter about cream and sugar and hot water. If one's soul was really enslaved at one's mistress's feet how could one talk coherently about weakened tea? Cushat-Prinkly had never expounded his views on the subject to his mother; all her life she had been accustomed to tinkle pleasantly at tea-time behind dainty porcelain and silver, and if he had spoken to her about divans and Nubian pages she would have urged him to take a week's holiday at the seaside. Now, as he passed through a tangle of small streets that led indirectly to the elegant Mayfair terrace for which he was bound, a horror at the idea of confronting Joan Sebastable at her tea-table seized on him. A momentary deliverance presented itself; on one floor of a narrow little house at the noisier end of Esquimault Street lived Rhoda Ellam, a sort of remote cousin, who made a living by creating hats out of costly materials. The hats really looked as if they had come from Paris; the cheques she got for them unfortunately never looked as if they were going to Paris. However, Rhoda appeared to find life amusing and to have a fairly good time in spite of her straitened circumstances. Cushat-Prinkly decided to climb up to her floor and defer by half-an-hour or so the important business which lay before him; by spinning out his visit he could contrive to reach the Sebastable mansion after the last vestiges of dainty porcelain had been cleared away.

     Rhoda welcomed him into a room that seemed to do duty as workshop, sitting-room, and kitchen combined, and to be wonderfully clean and comfortable at the same time.

     "I'm having a picnic meal," she announced. "There's caviare in that jar at your elbow. Begin on that brown bread-and-butter while I cut some more. Find yourself a cup; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things."

     She made no other allusion to food, but talked amusingly and made her visitor talk amusingly too. At the same time she cut the bread-and-butter with a masterly skill and produced red pepper and sliced lemon, where so many women would merely have produced reasons and regrets for not having any. Cushat-Prinkly found that he was enjoying an excellent tea without having to answer as many questions about it as a Minister for Agriculture might be called on to reply to during an outbreak of cattle plague.

     "And now tell me why you have come to see me," said Rhoda suddenly. "You arouse not merely my curiosity but my business instincts. I hope you've come about hats. I heard that you had come into a legacy the other day, and, of course, it struck me that it would be a beautiful and desirable thing for you to celebrate the event by buying brilliantly expensive hats for all your sisters. They may not have said anything about it, but I feel sure the same idea has occurred to them. Of course, with Goodwood on us, I am rather rushed just now, but in my business we're accustomed to that; we live in a series of rushes -- like the infant Moses."

     "I didn't come about hats," said her visitor. "In fact, I don't think I really came about anything. I was passing and I just thought I'd look in and see you. Since I've been sitting talking to you, however, rather important idea has occurred to me. If you'll forget Goodwood for a moment and listen to me, I'll tell you what it is."

     Some forty minutes later James Cushat-Prinkly returned to the bosom of his family, bearing an important piece of news.

     "I'm engaged to be married," he announced.

     A rapturous outbreak of congratulation and self-applause broke out.

     "Ah, we knew! We saw it coming! We foretold it weeks ago!"

     "I'll bet you didn't," said Cushat-Prinkly. "If any one had told me at lunch-time to-day that I was going to ask Rhoda Ellam to marry me and that she was going to accept me I would have laughed at the idea."

     The romantic suddenness of the affair in some measure compensated James's women-folk for the ruthless negation of all their patient effort and skilled diplomacy. It was rather trying to have to deflect their enthusiasm at a moment's notice from Joan Sebastable to Rhoda Ellam; but, after all, it was James's wife who was in question, and his tastes had some claim to be considered.

     On a September afternoon of the same year, after the honeymoon in Minorca had ended, Cushat-Prinkly came into the drawing-room of his new house in Granchester Square. Rhoda was seated at a low table, behind a service of dainty porcelain and gleaming silver. There was a pleasant tinkling note in her voice as she handed him a cup.

     "You like it weaker than that, don't you? Shall I put some more hot water to it? No?"

7. “The Match-Maker” by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)

The grill-room clock struck eleven with the respectful unobtrusiveness of one whose mission in life is to be ignored. When the flight of time should really have rendered abstinence and migration imperative the lighting apparatus would signal the fact in the usual way.

     Six minutes later Clovis approached the supper-table, in the blessed expectancy of one who has dined sketchily and long ago.

     "I'm starving," he announced, making an effort to sit down gracefully and read the menu at the same time.

     "So I gathered," said his host, "from the fact that you were nearly punctual. I ought to have told you that I'm a Food Reformer. I've ordered two bowls of bread-and-milk and some health biscuits. I hope you don't mind."

     Clovis pretended afterwards that he didn't go white above the collar-line for the fraction of a second.

     "All the same," he said, "you ought not to joke about such things. There really are such people. I've known people who've met them. To think of all the adorable things there are to eat in the world, and then to go through life munching sawdust and being proud of it."

     "They're like the Flagellants of the Middle Ages, who went about mortifying themselves."

     "They had some excuse," said Clovis. "They did it to save their immortal souls, didn't they? You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed."

     Clovis relapsed for a few golden moments into tender intimacies with a succession of rapidly disappearing oysters.

     "I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion," he resumed presently. "They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. Do you like my new waistcoat? I'm wearing it for the first time tonight."

     "It looks like a great many others you've had lately, only worse. New dinner waistcoats are becoming a habit with you."

     "They say one always pays for the excesses of one's youth; mercifully that isn't true about one's clothes. My mother is thinking of getting married."

     "Again!"

     "It's the first time."

     "Of course, you ought to know. I was under the impression that she'd been married once or twice at least."

     "Three times, to be mathematically exact. I meant that it was the first time she'd thought about getting married; the other times she did it without thinking. As a matter of fact, it's really I who am doing the thinking for her in this case. You see, it's quite two years since her last husband died."

     "You evidently think that brevity is the soul of widowhood."

     "Well, it struck me that she was getting moped, and beginning to settle down, which wouldn't suit her a bit. The first symptom that I noticed was when she began to complain that we were living beyond our income. All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren't respectable live beyond other people's. A few gifted individuals manage to do both."

     "It's hardly so much a gift as an industry."

     "The crisis came," returned Clovis, "when she suddenly started the theory that late hours were bad for one, and wanted me to be in by one o'clock every night. Imagine that sort of thing for me, who was eighteen on my last birthday."

     "On your last two birthdays, to be mathematically exact."

     "Oh, well, that's not my fault. I'm not going to arrive at nineteen as long as my mother remains at thirty-seven. One must have some regard for appearances."

     "Perhaps your mother would age a little in the process of settling down."

     "That's the last thing she'd think of. Feminine reformations always start in on the failings of other people. That's why I was so keen on the husband idea."

     "Did you go as far as to select the gentleman, or did you merely throw out a general idea, and trust to the force of suggestion?"

     "If one wants a thing done in a hurry one must see to it oneself. I found a military Johnny hanging round on a loose end at the club, and took him home to lunch once or twice. He'd spent most of his life on the Indian frontier, building roads, and relieving famines and minimizing earthquakes, and all that sort of thing that one does do on frontiers. He could talk sense to a peevish cobra in fifteen native languages, and probably knew what to do if you found a rogue elephant on your croquet-lawn; but he was shy and diffident with women. I told my mother privately that he was an absolute woman-hater; so, of course, she laid herself out to flirt all she knew, which isn't a little."

     "And was the gentleman responsive?"

     "I hear he told some one at the club that he was looking out for a Colonial job, with plenty of hard work, for a young friend of his, so I gather that he has some idea of marrying into the family."

     "You seem destined to be the victim of the reformation, after all."

     Clovis wiped the trace of Turkish coffee and the beginnings of a smile from his lips, and slowly lowered his dexter eyelid. Which, being interpreted, probably meant, "I don't think!"

8. “While the Auto Waits” by O. Henry

Promptly at the beginning of twilight, came again to that quiet corner of that quiet, small park the girl in gray. She sat upon a bench and read a book, for there was yet to come a half hour in which print could be accomplished. To repeat: Her dress was gray, and plain enough to mask its impeccancy of style and fit. A large meshed veil imprisoned her turban hat and a face that shone through it with a calm and unconscious beauty. She had come there at the same hour on the day previous, and on the day before that; and there was one who knew it.

The young man who knew it hovered near, relying upon burnt sacrifices to the great joss, Luck. His piety was rewarded, for, in turning a page, her book slipped from her fingers and bounded from the bench a full yard away.

The young man pounced upon it with instant avidity, returning it to its owner with that air that seems to flourish in parks and public places - a compound of gallantry and hope, tempered with respect for the policeman on the beat. In a pleasant voice, be risked an inconsequent remark upon the weather that introductory topic responsible for so much of the world's unhappiness-and stood poised for a moment, awaiting his fate.

The girl looked him over leisurely; at his ordinary, neat dress and his features distinguished by nothing particular in the way of expression. "You may sit down, if you like," she said, in a full, deliberate contralto. "Really, I would like to have you do so. The light is too bad for reading. I would prefer to talk."

The vassal of Luck slid upon the seat by her side with complaisance. "Do you know," he said, speaking the formula with which park chairmen open their meetings, "that you are quite the stunningest girl I have seen in a long time? I had my eye on you yesterday. Didn't know somebody was bowled over by those pretty lamps of yours, did you, honeysuckle?"

"Whoever you are," said the girl, in icy tones, "you must remember that I am a lady. I will excuse the remark you have just made because the mistake was, doubtless, not an unnatural one -- in your circle. I asked you to sit down; if the invitation must constitute me your honeysuckle, consider it withdrawn."

"I earnestly beg your pardon," pleaded the young ran. His expression of satisfaction had changed to one of penitence and humility. It was my fault, you know -I mean, there are girls in parks, you know - that is, of course, you don't know, but -- "

"Abandon the subject, if you please. Of course I know. Now, tell me about these people passing and crowding, each way, along these paths. Where are they going? Why do they hurry so? Are they happy?"

The young man had promptly abandoned his air of coquetry. His cue was now for a waiting part; he could not guess the role be would be expected to play.

"It is interesting to watch them," he replied, postulating her mood. "It is the wonderful drama of life. Some are going to supper and some to -- er -other places. One wonders what their histories are."

"I do not," said the girl; "I am not so inquisitive. I come here to sit because here, only, can I be tear the great, common, throbbing heart of humanity. My part in life is cast where its beats are never felt. Can you surmise why I spoke to you, Mr. -- ?"

"Parkenstacker," supplied the young man. Then be looked eager and hopeful.

"No," said the girl, holding up a slender finger, and smiling slightly. "You would recognize it immediately. It is impossible to keep one's name out of print. Or even one's portrait. This veil and this hat of my maid furnish me with an incog. You should have seen the chauffeur stare at it when he thought I did not see. Candidly, there are five or six names that belong in the holy of holies, and mine, by the accident of birth, is one of them. I spoke to you, Mr. Stackenpot -- "

"Parkenstacker," corrected the young man, modestly.

" -- Mr. Parkenstacker, because I wanted to talk, for once, with a natural man -- one unspoiled by the despicable gloss of wealth and supposed social superiority. Oh! you do not know how weary I am of it -- money, money, money! And of the men who surround me, dancing like little marionettes all cut by the same pattern. I am sick of pleasure, of jewels, of travel, of society, of luxuries of all kinds."

"I always had an idea," ventured the young man, hesitatingly, "that money must be a pretty good thing."

"A competence is to be desired. But when you leave so many millions that -- !" She concluded the sentence with a gesture of despair. "It is the monotony of it" she continued, "that palls. Drives, dinners, theatres, balls, suppers, with the gilding of superfluous wealth over it all. Sometimes the very tinkle of the ice in my champagne glass nearly drives me mad."

Mr. Parkenstacker looked ingenuously interested.

"I have always liked," he said, "to read and hear about the ways of wealthy and fashionable folks. I suppose I am a bit of a snob. But I like to have my information accurate. Now, I had formed the opinion that champagne is cooled in the bottle and not by placing ice in the glass."

The girl gave a musical laugh of genuine amusement.

"You should know," she explained, in an indulgent tone, "that we of the non-useful class depend for our amusement upon departure from precedent. Just now it is a fad to put ice in champagne. The idea was originated by a visiting Prince of Tartary while dining at the Waldorf. It will soon give way to some other whim. Just as at a dinner party this week on Madison Avenue a green kid glove was laid by the plate of each guest to be put on and used while eating olives."

"I see," admitted the young man, humbly.

"These special diversions of the inner circle do not become familiar to the common public."

"Sometimes," continued the girl, acknowledging his confession of error by a slight bow, "I have thought that if I ever should love a man it would be one of lowly station. One who is a worker and not a drone. But, doubtless, the claims of caste and wealth will prove stronger than my inclination. Just now I am besieged by two. One is a Grand Duke of a German principality. I think he has, or has bad, a wife, somewhere, driven mad by his intemperance and cruelty. The other is an English Marquis, so cold and mercenary that I even prefer the diabolism of the Duke. What is it that impels me to tell you these things, Mr. Packenstacker?

"Parkenstacker," breathed the young man. "Indeed, you cannot know how much I appreciate your confidences." The girl contemplated him with the calm, impersonal regard that befitted the difference in their stations.

"What is your line of business, Mr. Parkenstacker?" she asked.

"A very humble one. But I hope to rise in the world. Were you really in earnest when you said that you could love a man of lowly position?"

"Indeed I was. But I said 'might.' There is the Grand Duke and the Marquis, you know. Yes; no calling could be too humble were the man what I would wish him to be."

"I work," declared Mr. Parkenstacker, "in a restaurant."

The girl shrank slightly.

"Not as a waiter?" she said, a little imploringly. "Labor is noble, but personal attendance, you know -- valets and -- "

"I am not a waiter. I am cashier in" -- on the street they faced that bounded the opposite side of the park was the brilliant electric sign "RESTAURANT" -- "I am cashier in that restaurant you am there."

The girl consulted a tiny watch set in a bracelet of rich design upon her left wrist, and rose, hurriedly. She thrust her book into a glittering reticule suspended from her waist, for which, however, the book was too large.

"Why are you not at work?" she asked.

"I am on the night turn," said the young man; it is yet an hour before my period begins. May I not hope to see you again?"

"I do not know. Perhaps - but the whim may not seize me again. I must go quickly now. There is a dinner, and a box at the play -- and, oh! the same old round. Perhaps you noticed an automobile at the upper corner of the park as you came. One with a white body.

"And red running gear?" asked the young man, knitting his brows reflectively.

"Yes. I always come in that. Pierre waits for me there. He supposes me to be shopping in the department store across the square. Conceive of the bondage of the life wherein we must deceive even our chauffeurs. Good-night."

"But it is dark now," said Mr. Parkenstacker, "and the park is full of rude men. May I not walk -- "

"If you have the slightest regard for my wishes," said the girl, firmly, "you will remain at this bench for ten minutes after I have left. I do not mean to accuse you, but you are probably aware that autos generally bear the monogram of their owner. Again, good-night"

Swift and stately she moved away through the dusk. The young man watched her graceful form as she reached the pavement at the park's edge, and turned up along it toward the corner where stood the automobile. Then he treacherously and unhesitatingly began to dodge and skim among the park trees and shrubbery in a course parallel to her route, keeping her well in sight.

When she reached the corner she turned her head to glance at the motor car, and then passed it, continuing on across the street. Sheltered behind a convenient standing cab, the young man followed her movements closely with his eyes. Passing down the sidewalk of the street opposite the park, she entered the restaurant with the blazing sign. The place was one of those frankly glaring establishments, all white, paint and glass, where one may dine cheaply and conspicuously. The girl penetrated the restaurant to some retreat at its rear, whence she quickly emerged without her bat and veil. The cashier's desk was well to the front. A redhead girl an the stool climbed down, glancing pointedly at the clock as she did so. The girl in gray mounted in her place.

The young man thrust his hands into his pockets and walked slowly back along the sidewalk. At the corner his foot struck a small, paper-covered volume lying there, sending it sliding to the edge of the turf. By its picturesque cover he recognized it as the book the girl had been reading. He picked it up carelessly, and saw that its title was "New Arabian Nights," the author being of the name of Stevenson. He dropped it again upon the grass, and lounged, irresolute, for a minute. Then he stepped into the automobile, reclined upon the cushions, and said two words to the chauffeur: "Club, Henri."

9. “Killed in action” by Richard Aldington

“The Death of a Hero” is R. Aldington’s best and best-known novel. It begins with the death of its main character. On Nov.4, 1918, just a few days before the end of the war, Captain George Winterbourne, exposing himself unnecessarily to heavy machine gun fire, was instantly killed. Attempting to account for that last moment, the rest of the novel depicts the life of the hero. In the extract below, George’s parents receive a telegram with the fatal news of their son’s death.

Winterbourne’s father, whom I knew slightly, was an inadequate sentimentalist. Mild, with an affection of gentility, incompetent, selfishly unselfish (i.e. always patting himself on the back for ‘renouncing’ something he was afraid to do or be or take), he had a genius for messing up other people’s lives. The amount of irreparable harm which can be done by a really good man is astounding. Ten astute rogues do less. He messed up his wife’s life by being weak with her, messed up his children’s lives by being weak and sentimentalish with them and by losing his money – the unforgivable sin in a parent; messed up the lives of his friends and clients by honestly losing their money for them; and messed up his own most completely. That was the one thing he ever did with complete and satisfactory thoroughness. The mess he got his life into would have baffled an army of psychologists to unravel […]

Old Winterbourne was in London, when the news of George’s death came. The telegram from the War Office – ‘regret to inform… killed in action… Their Majesties’ sympathy…’ – went to the home address in the country, and was opened by Mrs Winterbourne. Such an excitement for her, almost a pleasant change, for it was pretty dull in the country just after the Armistice. She was sitting by the fire, yawning over her twenty-second lover – the affair had lasted nearly a year – when the servant brought the telegram. It was addressed to Mr Winterbourne, but of course she opened it; she had an idea that ‘one of those women’ was ‘after’ her husband, who, however, was regrettably chaste, from cowardice.

Mrs Winterbourne liked drama in private life. She uttered a most creditable shriek, clasped both hands to her rather soggy bosom, and pretended to faint. The lover, one of those nice, clean, sporting Englishmen with a minimum of intelligence and an infinite capacity for being gulled by females, especially the clean English sort, clutched her unwillingly and automatically but with quite an Ethel M. Dell* appearance of emotion, and exclaimed:

‘Darling, what is it? Has he insulted you again?’

Poor old Winterbourne was incapable of insulting any one, but it was a convention always established between Mrs Winterbourne and her lovers that Winterbourne had ‘insulted’ her.

In low moaning tones, founded on the best tradition of sensational fiction, Mrs. Winterbourne feebly ejaculated:

‘Dead, dead, dead!

‘Who’s dead? Winterbourne?’

(Some apprehension perhaps in the attendant Sam Browne – he would have to propose, of course, and might be accepted.)

‘They’ve killed him, those vile, filthy foreigners. My baby son.’

Sam Browne, still mystified, read the telegram. He then stood to attention, saluted (although not wearing a cap), and said solemnly:

‘A clean sportin’ death, an Englishman’s death.’

(When Huns** were killed it was neither clean nor sportin’, but served the beggars right.)

The tears Mrs Winterbourne shed were not very natural, but they did not take long to dry. Dramatically, she ran to the telephone. Dramatically, she called to the local exchange:

‘Trrrunks. (Sob.) Give me Kensington 1030. Mr Winterbourne’s number, you know. (Sob.) Our darling son – Captain Winterbourne – has been killed by those (Sob) beasts. (Sob. Pause.) Oh, thank you so much, Mr Cump, I knew you would feel for us in our trouble. (Sob. Sob.) But the blow is so sudden. I must speak to Mr Winterbourne. Our hearts are breaking here. (Sobissimo.) Thank you. I’ll wait till you ring me.’

Mrs Winterbourne’s effort on the telephone to her husband was not unworthy of her:

‘Is that you, George? Yes, Isabel speaking. I have just had rather bad news. No, about George. You must be prepared, darling. I fear he is seriously ill. What? No. George. GEORGE. Can’t you hear? Yes, that’s better. Now, listen, darling, you must prepare for a great shock. George is seriously ill. Yes, our George, our baby son. What? Wounded? No, not wounded, very dangerously ill. No, darling, there is little hope. (Sob.) Yes, darling, a telegram from the King and Queen. Shall I read it? You are prepared for the shock, (sob.) George, aren’t you? ‘Deeply regret… killed in action… Their Majesties sympathy…” (Sob. Long pause.) Are you there, George? Hullo, hullo. (Sob.) Hullo, hullo HULLO. (Aside to Sam Browne.) He’s rung off! How that man insults me! How can I bear it in my sorrow? After I had prepared him for the shock! (Sob. Sob.)’

[…]

*Ethel M. Deil: an English authoress of melodramic novels and stories

**Hun: sl. A German soldier

10. “I was through” by Ernest Hemingway

Lieutenant Frederick Henry, an American ambulance driver with the Italian army fighting on the Austrian front, falls in love with an English nurse, Catherine Berkeley. They are posted to different places but meet up again in Milan, where Frederic is convalescing after being wounded. Catherine gets pregnant but Frederick must go back to the front. Having been almost executed by the Carabineri for abandoning the battlefront, he decides to desert. He has jumped a train and is lying on the floor of the carriage under a canvas surrounded by guns, hoping not to be detected.

Lying on the floor of the flat-car with the guns beside me under the canvas I was wet, cold and very hungry. Finally I rolled over and lay flat on my stomach with my head on my arms. My knee was stiff, but it had been very satisfactory. Valentini had done a fine job. I had done half the retreat on foot and swum part of the Tagliamento with his knee. It was his knee all right. The other knee was mine. Doctors did things to you and then it was not your body any more. The head was mine, and the inside of the belly. It was very hungry in there. I could feel it turn over on itself. The head was mine, but not to use, not to think with, only to remember and not too much remember.

I could remember Catherine but I knew I would get crazy if I thought about her when I was not sure yet I would see her, only about her a little, only about her with the car going slowly and clickingly, and some light trough the canvas and my lying with Catherine on the floor of the car. Hard as the floor of the car to lie not thinking only feeling, having been away too long, the clothes wet and the floor moving only a little each time and lonesome inside and alone with wet clothing and hard floor for a wife.

You did not love the floor of a flat-car nor guns with canvas jackets and the smell of vaselined metal or a canvas that rain leaked through, although it is very fine under a canvas and pleasant with guns; but you loved some one else whom now you knew was not even to be pretended there; you seeing now very clearly and coldly – not so coldly as clearly and emptily. You saw emptily, lying on your stomach, having been present when one army moved back and another came forward. You had lost your cars and your men as a floorwalker loses the stock of his department in a fire. There was, however, no insurance. You were out of it now,. You had no more obligation. If they shot floorwalkers after a fire in the department store because they spoke with an accent they had always had, then certainly the floorwalkers would not be expected to return when the store opened again for business. They might seek other employment: if there was any other employment and the police did not get them.

Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation. Although that ceased when the carabineri out his hands on my collar. I would like to have had the uniform off although I did not care much about the outward forms. I had taken off the stars, but that was for convenience. It was no point of honor. I was not against them. I was through. I wished them all the luck. There were the good ones, and the brave ones, and the calm ones and the sensible ones, and they deserved it. But it was not my show any more and I wished this bloody train would get to Mestre and I would eat and stop thinking. I would have to stop.

Piani would tell them they had shot me. They went through the pockets and took the papers of the people they shot. They would not have my papers. They might call me drowned. I wondered what they would hear in the States. Dead from wounds and other causes. Good Christ I was hungry. I wondered what had become of the priest at the mess. And Rinaldi. He was probably at Pordenone. If they had not gone further back. Well, I would never see him now. I would never see any of them now. That life was over. I did not think he had syphilis. It was not a serious disease anyway if you took it in time, they said. But he would worry. I would worry too if I had it. Any one would worry.

I was not made to think. I was made to eat. My God, yes. Eat and drink and sleep with Catherine. To-night maybe. No that was impossible. But tomorrow night, and a good meal and sheets and never going away again except together. Probably have to go damned quickly. She would go. I knew she would go. When would we go? That was something to think about. It was getting dark. I lay and thought where we would go. There were many places. […]

I dropped off the train in Milan as it slowed to come into the station early in the morning before it was light. I crossed the track and came out between some buildings and down onto the street. A wine shop was open and I went in for some coffee. It smelled of early morning, of swept dust, spoons in coffee glasses and the wet circles left by wine-glasses. The proprietor was behind the bar. Two soldiers sat at a table. I stood at the bar and drank a glass of coffee and ate a piece of bread. The coffee was gray with milk, and I skimmed the milk scum of the top with a piece of bread. The proprietor looked at me.

“You want a glass of grappa?”

“No thanks.”

“On me,” he said and poured a small glass and pushed it toward me. “What’s happening at the front?”

“I would not know.”

“They are drunk,” he said, moving his hand toward the two soldiers. I could believe him. They looked drunk.

“Tell me,” he said, “what is happening at the front?”

“I would not know about the front”.

“I saw you come down the wall. You came off the train.”

“There is a big retreat.”

“I read the papers. What happens? Is it over?”

“I don’t think so.”

He filled the glass with grappa. “If you are in trouble,” he said, “I can keep you.”

“I am not in trouble.”

“If you are in trouble stay here with me.”

“Where does one stay?”

“In the building. Many stay here. Any who are in trouble stay here.” […]

11. “Hills Like White Elephants” ” by Ernest Hemingway

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went on to Madrid.

"What should we drink?" the girl asked. She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.

"It's pretty hot," the man said.

"Let's drink beer."

"Dos cervezas, the man said into the curtain.

"Big ones?" a woman asked from the doorway.

"Yes. Two big ones."

The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glasses on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.

"They look like white elephants," she said.

"I've never seen one," the man drank his beer.

"No, you wouldn't have."

"I might have," the man said. "Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn't prove anything."

The girl looked at the bead curtain. "They've painted something on it," she said. "What does it say?"

"Anis del Toro. It's a drink." "Could we try it?"

The man called "Listen" through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar. "Four reales."

"We want two Anis del Toro." "With water?"

"Do you want it with water?" "I don't know," the girl said. "Is it good with water?"

''It's all right."

"You want them with water?" asked the woman.

"Yes, with water."

"It tastes like licorice," the girl said and put the glass down.

"That's the way with everything." "Yes," said the girl. "Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you've waited so long for, like absinthe." "Oh, cut it out."

"You started it," the girl said. "I was being amused. I was having a fine time."

"Well, let's try and have a fine time." "All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn't that bright?" "That was bright."

"I wanted to try this new drink. That's all we do, isn't it — look at things and try new drinks?" "I guess so."

The girl looked across at the hills.

"They're lovely hills," she said. "They don't really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees."

"Should we have another drink?"

"All right."

The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.

"The beer's nice and cool," the man said.

"It's lovely," the girl said.

"It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig," the man said. "It's not really an operation at all."

The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.

"I know you wouldn't mind it, Jig. It's really not anything. It's just to let the air in."

The girl did not say anything.

"I'll go with you and I'll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it's all perfectly natural."

"Then what will we do afterward?"

"We'll be fine afterward. Just like we were before."

"What makes you think so?"

"That's the only thing that bothers us. It's the only thing that's made us unhappy."

The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads.

"And you think then we'll be all right and be happy."

"I know we will. You don't have to be afraid. I've known lots of people that have done it."

"So have I," said the girl. "And afterward they were all so happy."

"Well," the man said, "if you don't want to you don't have to. I wouldn't have you do it if you didn't want to. But I know it's perfectly simple."

"And you really want to?"

"I think it's the best thing to do. But I don't want you to do it if you don't really want to."

"And if I do it you'll be happy and things will be like they were and you'll love me?"

"I love you now. You know I love you."

"I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you'll like it?"

"I'll love it. I love it now but I just can't think about it. You know how I get when I worry."

"If I do it you won't ever worry?"

"I won't worry about that because it's perfectly simple."

"Then I'll do it. Because I don't care about me."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't care about me."

"Well, I care about you."

"Oh, yes. But I don't care about me. And I'll do it and then everything will be fine."

"I don't want you to do it if you feel that way."

The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.

"And we could have all this," she said. "And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible."

"What did you say?"

"I said we could have everything."

"We can have everything."

"No, we can't."

"We can have the whole world."

"No, we can't."

"We can go everywhere."

"No, we can't. It isn't ours any more."

"It's ours."

"No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back."

"But they haven't taken it away."

"We'll wait and see."

"Come on back in the shade," he said. "You mustn't feel that way."

"I don't feel any way," the girl said. "I just know things."

"I don't want you to do anything that you don't want to do — "

"Nor that isn't good for me," she said. "I know. Could we have another beer?"

"All right. But you've got to realise — "

"I realise," the girl said. "Can't we maybe stop talking?"

They sat down at the table and the girl looked across at the hills on the dry side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table.

"You've got to realise," he said, "that I don't want you to do it if you don't want to. I'm perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you."

"Doesn't it mean anything to you? We could get along."

"Of course it does. But I don't want anybody but you. I don't want any one else. And I know it's perfectly simple."

"Yes, you know it's perfectly simple."

"It's all right for you to say that, but I do know it."

"Would you do something for me now?"

"I'd do anything for you."

"Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?"

He did not say anything but looked at the bags against the wall of the station. There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights.

"But I don't want you to," he said, "I don't care anything about it." "I'll scream," the girl said. The woman came out through the curtains with two glasses of beer and put them down on the damp felt pads. "The train comes in five minutes," she said.

"What did she say?" asked the girl. "That the train is coming in five minutes." The girl smiled brightly at the woman, to thank her.

"I'd better take the bags over to the other side of the station," the man said. She smiled at him. "All right. Then come back and we'll finish the beer."

He picked up the two heavy bags and carried them around the station to the other tracks. He looked up the tracks but could not see the train. Coming back, he walked through the barroom, where people waiting for the train were drinking. He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. They were all waiting reasonably for the train. He went out through the bead curtain. She was sitting at the table and smiled at him. "Do you feel better?" he asked. "I feel fine," she said. "There's nothing wrong with me. I feel fine."

12. “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

     It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

     She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

     There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

     She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

     There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

     She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

     She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

     There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

     Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will - as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.

     When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

     She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.

     She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

     There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

     And yet she had loved him - sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

     "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

     Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg, open the door - you will make yourself ill. What are you doing Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

     "Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

     Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

     She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

     Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

     But Richards was too late.

     When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease - of joy that kills.

ПРОФЕССОР УДАЧИ

Англичанин Ричард Вайсман из Университета Хартфордшира 10 лет проводил научные эксперименты, чтобы выяснить то, что давно знали: наша удача -- в наших руках

Ричард Вайсман -- личность сама по себе интересная. До того как стать британским научным светилом и войти в различные королевские и академические общества, он зарабатывал на жизнь тем, что показывал в цирке фокусы. Стоит ли удивляться тому, что, придя в науку, он занялся самыми ненаучными вещами. Такими, как парапсихология, физиология призраков, экстрасенсорика и тому подобное. Кстати, это именно под его руководством ежегодно вычисляются самые смешные шутки в мире.Проект «Удача» родился в 1994 году. Университет дал объявление в газете: ищем людей, считающих себя везучими или невезучими по жизни. Откликнулись тысячи людей. Почти 400 человек согласились стать на время «подопытными кроликами» и позволили копаться в своей личной жизни. Результатом этих исследований стал фундаментальный труд коллектива авторов во главе с Ричардом Вайсманом «Фактор удачи». Книга, несмотря на довольно сложный язык, стала бестселлером. Мы задали профессору ВАЙСМАНУ несколько простых вопросов.

-- Скажите, профессор, проведя свои исследования, вы продолжаете верить в то, что весь научный мир считает абсолютно антинаучным понятием, -- в удачливость и неудачливость?

-- Я занимаюсь этой проблемой уже больше десяти лет и именно в результате исследований пришел к выводу, что люди действительно делятся на «счастливчиков» и «неудачников». В моей картотеке, например, есть такой Барнет Хельзберг-младший. Очень удачливый человек. К середине 1990-х он создал сеть ювелирных магазинов с годовым доходом в $300 000 000. Когда ему стукнуло 60, он решил их продать и пожить в удовольствие, однако подходящий покупатель никак не находился. И вот как-то, проходя мимо нью-йоркского Палас-отеля, он услышал, как некая женщина обратилась к сопровождавшему ее мужчине: «Мистер Баффет». «Интересно, -- подумал тогда Хельзберг, -- уж не тот ли это мистер Баффет, что считается одним из самых успешных американских инвесторов? И если это он, то почему бы не предложить ему купить мои магазины. Человек денежный, умный, мой бизнес должен показаться ему привлекательным. Надо подойти, представиться». И что же вы думаете? Человек и правда оказался тем самым Уорреном Баффетом, и этот Баффет менее чем через год после встречи скупил у Хельзберга все его магазины по выгодной цене. Ну что это, как не удача? И таких примеров масса.

-- Все-таки кажется, что это не более чем стечение обстоятельств.

-- Несомненно. Вот только как воспользоваться этим стечением? Тут-то и проходит грань между людьми удачливыми и нет. Удачливые умеют обращать эти обстоятельства в свою пользу, а неудачливые чаще всего просто проходят мимо, ничего не заметив. Ведь и Хельзберг мог просто пройти, не обратив внимания на слова дамы, которую сопровождал Баффет.

-- А как же всякие приметы, талисманы, приносящие удачу, амулеты? Они как действуют?

-- Они никак не действуют. Поверьте, мы провели не одну сотню экспериментов и убедились: они действуют НИКАК. Все приметы, если разобраться, есть лишь отголоски неких древних верований. Скажем, число 13 стало несчастливым из-за того, что в тайной вечере Христа участвовали именно тринадцать человек. А истинной причиной того, что прохождение под приставленной к стене лестницей считается плохой приметой, является то, что треугольник (а в данном случае получается именно треугольник: пол -- стена -- лестница) в Средневековье считался символом Святой Троицы. Соответственно пройти через этот треугольник -- значит, оскорбить Святую Троицу и навлечь на себя неприятности. Черная кошка всегда была символом ведьмы, которая, перебегая вам дорогу, забирала вашу удачу. Тут можно рассказать об эксперименте, который поставил член «Общества скептиков» Марк Левин. Он специально провоцировал кошек, причем не только черных (в некоторых странах считается, что несчастья приносят белые коты), на то, чтобы они перебегали ему дорогу, а после этого подбрасывал монетку, проверяя, насколько выросла его удачливость. Так вот, она не выросла ни на одну долю процента.Кроме того, еще до того, как заняться проектом «Удача» я провел такой эксперимент. Набрал группу добровольцев и несколько недель подвергал их воздействию добрых примет, заставлял пользоваться вещами, которые должны были принести им удачу, богатство и счастье. После этого я попросил их оценить полученный эффект. Так вот, эффект был нулевым.

-- Но ведь все очень субъективно, того, что один человек посчитает для себя удачей, другой даже не заметит...

-- Это даже более субъективно, чем вы думаете, и об этом мы еще поговорим. А пока еще пример: в группе «удачников» была такая 42-летняя судмедэксперт Джессика. Она небезосновательно считала, что в жизни ей сопутствовала только удача. «У меня есть работа, о которой я мечтала, -- сказала она мне, -- есть двое очаровательных детей и муж, которого я люблю. Я не могу пожаловаться на свою жизнь». Кстати, мужа она встретила совершенно случайно, на каком-то званом обеде. А вот 20-летнюю Патрицию, напротив, всю жизнь преследовали одни неудачи. Несколько лет назад она поступила на работу стюардессой. Во время первого ее полета экипаж вынужден был пойти на незапланированную посадку, так как пассажиры в салоне, напившись, начали скандалить. Во время второго полета в самолет ударила молния. Третий закончился вынужденной посадкой. Несмотря на юный возраст у нее уже было несколько несчастных браков, и сейчас она вообще боится сходиться с кем-либо, ибо уверена: ее неудачливость заразна, а она не хочет портить никому жизнь. Всегда она попадает в ненужное время в ненужное место.

-- И как же можно ей помочь? Место подсказывать?

-- Ни в коем случае. Надо научить ее саму искать это место. Я провел такой эксперимент: раздал моим подопытным специально выпущенный для этого случая номер газеты и попросил их посчитать, сколько в номере напечатано фотографий. Так вот, «неудачники» потратили на выполнение задания в среднем по две минуты, а «счастливчики» справились с ним за несколько секунд.

-- И в чем секрет?

-- Все очень просто. В этой газете на второй полосе на полстраницы было набрано объявление: «Прекратите считать: в этой газете ровно 43 фотографии». Такое объявление пропустить было невозможно, однако «неудачники», увлеченные подсчетом, не обратили на него внимания. В другой раз я повторил задание, но в объявлении написал: «Прекратите считать, сообщите экспериментатору, что вы это прочли, и вы получите $250». Эффект был тот же. «Счастливчики» получили деньги, а «неудачники» остались со своей неудачей. Этот эксперимент показал, что люди, считающие себя «неудачниками», более напряжены, чем их «удачливые» коллеги, и эта напряженность часто мешает им заметить нечто неожиданное, но полезное.

-- «Расслабься и получай удовольствие»? Очень популярный еще недавно в России лозунг...

-- Да, так. Примерно. Мое исследование показало, что удачливые люди делаются таковыми потому, что, во-первых, умеют пользоваться случайными возможностями и могут создавать их, во-вторых, принимают удачные решения, слушаясь интуиции, в-третьих, могут самореализоваться, надеясь на лучшее, и наконец, в-четвертых, умеют сохранять жизнерадостное отношение к жизни. Возьмем, к примеру, ситуацию поиска работы. Когда ее ищет «неудачник», он просматривает ТОЛЬКО те объявления, которые запланировал. «Счастливчик» же замечает все. В результате он вполне может найти не совсем то, что искал, но то, что ему больше подходит. Вот вам и удача. Многие из моих «счастливчиков» несознательно увеличивали свой шанс на удачу тем, что старались как-то разнообразить собственную жизнь. Один часто менял маршруты пути от дома до работы, другой, собираясь на вечеринку, решал, с каким типом людей он будет сегодня «водиться». На одной вечеринке он разговаривал исключительно с женщинами в красном, на другой -- с мужчинами в черном и так далее...

-- И зачем?

-- Подсознательно мы всегда тянемся к одному конкретному типу людей, а задавая себе такие «случайные» параметры мы сильно увеличиваем круг общения. Очень важно, как сам человек реагирует на свое «счастье».

-- А что, бывают варианты?

-- Представьте ситуацию: на Олимпийских играх два атлета получили: один серебряную медаль, а второй -- бронзовую. Кто из них больше счастлив?

 -- Тот, что взял «серебро»...

-- Так думают все. А исследования показывают, что более счастлив тот, у кого «бронза». Тому, у кого «серебро», мешает ощущение того, что если бы он еще немного потрудился, то мог бы взять и «золото». А бронзового медалиста греет мысль о том, что если бы он выступил чуть хуже, вообще мог ничего не получить. К такой возможности человеческой психики вообразить то, что могло бы случиться, вместо того, что случилось фактически, часто обращаются психологи для того, чтобы вывести пациента из депрессии.В одной и той же ситуации разные люди могут видеть как удачу, так и неудачу и, соответственно, чувствовать себя либо счастливыми, либо несчастными. Я задал своим добровольцам вопрос: как они расценивают такую ситуацию: в банк, где они получают деньги, врывается грабитель и ранит их в руку? Так вот, в то время как «неудачники» отнесли эту историю к несомненным неудачам, «счастливчики» заявили, что им повезло, ибо могли бы попасть и в голову.

-- Получается, что «счастливчики» потому и счастливы, что при любой неудаче понимают, что могло быть и хуже?

-- Получается, что так. Соответственно, они всегда пребывают в хорошем настроении, а это, в свою очередь, помогает им извлекать удачи даже из самых неприятных случаев. Так, в приведенной ситуации несколько «удачников» заявило, что теперь они смогут заработать денег, «продав» историю об ограблении газетчикам.

-- Такой взгляд на жизнь дается от рождения или можно научиться быть «удачником»?

-- Можно, надо только усвоить правила удачливого человека, которые мы выработали в рамках проекта «Удача», и научиться ими пользоваться. Второй частью нашего проекта была организация «школы удачи», в которую вошли те самые мои добровольцы. Я попросил их прожить по нашим правилам месяц. Почаще ломать распорядок дня, жить на интуиции, на инстинктах, менять круг общения, и все время воображать себя счастливым. Через месяц восемьдесят процентов из них заявили, что стали более счастливыми и удачливыми. Причем самое ценное, что это заявили не только «неудачники», но и те, кто раньше на фортуну не жаловался.

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